The Pitfall Of Perfectionism

“Hardly — you just made a few slips in this — the hammeshiah threw me off — it looks exactly like Persian. But the word Christus is really old — from Apostolic times and it is in Greek which was the lingua Franca (along with Aramaic) of the Middle East during the time of Jesus Christ and the apostles. “

Yes. The New Testament was originally written in Greek. My point was, we don’t normally translate proper nouns (names).

Giuseppi Verdi does not become “Joe Green”on English. In Spanish, William Shakespeare is still “William Shakespeare”. We don’t translate names. But in translating the Bible into Latin, Miriam became “Maria”. Jeshua became “Jesus”.

So, you’re saying it happened when the writers of the New Testament translated Hebrew into Greek.

Just to clarify -- the "hardly" is because your statement "I'm just wrong about everything, aren't I"!" is incorrect -- you can hardly be wrong about everything!

The New Testament was originally written in Greek. My point was, we don’t normally translate proper nouns (names). -- Yet the term "Christ" is not a name, neither is Messiah or haMeshiah. That is a term added to Christ's name.

Most Jews at that time, like many Arabs today wouldn't have a surname. They would be like Simon Bar Jona -- Simon son of Jonah or in modern Arab terms like Sheikh Isa ibn Hamad ibn Khalid. At the most they would have a tribal name affixed (only in later Europe were locations or occupations added like "Fields" or "Smith")

Jesus' surname was definitely not "haMeshiah" or "Christus" -- those were the terms used to indicate that He was the Messiah

Also, Giuseppi Verdi does not necessarily become Joe Green in English, but Giuseppe is the Italian version of the original Hebrew/Aramaic name of Yusuf as did Joseph.

John starts off as the Hebrew Yohanan then becomes Greek Ioannes and then Latin Iohannes but becomes John in English, Jan in Swedish, Polish etc.

The translation of these names did not occur during the translation from Greek to Latin (since both were Indo-European and hence had the same phonemes), so Jerome (the translator to the Latin Vulgate) is off the hook!

Why did they change from Aramaic/Hebrew to Greek? I'm guessing due to three reasons:

The movement from a Semitic language to an Indo-European one necessitated changing sounds to those in the translated language -- let me give you an example. I'm an American settled in Poland and only after marrying my wife did I realise that the former President of Poland's name is not "Leck Walesa" but is properly pronounced as "LeH Vawensa" -- there are lots of sounds in German, French, Slavic languages, Indian languages that are not there in English. Even more so in the Semitic languages -- whether Hebrew "Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai elohanu, Adonai echad" or Arabic "La illah allah mohammad al rasurillah, shadwan al rasurillah" -- different sounds that don't exist in our language. Definitely there would be sounds not shared between Hebrew and Greek
Hebrew was also written without vowels -- pretty perplexing, eh? so, for the speakers of Greek, it would be easier to take the most common prononciation and use it
A different script can add to point one -- something there just aren't letters in the alphabet that translate the sound! For instance, my name is John, translated into Hindi is मेरा नाम जॉन है -- but the "John" there has to be pronounced as "Jaahn" if one uses the limitations of that alphabet (of course it's the same the other way around -- the Latin script can't translate many Hindi words

So, you’re saying it happened when the writers of the New Testament translated Hebrew into Greek.

Well, I already established my point that Meshiah/Messiah or Chrystus/Christ was not Jesus surname, and the first time Christians were called Christians is after Chrystus (and thats in Acts) -- we're not called Meshiahians ;-P (well actually, in Arabic we are called Isai - from Meshiah)

But the translation of Hebrew/Aramaic names occurred far earlier -- right from Alexander the Great's conquering of the Middle East in the 3rd century BC, Greek dominated and local terminologies, languages etc. had to be "translated" into Greek.

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