Dharma

Which Gospel is the oldest and how is the name of Jesus pronounced therein?

O.E. crist, from L. Christus, from Gk. khristos "the anointed" (translation of Heb. mashiah, see messiah), from khriein "to rub, anoint," title given to Jesus of Nazareth. The L. term drove out O.E. hæland "healer" as the preferred descriptive term for Jesus. A title, treated as a proper name in O.E., but not regularly capitalized until 17c. Pronunciation with long -i- is result of Ir. missionary work in England, 7c.-8c. The Ch- form, regular since c.1500, was rare before. Christmas is O.E. Cristes mæsse and retains original vowel sound; Father Christmas first attested in a carol attributed to Richard Smart, Rector of Plymtree (Devon) from 1435-77. Christmas tree first attested 1835 in Amer.Eng., from Ger. Weihnachtsbaum. Christmas cards first designed 1843, popular by 1860s.


http://www.searchgodsword.org/lex/gr...gi?number=2424

Original Word Word Origin
¹Ihsou=v of Hebrew origin (03091)
Transliterated Word Phonetic Spelling
Iesous ee-ay-sooce'
Parts of Speech TDNT
Noun Masculine 3:284,360

Diogenes the Cynic

The oldest Canonical Gospel is Mark and the Greek word Iesous is pronounced as ee-AY-sooce. The Aramaic name is Yeshu and would have been pronounced as "YES-shoo."

freigeister

The definitive pronunciation

spin

The following gets an oh-my-god.
Why do we have to use this sh*tty cryptic incoherent excuse for a transcription, when there is a nice clear system, IPA, devised by phonetic scholars and used around the world? (IPA guarantees only one sound per letter, but has a much larger group of letters to cater for all the different sounds. You need more than ascii for IPA.)

The basic transcription for the understood pronunciation would be /je:su:s/. /j/ is pronounced like "y" in "yes". /e:/ - the colon indicates a long vowel, so it would have been pronounced noticeably longer. This is also the case for the /u:/ -- (/u/ as in "put").

The eta in the Greek is a pure long vowel, not a diphthong, though "ay" unfortunately is a diphthong. Greek didn't make a distinction between a vocalic iota and a consonantal iota, eg do you pronounce the letter iota with an initial "i" or a "y"? When it precedes another vowel it is guaranteed to be consonantal. This behaviour is just like the Hebrew letter YOD.

The Aramaic is Y$W(, which suggests a transcription of /je$u:/. One problem with the Greek is that there is no equivalent for the SHIN, so one used the nearest sound, the sigma. So let's insert the sigma and compare the result with the genitive form of Jesus in Greek:

/jesu:/ (Aramaic transcription with sigma)

/je:su:/ (Greek genitive)

The resultant difference is the length of the vowel. Why it is long in Greek isn't transparent.

The spelling of the root part of Jesus doesn't vary, so there's no sign of pronunciation variation.


As to the word christos as a translation of M$YX anointed, it's very ideosyncratic. The word christos as it is used in classical Greek meant unguent, that with which you anoint, not the one who is anointed. That's why we joked a while back over the word "christian" meaning the oilies. It is therefore strange that the LXX translators chose to use "christos" for "messiah", because the resultant use didn't match the Greek. The translators' action is clear however. Starting from a translation of the verb chriw "smear or pour oil over", they derived a noun from the verb (as had been done in Hebrew to get something that meant "that which is anointed"), but the derivation in Greek indicates "that with which you anoint". We do find christos in literature prior to the LXX and it definitely means the oil, not the oiled.


spin

Chris Weimer

spin: It's odd indeed. It does cast doubt on the extreme quality of the translation of the Torah into Greek, however. I wonder if the translators might have had something else in the beginning? Do we have pre-Christian attestations to Christos (well, thinking about it, why else would Christians adopt the term if it wasn't there in the first place). Very odd indeed.

spin

I have already pointed out that xristos in Greek prior to the LXX didn't equate to the meaning of M$YX. But could anyone think that it was the christians who had the torah translated into Greek? LXX Lev 4:5 (etc.) has o iereus o xristos and the term xristos is used dozens of times in the LXX along with numerous other verbal forms of xriw directly related to the Hebrew verb M$X.

"why else would Christians adopt the term if it wasn't there in the first place"? Because it was there in the LXX as a translation of M$YX in the first place. Can you see any reason other than as an appropriation of Jewish cultic terms for christianizing purposes?


spin

spin

Let me add that the LXX usage of xriw was also ideosyncratic. The verb principally means, "rub, anoint with scented unguents or oil" according to L&S. I can't see any specifically cultic usage of the verb in a non-LXX context prior to christianity, whereas M$X seems predominantly to carry a cultic significance.


spin

Dharma

odd and interesting indeed. It is definatively for Christianizing purposes...however, I doubt anyone would call themselves as spin asserts, "the oily smeared ones!"

We must remember that Jews were involved in many of the translations, and they were generally well versed in Greek AND Hebrew...for them to make such a deliberate mistake is unlikely.

It get's even more confusing:

here is the title of Barlaam and Joshphat : St. John Damascene: Barlaam and Ioasaph
Here is JEsus in the Apocryphal:

HE NAME JESUS IN THE APOCRYPHA

The apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, also called The Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, was likely written early in the third century B. C. E. Originally written in Hebrew by one Joshua son of Sirach, it was translated into Greek about 132 B.C.E.
Read this short passage from the introduction written by Joshua’s grandson who translated the work into Greek.



The grandfather's name is iwvhy, Joshua. His grandson translated the book into Greek, the language which many of the Jews learned from childhood. At the same time, he transliterated the name of his grandfather into Greek as IhsouV, Jesus. It should be understood that at this time in history, not all Jews spoke Hebrew. Perhaps it would be well to read from Acts chapter two.

unknown4

I still think something's "odd" about this name "Iesous". I understand the final sigma for a masculine ending name in Greek, and the theory that the final ayin may have been dropped, but why an eta as the second letter? If it was really "Yeh-shoo", then why transliterate that name with an eta as the second letter which would make a "yay" sound? I read this on the net, whether accurate or not, http://www.fossilizedcustoms.com/transliteration.html, where this person transliterates the second letter as an alpha. The main reason why I think this name is "odd" is that it supposedly equals 888 in Greek gematria. Sure, it could have just happened to "turn out that way", and then "mythology" related to that written. Here's an interesting link where this guy "finds" patterns in the Greek Testament relating to 888. Maybe they were purposedly designed that way? Anyway, here it is: http://www.jesus8880.com/

spin

The usual Dharma confusion.

The Jews who coined the term xristos derived it as a noun parallel to the derived M$YX. The christians got it from the LXX. At some later Roman influenced stage the term xristianos was derived from xristos, understood to mean M$YX. This is coherent in the Judeo-christian ethos.

It just so happens that the Greek word xristos outside that ethos and prior to the Greek development of it was used to mean oil or unguent.

Once the term was coined, and it is actually difficult to work out when despite the passage in Acts on the first use, there was no turning back.


spin