On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 10:12:53AM -0600, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote:Harmon Seaver wrote:
Translate/transliterate is irrelevant -- you don't change people's names,Ever hear of King Ferdinand of Spain? His real name was, of course,
Fernando -- Ferdinand is merely the English equivalent. Likewise,
English and Spanish speakers use different names for the same explorer
-- "Christopher Columbus" vs. "Cristobal Colon".
Yes, the americans and brits are infamous for their total ignorance and
disregard for the sensetivities of others. It's called the Ugly American/Ugly
Brit syndrome. And it's part and parcel of why the rest of the world hates us.
It's a wonder they haven't changed the name of the Prophet Mohammed to Mumbo
or something equally inane. And Allah to asshole.
And then of course there were those moron christer monks who in the 13th
century decided to create a new name for god himself, and stuck "Jehovah" into
the text.
Even I, as a nonbeliever in anthing religious, know that much of your theology is wrong.
YHWH is the Tetragrammaton. Jews (and some others) believe the name of their god may not not be spoken. Vowels are usually left out in Semitic languages, with sometimes placeholder consonants. In this case, various transcriptions of YHWH come out as "Yahweh," "Jehova," "Jehovah," etc. The "Yah" part is familiat to those familiar with Rastafarians, as Ja or Jah.
As for silly claim that "no Jewish mother ever named her son Jesus," Ken Brown and others have already dealt with how languages and alphabets shift around. The shifts between consonants (like J and Y, like D and T in German, and so on) are well known to all etymologists.
Here's a short description from the American Heritage Dictionary (my favorite dictionary). Some of the diacriticals may not have survived my cutting and pasting, but the gist is clear:
"ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English, from Late Latin Isus, from Greek Isous, from Hebrew y{, from yht{a, Joshua. See Joshua1.
What you may have been thinking of is "No Jewish mother ever named her son Christ." Christ is, of course, essentially a title, not a name.
But Jesus is a perfectly legitimate name (even if Jesus wasn't).
By the way, a fun novel with crypto scattered throughout it is the new novel "The Da Vinci Code," by Dan Brown. It just came out and I've been reading it this week. The plot is that a leading symbologist (who was also in Brown's earlier novel, "Angels and Demons") is a suspect in a murder in the Louvre. He and his cryptologist woman friend (shades of Hollywood--necessary so that Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Garner can play the ass-kicking cryptologist babe) find cryptic messages written by her murdered grandfather. Uncovering the clues related to the Priory of Sion, the Knights Templars, the Holy Grail, and the blood line of Jesus take the reader through France, Italy, and England.
(The core of the research is pretty obvious Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln's "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," from 20 years ago, and the names are even used in anagram form in the novel. The Templars make for an interesting story....Harmon will probably try to weave in some connection with his Druids and how "sweet old ladies" were murdered as Wiccans. Indeed, many Templars were liquidated in a purge, on a Friday the 13th, no less. There is almost certainly some major history going on that is not taught popularly.)
--Tim May "Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice."--Barry Goldwater
