I know the answer. What’s yours? How do yo know that the Hebrew Tetragrammaton initialism YHWH [is the name of God the Father]?
Just don’t get naming trends like that anymore!
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Xšayāršā; it’s all the same name.
I think these other issues that you mention about names are legitimate issues, but they all deal with people from other languages and cultures being expected to assimilate into a dominant culture, which isn’t an analogous thing to transliterating names in the Bible, especially not when Bible translations have existed in a language for as long as the language has existed. The names used in modern English Bible Translations are related to the names used in Middle English Bible Translations, which are related to names used in Old English Bible translations. The forms and spellings have changed as the language has changed.
It’s actually the Aramaic, which was a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew. the Greek version is Ἰησοῦς (Iesus) from which Latin got Iesus and English got Jesus. That’s an interesting part of this conversation. Rome was a colonizing country that had absorbed Greek culture. The New Testament Hellenized a bunch of Hebrew names pretty far away from their Hebrew/Aramaic forms.
The Aramaic of Mary is Maryam, which was derived from the Hebrew Miryam. Maria of the Greek NT is a Hellenized form.
I think this all shows that the Bible has been put into other languages beginning when it was first written down. There’s nothing wrong with adapting names for target languages, it’s been happening since the NT characters names were adapted to Greek for the autographs.
Maybe. And you can buy Bibles that use more Jewish spellings, like Merv mentioned. But I think this whole idea just denies the fact that Christianity is not some new religion being introduced into American culture. It is already deeply contextualized. The English Bible has had a far more shaping influence on American culture than American culture has had on the Bible. Plus, the “culture shock” of different sounding-names would only last one generation of Christians. If the church switched, those new names would become the “white names” if they are the ones being used by the white church. It’s a fallacy to insist that the Bible has been “Americanized.” That’s just a failure to understand how religion, language, and culture work. And as to American Christianity being American–well, that’s normal and that happens in every culture Christianity takes root. The issue is the other problems in society caused by American cultural imperialism and white supremacy, not the fact that the Christian religion has been contextualized in American culture.
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I get the reasoning behind transliterating names – and typically it makes sense – but especially in Genesis it’s a shame due to what gets lost. In Hebrew, the names carried obvious meaning that disappears with a transliterated name. But if you just translate the meaning of the word used for the name, like calling Adam “Humanity,” you lose the namey-ness. Sometimes that might be the smaller loss, especially with words like adam that don’t seem to have been common Hebrew names anyway. But it would be neat to combine a name that sounds like a name with a connection to what the name means.
I’d love to see a Bible gutsy enough to start with the story of Guy and Liv and their firstborn son Lance. And I think the Jacob and Esau story might resonate a bit more with the Hebrew if they became Connor and Harry. Probably too much of a stretch to introduce Hagar as Emma Grant.
But then I guess we’re back to the ditch on the other side: giving Semitic characters common European names.
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As I have Czech mitochondria, should I complain about people singing “Good King Wenceslaus”? That’s Duke Václav, garbled through a few languages to reach English. The problem is the misconception that the biblical persons are of our culture. On the other hand, the misconception that they were totally different causes problems as well, perhaps more fundamentally. Setting the biblical events into current cultures, such as the Cotton Patch Gospel, or D. L. Sayers’ efforts in The Man Born to Be King, can helpfully force us to see ourselves and our culture in biblical terms. But it is certainly of value to note that Europeans play a rather minor role in the Bible, and often (though not always) not such a good one when we show up.
Miriam is indeed the Hebrew name that Mary is in the Greek-derived English of the New Testament. Emphasizing the continuity between the Old and New Testament is of value.
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It’s best to know the meaning of the names. Especially the most important One bar none.
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