IOKOBOS to JAMES

Paul Cheung CheungWH at abs.edu
Thu Aug 8 22:02:48 EDT 2002


Generally, the Chinese Bible versions maintain a consistent transliteration throughout, from Judah the son of Jacob and the southern kingdom of Judah, through Judas Iscariot, Judas the brother of Jesus, to the Epistle of Jude. 

This is true of the Chinese Union Version (the standard Protestant version). The Chinese Catholic transliteration does show a difference between Jude and Judas, with the latter having the additional "s" transliteration. Both the Catholic and Protestant transliterations use a different term for the New Testament geopolitical term IOUDAIA (Judea) versus the Old Testament IOUDA (Judah).

The oddness of having an epistle named after Judas will be there, but this is simply due to the notoriety of Judas Iscariot. The oddness can be easily overcome, as can be seen in the Chinese Protestant situation. But I guess in the English world, tradition is so entrenched that "Jude" has since time immemorial both a life and identity of its own. Once you started on a different track, a good reason needs to be found to rejoin the original.


Paul Cheung

>>> "Eric S. Weiss" <eweiss at gte.net> 08/09/02 05:39AM >>>
> How the NRSV almost had a Letter of Judas--
> 
> This is from Bruce Metzger, *Reminiscences of an Octogenarian* (Peabody,
> Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997), 91-92:

Thanks for the information. My suggestion for any Bible editor or
committee brave enough to do this would be to title it "Judas (Jude)" or
"The Epistle of Judas (Jude)".

Maybe, just maybe, over time this would acclimate the Bible-reading public
to this fact so that one day an edition can be published that does call
the book "Judas".

Of course, the BEST solution might be to properly name Judas Iscariot,
Jude, and all the other Judases as "Judah." The NASB gives OT characters'
names in their OT form, hence "Judah" appears in Matthew 1:3 where the
Greek is IOUDAS. Most English translations, I think, also give OT
characters their popular English OT name, e.g., Elijah, Moses, etc., and
not even transliterations of Hebrew (e.g., Moshe). Yet, the names of some
of the apostles are given Greek transliterated names, e.g., Judas, but
even that isn't true of all of them -- i.e., we have Andrew, not ANDREAS,
Peter and not PETROS, Paul and not PAULOS, etc. This inconsistency is the
cause of the problem.

Drop, where possible, the OS/AS endings from the English translations of
Greek names. [As an aside, I once found myself in the weird position of
arguing with a door-knocking evangelist that Elias (KJV New Testament) was
the same person as Elijah, because he claimed they were two different
people and was promoting some doctrine based on that (I won't name the
sect).]

How about:

Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Timothy 1,2
Titus
Philemon
Jacob (James)
John 1,2,3
Judah (Jude)

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