A Jew by any other name..

[erratio]

I have now had the second person ask me if the reason for my religion's name is because of the apostle Judas. Judging by the cultural, social and physical distance between the two queries leads me to think that this belief must be quite widespread.

Now, here's my train of thought on this subject:
1. The Torah and Jewish history is full of names which changed significantly when translated into whatever the dominant language was at the time. For example, Moshe is known in English as Moses, and his brother Aharon is usually referred to as Aaron. Furthermore, Jesus would be known in Hebrew as Yesu or Yeshu (someone please correct me on this if I'm wrong).
EDIT: Thanks Michael and Simon for correcting me. Jesus = Yeshua or Yehoshua

2. This is rather timely :) The festival of Chanukkah is coming up, when the Jews celebrate the people rose up against the Greek oppressors and the man who led them. The man's name? In English, Judah. In Hebrew, Yehudah. His name is sourced from one of Jacob's (Ya'akov in Hebrew) 12 sons.

3. The Greek occupation of Judah/Israel/Palestine predated the Roman occupation.

4. This leads me to believe a few things. From (1), that Hebrew names that end in vowels tend to have an S tacked on to the end when converted into the language that was dominant at the time of Jesus (Latin? Roman? Greek?). Secondly, that names that contain H in a medial position tend to lose it in the translation. Thirdly, in all names Y becomes J during translation.

5. From this I conclude that Judas' real (ie. Hebrew) name was probably Yehudah, a name the predates him considerably.

6. Independently of all the above points, there's also a case to be made about the stupidity of naming an entire race/religion that had already existed for a few thousand years after one man, no matter how infamous.

7. Another case can probably be made via the etymology of the name Judas/Judah/Yehudah. According to one of those baby-naming sites (not the best of sources I know, but I don't exactly have any good Jewish literature on hand):
JUDAS Greek form of JUDAH. Judas Iscariot was the apostle who betrayed Jesus.
JUDAH "praised" (Hebrew). One of the twelve sons of Jacob and ancestor of a large tribe in the Old Testament.

So there you go. Who am I to argue with the baby-naming site? :)

In other news, some friends and I are considering celebrating Chrismukkah this year. It'll be fun!

Comments

Hello...

[mnarciso.livejournal.com]

Jesus is actually translated more closely to Yeshua, Yehoshua, or at times, Yahshua. But pretty close, eh. Hope you ok, jen. Take care. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Congrats on regaining your vision!

The languages dominant at the time of Jesus were Greek and Aramaic (irrespective of what Mel Gibson might think), but the transliterations into English of Biblical names come through the Greek Bible. They don't always get an "s" when they end in a vowel (Eli, for example, stays Eli), and I don't know if there's a rule in Greek for when they do.

As mnarciso said, Jesus was Yeshua in Hebrew (ישוע) which means "he will save". There was also at least one high priest with that name in the Temple and we have reason to believe that it was a fairly common name. The full name is Yehoshua (English "Joshua") which means "God will save", but it is possible that Yeshua is understood (in Christian tradition anyway) as a participle rather than a verb: "saviour".

As for Judas, yes that is Yehuda. The Hebrew "y" (י) becomes a German "j" (pronounced the same, of course) and then that spelling persists in English with the different pronounciation. Hence "Jew" with a "j" as well, while the German "Jude" is a better approximation of the Hebrew. In case you're interested, Judas' last name is a real poser!

The best theory (in my opinion) is that Iscariot is a Greek conflation for the Hebreo-Aramaic Ish Qeriyot (איש קריות) which means, "resident of Qeriyot" - a known Palestinian town. Actually, there were lots of places with that name (it literally meant "enclosed city/ies") and topographical 'surnames' were very common.

Simon
PS: I've almost finished! Woohoo!

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, and by the way:

There's a Jesus in Ezra 3:9 (a son of a certain Shealtiel) and the Greek Bible spells his name just as they spell the name of Jesus in the Gospels. The King James Version, however, transliterates it instead: Jeshua. Best not confuse the masses, right? Somebody's head might explode.

[doctorer.livejournal.com]

The link from "y" to "j" is still through Latin, wherein I and J are the same sound. A long i (j) was written at the beginning of words where i was functioning as a consonant (actually a diphthong), which later evolved to a seperate letter (j as we know it).

Yesu/Yeshu

[river-of-light.livejournal.com]

You are a Jew, what are you doing asking if the name is Yesu (or Yeshu)? You could just pick up your Hebrew dictionary and see that it is. You really seem to be up on the names. Why ask someone else who might not know, when you could just look it up for yourself? You ended up getting the erroneous stock answer that it is Yeshua or Yehoshua. These pronunciations are erroneous for the name in question. The name whether spelled yod shin waw ayin, or just yod shin waw, is always pronounced Yesu (or Yeshu). Be careful in your research. You had it right the first time.