James and Jacob
Eszter Andorka
ESZTER.ANDORKA at student.kuleuven.ac.be
Thu Jul 13 11:07:15 EDT 2000
Dear List Members,
the Lutherbibel elready distinguished the patriarch and the two NT-Jameses
by calling 'Jakob'(OT) and 'Jakobus'(NT). Tyndale followed Luthers
decisions very faithfully. (I never studied this age, but a friend of mine
is writing his PhD on the translations edited in Antwerp in these decades,
and he told me so.) So, I guess, the distinction originates somewhere
there. The primary motivation can well be the one mentionned by Lynn: they
wanted to avoid confusion.
BUT: they hided many important links and allusions by this. James/Jacob
isone of them: according to lany exegetes, the JAKWBOS writing to the 12
tribes is not referring to any other NT JAKWBON, but to the patriarch. The
intended readers easily identified it as a pseudoname with a symbolic
message. (See: the regatjhering of Israel, the lost tribes, etc.) There
are several important OT/NT drusas, for ex. Miriam/Mary. The Gospel
narratives uses the same word as the LXX, the Bible of many NT authors.
I think the translators of the Reformation centuries worked with a hidden
antijudaist bias, and their decisions in the translation reflects and
transmittes us this bias. And it is important to make it conscious.
Eszter Andorka
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