stephan huller

I know pronunciations change over time, but it sounds to me like all surviving ancient traditions pronounce the name as some variation of Eesus.

In modern Greek = Eesous https://translate.google.com/?safe=o...wT#iw/el/Jesus

In modern Coptic = Eesus http://books.google.com/books?id=FQl...sos%22&f=false

In Syriac = Eeso' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fivm4RbIeKc

variant Syriac dialects - Eeso http://books.google.com/books?id=ZGl...eso%22&f=false

Tommy

Very interesting. Is the "Eashoa" in link three a preferable alternative pronunciation to Yeshua?

stephan huller

Whenever I hear modern Syriac, I hear eesho or eesho'.

We know for instance that the 'ignorant' pronounced 'Xristos' xrestos according to Lactantius and others. How sure can we be how Ιησούς was pronounced among the vulgar?

stephan huller

Again, as I noted in the other thread very few Greek words began with iota eta:

ἰή LSJ, Middle Liddell, Slater 245 0 [unavailable]
ἰή2 LSJ 245 0 [unavailable]
ἰηγορεῖν LSJ 0 0 joy
ἰήϊος LSJ 0 0 invoked with the cry
ἰήιος Middle Liddell 9 9 invoked with the cry
ἴηλα LSJ, Autenrieth 0 0 [unavailable]
Ἰηλυσός Autenrieth 0 0 [unavailable]
ἴημα LSJ 0 0 [unavailable]
ἵημι LSJ, Middle Liddell, Slater, Autenrieth 62,925 521 Ja-c-io
ἴηνα LSJ 0 0 [unavailable]
ἰήνατε Autenrieth 0 0 [unavailable]
Ἰηπαιήων LSJ, Middle Liddell 2 2 hymn
Ἰηπαιωνίζω LSJ 0 0 cry
ἰηπαιωνίζω Middle Liddell 1 1 to cry
ἰήρια LSJ 0 0 [unavailable]
ἰήσασθε Autenrieth 0 0 [unavailable]
ἴῃσι LSJ, Autenrieth 0 0 ibo
Ἰησονίδης Autenrieth 0 0 son of Iēson
Ἰησοῦς LSJ, Middle Liddell 0 0 Joshua
Ἰήσων Autenrieth 0 0 Iēson
ἰήτειρα LSJ 0 0 [unavailable]
ἰητήρ Autenrieth 0 0 [unavailable]
ἰήτης LSJ 0 0 [unavailable]
ἰητρός Autenrieth 0 0 healer, surgeon, physician;

in the case of the last example, it turns out to be an Ionian variant of ἰατρός

stephan huller

And then if you think about it, how many Greek speaking people in the Empire ever came across an individual named Ἰησοῦς? Not many I suspect.

stephan huller

I've also always found this statement puzzling from the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Philip:

"Jesus" is a hidden name, "Christ" is a revealed name. For this reason "Jesus" is not particular to any language; rather he is always called by the name "Jesus".

stephan huller

So if we breakdown the name Ἰησοῦς the question boils down to - was the eta ever pronounced? Modern Greek, Coptic et al do not pronounce the eta. The name is essentially pronounced (to my ears anyway):

Ἰ (= ee) + σοῦς

The letter eta has the sound of e in the word bet in ancient Greek. Why assume that the eta might not be pronounced? Because if we go back to the handful of Greek words that appeared there almost all of them represent regional dialect pronunciations of iota + other vowels. The Ἰη sound was almost inevitably associated in ancient Greek with the scream or cry 'Eeee!' Go down the list in Liddell and you will see it is true. The question of course might be is the scream 'Eeee-eh' or simply 'Eeeee.' I think it has to be the latter. One of those words Ἰηπαιήων means 'Ee-Paian and comes from the Greek παιάν (also παιήων or παιών), "song of triumph, any solemn song or chant." In this case it is the song dedicated to Apollo thanking him for deliverance from evil. I wonder whether Ἰησοῦς was like Ἰηπαιήων or Ιοβακχος.

spin

The last is rather telling. Obviously you're dealing with a consonantal iota, as evinced in the name of the letter itself. Looking at only the combination of iota-eta ignores that iota combines as a consonant before other vowels. The fact that Joshua was transliterated into LXX Greek, shows that it was normal. The only difference is that the transcriber latched onto the waw in Joshua, which wasn't there in Yeshua and was transliterated as Jesus regarding the high priest at the time of Sheshbazaar. Then of course there was the consonantal u, as seen with Vespasian's name transliterated into Greek. That iota-eta might later change to an eta is a natural change, simplifying the syllable.

It should be clear from the pre-christian use of Jesus in Greek that you already have a natural demonstration of where Jesus came from. Why are you still listening to Irenaeus as you are? It cannot help you source the pronunciation of the name, just the ideas in circulation in the late 2nd c.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Stephan,

Fascinating stuff.

Its usually difficult to trace how a signifier gets tied to the thing it signifies.
Here we face the additional problem of ancient pronunciations which varied quite a bit. Also the ancients took delight, as we do, in coming up with etymological explanations that didn't match any reality, but sounded cool.

Probably there were multiple origins or streams that fed into the different streams we have today. I like the modern Spanish pronunciation for the signifier as it sounds like "Hey, Zeus" to me. Quite ironic, I think.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

stephan huller

What got me started was trying to see iota eta words transliterated into Aramaic. They don't exist. Then I noticed in Jastrow that alef yod is often used to render eta, even the e in eta which confused me even more. Most of the list of iota eta words are very rare variants found only in Hesychius. The gospel(s) only had IE or IES. The "Jesus" was inferred from the special script