![]() He leads field studies in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean for university, seminary and church groups. He is currently Associate Professor Extraordinary of New Testament at Stellenbosch University. Mark received his doctorate in Biblical studies from the University of South Africa (Pretoria), where he serves as a research fellow in Biblical archaeology. Mark Wilson is the director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey, and is a popular teacher on BAS Travel/Study tours. These connections, now lost only for English readers, were caught by Greek-speaking audiences as well as modern readers of translations in most other languages. And while we’re at it, let’s rehabilitate Jacob as the name of two of Jesus’ disciples/apostles. To start, a footnote could denote that James is really Jacob. Most difficult to change would be Bible translations, which are very conservative. Making such an onomastic adjustment need not be too difficult in religious circles, either.īut can such a switch be made practically? Biblical scholars and publishers would need to agree that continued use of “James” is linguistically indefensible and culturally misleading. These changes were soon incorporated by the media as well as in subsequent editions of geographical and historical books. In my lifetime we have adapted to a number of name changes: Bombay to Mumbai, Peking to Beijing, Burma to Myanmar, and Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Its genre is considered to be a diaspora letter like Jeremiah 29:1–23 and the apocryphal works The Epistle of Jeremiah, 2 Maccabees 1:1–2:18, and 2 Apocalypse of Baruch 78–86.įor these reasons, changing English translations of James to Jacob makes a lot of sense. Scholars consider James the most “Jewish” book in the New Testament. The Book of Jacob (i.e., the Book of James) is addressed to “the twelve tribes in the diaspora” (James 1:1) and full of references and allusions to the Torah and Wisdom Literature of the Jewish Bible (Christians’ Old Testament). 3 Including both the Eastern and Western Diasporas, Jacob was the third most popular Jewish name, with 74 occurrences.įourth, the Jewish literary heritage is muddled. Tal Ilan identifies Jacob as the 15th most popular name in Palestine in antiquity, with 18 known persons carrying it. Third, James’s Jewish cultural background is minimized. As Ben Witherington writes, “It is clear that the family of ‘James’ was proud of its patriarchal heritage.” 2 So Jacob was the third Jacob in the family. James was thus named after his grandfather. In Matthew’s genealogy, we learn that Joseph’s father was named Jacob (Matthew 1:16) and that his family tree included the patriarch Jacob (Matthew 1:2). ![]() Second, James’s ancestral lineage is lost, as the student noted above. Hershel Shanks has noted that the reason Israeli scholars failed to understand the significance of the eponymous ossuary is that they didn’t connect James with Ya’akov. Scholars providing a transliteration of James indicate Iakōbos, which even lay readers know is not the same. So what is lost by using James instead of Jacob? First, it has created an awkwardness in academic writing. Since 1797 it has been called the King James Bible. In all future English translations the name stuck, especially after 1611, when King James I sponsored the translation then called the Authorized Version. (However, in both the Old and New Testaments he arbitrarily used the name Jacob for the patriarch). ![]() In the 14th century, John Wycliffe made the first Bible translation into English and translated Iakobus as James. So how did the Jewish name Ya’akov become so Gentilized as James? Since the 13th century, the form of the Latin name Iacomus began its use in English. ![]() One student wrote later that knowing this “turned my understanding of the writing upside down.” Another observed that “with the name change, the loss of the Jewish lineage occurs.” Students were perplexed until they learned that Jacob is the proper translation of the Greek name Iakōbos. When I was teaching a course on the New Testament General Letters (Hebrews through Jude), I began by introducing the Book of Jacob, also known as the Book of James. When I asked what the name of these men was in their languages, they all said “Jacob.” Participants in the study came from a range of countries, including the Netherlands, Iran, Mexico, Moldova and Cameroon. Pastor Dennis Massaro was discussing the three men named “James” in the New Testament: Two were apostles, and the third was the leader of the Jerusalem church and author of the eponymous letter-the Book of James. The problem of names surfaced at a Bible study at the St. Baroque artist Guido Reni depicts the apostle James, son of Zebedee, in his painting Saint James the Greater (c. ![]()
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