Jees, Jude and the Book of Tit

King James

The other day a friend drew me into a discussion on the King James Bible, which, in his view, was the only true Word of God. The discussion was rather short and I believe I may have used a word or two that don't occur in any version of the Scriptures, but until my friend met me, my friend truly believed that the Word of God had been warped and obscured untill truly enlightened folks began to speak English. I bet he believed that God gave Moses the Torah in English and left him the grim task of translating it back into Hebrew.

Take the name James itself, for instance. There is no name James in the Greek Bible. In the Greek texts of the New Testament, the name English speakers know as James is really Yakobos, the Greek version of the Hebrew name Jacob (or rather Yakob). When the Bible was translated into Latin, Yacobos became Iacobus, and a later development in Latin rendered it Iacomus,which isn't all that big a leap when we realize that the b and the m sound somewhat similar in nasal languages.

But Latin evolved into French and Iacomus became Gemmes, believe it or not. When the gospel reached the lands in which people spoke proto-English, the name Gemmes was transliterated into James, and that's where it came from. But if my friend wants to pursue a purified version of Scriptures, he should speak of the Book of Yacob, and not of the Book of James. I'm proud to report that for instance the Dutch speak faithfully of the Brief (=letter) van Jacobus.

And the name James isn't the only name that was warped to fit the reach of the English tongue. The name Paul, for instance, isn't Paul but Paulos (the Dutch say Paulus - go Dutchies!). As a matter of fact, a large majority of New Testament names were Anglicized by amputating the Greek extensions. Thus the Greek name Timotheos became truncated into the rather chipper sounding English name Timothy, Matteas became Matthew, Lukas became Luke, Markos became Mark, Johnanus became John, Stephanos became Steven, Petros became Peter, and so on.

But for some unknown reason, of a few names the Greek forms were left in tact. This is remarkably inconsistent and if my friend wants to pursue some kind of purity, he may start with consistency and truncate all New Testament Greek names.

Well, if he should insist, then I guess I could accommodate him to some extent. I mean, it's perfectly conceivable that demons will flee too when rebuked in the name of Jees. And Jude sounds just as mean as Judas. But I refuse to ever read from the Book of Tit!