Comments on: Was It Meant to Be History?

By: Pulpit Magazine » Blog Archive » Gospel Harmony

Pulpit Magazine » Blog Archive » Gospel Harmony — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 07:12:56 +0000

[...] This is the sixth installment in our series on the trustworthiness of the New Testament gospels. In case you’ve missed any of the discussion so far, here are links to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. [...]

By: Sharon

Sharon — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:24:13 +0000

Here’s another thought–perhaps the Epistle of Jude was called that so as to make sure one knew that Judas Iscariot was not the author. I don’t believe there are any places in Scripture where Judas Iscariot is called “Jude.”

By: eva

eva — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:50:51 +0000

Provided, what you’ve posted is true and the Geneva bible had nothing to do with any Jamess, it blows the they changed JAcob to James to honour King James theory right out of the water. You know, you could’ve posted that 20 posts ago.

I was not condemning or proving anything, merely looking for the most reasonable explanation. You’ve subscribed to a variation of that ideology by introducing a time element into it, same thing though

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:35:15 +0000

Jacob = Iaakob (Gen 25:26)
James = Iames (Jas 1:1)

Be careful, though, Eva, not to ascribe to me positions I have not taken. I’m not using the “Just because we can’t explain it, doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation” thing to JUSTIFY the change. All I’m saying is that, as there may be a rationale, we can’t yet CONDEMN the change.

There’s a huge conceptual difference between saying that a possible explanation (though its unknown) proves something vs. a possible explanation postpones condemnation.

By: eva

eva — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:54:31 +0000

That’s certainly interesting….what does it say regarding Jacob in the Geneva bible?

No one seems to have a ‘liguistic’ rationale for it, not just yourself. I don’t like to submit to the: ‘just because we can’t explain it, doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation/it’s not true’ ideology till the bitter end, as that can be used to justify anything. I too wish to believe that it was a passive change in names but there is a case for intentional alteration by the translators.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 22:09:33 +0000

In the Geneva Bible, published in 1577 (KJV=1611), renders Ioudas “Ivde” in Jude 1:1 and “Ivdas” in Mt 13:55. Same deal, except they have I’s for J’s and, following the Latin, the U was written as V (which, by the way is why we call a W a double-U even though it looks like two Vs).

I understand your point Eva, but just because I personally don’t have a rationale for it doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t one.

By: eva

eva — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 16:33:10 +0000

They shouldn’t have done that because bibles in other languages have managed to retain their integrity, despite being translated from the same original hebrew and greek documents.

A nearly plausible explanation for Jacob to James is linguistic evolution, as Hampton and yourself said at the start: Jacobus to Jacomus to James..I personally don’t agree but unless anyone has access to translations pre-KJV, to check how it was translated there, then that’s all there is to go on.

The name Ioudas in the greek appears in the NT in two situations: gospels and as the name of one of the NT books. It was translated to Judas in the gospels and not given the English treatment. However, when they came to the book of Judas, they decided to use the English version: Jude. Consistency? rationale?

Peter/Petros/Cephas has no bearing on this whatsoever.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 11:35:57 +0000

Why shouldn’t they have done that? Why should Peter have been written down as Cephas and not Petros? Does that mean the NT writers should have written the NT in Aramaic and not Greek, since they spoke in Aramaic?

There are no name changes. Nobody is arbitrarily CHANGING names. It involves either the translation of the name from Hebrew or Aramaic to Greek to English (Judah/Judas/Jude; Cephas/Petros/Peter), or it involves the linguistic evolution of a name over time (as in the Jacob/James example).

By: eva

eva — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 09:25:06 +0000

No need thanks. In conclusion, the translators made a few name changes, when they shouldn’t have done.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:15:16 +0000

Yehudah is the Hebrew. There’s a variant of that, which is rendered “Judah” in OT texts.

Judas is the Greek version of Yehudah, but it’s the English transliteration from the Greek Ioudas.

Jude is the English version of Yehudah and Ioudas.

The writer of Jude, noted as Jude, is actually called Judas in Matt 13:55 and Mark 6:3 (Parallel passages).

So the answer to your “digression question” is: essentially the same reason that they chose to call Peter “Peter,” instead of “Petros” (Greek) or “Cephas” (Aramaic), see John 1:42, NASB. Since I’m not a translation scholar, I don’t know how they decide which language to use when.

Maybe one of the smarter guys at Grace can answer this? Nate? Matt? Nathan? Jesse? Bueller?