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  • From: Mike.Conley AT t-online.de (Mike Conley)
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Playing the naming game
  • Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 13:32:20 +0200


Dear Frank Anthony!<VNtsearcher AT aol.com>

I can't tell you whether Epaphras and Ephraditus were one and the same
person or whether Aristasrchus is a Jew or Gentile, nor how to separate
out the literally tens of thousands of Gaiuses in the early Roman
Empire, but I'm sorely inclined to offer advise of a general nature on
how to go about this business.

First off, collect maybe a dozen different translations of the New
Testament, including some in foreign languages. Whether you can read the
language in question or not, you can find the names by cross checking,
noting book and verse. Keep in mind that every translation of the New
Testament, from William Tyndale and Martin Luther's time up to our very
day, is simultaneously a `re-write,' inserting or expurgating pericopes
in whole or in their single elements in detail to support the doctrinal
credo of the one or the other sect, creeds, community or church.

Then, step two, get yourself a good GREEK-LANGUAGE edition of the New
Testament and teach yourselve the Greek alphabet! That's not all that
difficult, believe me. Thus equipped, check the Greek rendition out in
the same fashion by book and verse (They're numbered in the Greek
version as well.)

Bet on it! You'll find half a dozen different spellings of the names to
which you referred in your dispatch of Friday, the 3rd.

Then go to Robert Eisenman's heavy brick, a good two inches thick:
"James; The Brother of Jesus," Penguin Books, 1997, ISBN 0-670-86932-5.
There Eisenman plays the game of equating Biblical names over a space of
1074 pages. That'd be a help; seek out the system (= playing rules)
behind his approach.

And when you've gone through all these steps, set yourself a new
question:

How if I've concentrated myself on English derivations of words - with
or without knowing Hebrew - while totally ignore the overwhelmingly
GREEK world in which all of these presumed records were compiled...,
How, under these circumstances, can I meaningfully draw conclusions from
what I've now compiled?

To treat the Jews of the first century C.E. as a hermetically sealed off
world unto themselves is to have misunderstood the world you would
analyze. In the period in question, there was more GREEK spoken in
Jerusalem than Hebrew and, come 66 C.E. you couldn't go a hundred paces
without running into Latin. That's the real world of the late first
century in which the gospels were hacked out!

There are endless numbers of good translations of Greek texts into
English. Think of the elaborate Loeb Library, just to name one. Read
into it! Learn what real live flesh and blood people were thinking about
back then! And only thereafter return to you your game of scrabbles.

With Cosmic greetings,

Mike Conley




  • Playing the naming game, Mike Conley, 08/05/2001

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