[geeks] The unspellable name of G-D (was Airport Security)

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 11:37:02AM +0200, Jonathan Groll wrote:
> In a kind of freakonomics way it seems to be possible to determine the
> degree of religious fervour based on the number of spelling mistakes
> that are made. My current hypothesis is that the number of spelling
> mistakes increases linearly as the emotional response increases, or
> alternatively it is the sheer number of characters that need to be
> typed to produce a compelling argument for non-believers?
> 
> In any case Yeshua/Yehosua/Yeashua/Jesus/Jeu of Nazateth/Nazarth would
> have had difficulty turning the other cheek if he couldn't parse the
> argument!

What you call spelling mistakes are often transliterations of words that
don't properly exist in other languages. It may also be obscured because
various languages and pronunciations were used in the area at various times.

For example, there were several versions of Latin and Greek, which among
other things were used to distinguish between classes. In the case of
Judea around 2,000 years ago, the people on the street spoke Aramaic,
which is sort of like Hebrew, while the official language was Hebrew,
which is sort of like modern Israeli Hebrew, and not at all like the
Hebrew spoken in western Europe.

A Roman soldier spoke a version of "street Greek" and some "street
Latin", neither of which were much like the Greek spoken on the street
in Greece, nor the Greek or Latin spoken in the patrician schools of
Rome or the Roman Senate.

It still persists to this day, my street name is an acronym for an
organization, Pioneers in Service to the State (shin chet lamed in
Hebrew), but since it was first built in 1956, the English version of
the street name has change several times and there are at my last count
5 different versions ranging from Shekel to Shachal. 

As for Jesus, it is very obviously not his name. The "G" sound did not
exist in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic. In fact it really does not exist
in modern Hebrew either, technically, I have to use a special marking with
my name (which I don't bother with) to differentiate it from gehf-ry.
(gimel (mark) fey resh yould) (that's backwards, Hebrew reads from
right to left).


It was yeh-shoe-ah which is a variant of yeh ho shoe ah. Hebrew and 
Aramaic have no letter vowels, so just translating it to Latin
(English) letters makes little sense anyway. Either name begins
with a yould (Y sound) not a "G" sound anyway.

I mention this as historical interest anyway, because IMHO it's
up to the followers of any particular religion to name their
deities.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM