Fwd: Re: Derivation of BARBAROS

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Sep 12 07:41:27 EDT 2002


forwarded for George Somsel

>In a message dated 9/11/2002 8:53:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>theomann at earthlink.net writes:
>
>>In connection with Acts 28:2, I recently read the following statement in The
>>Expositor's Bible Commentary (Zondervan: Vol. 9, p. 564):  "Luke calls the
>>natives who welcomed them HOI BARBAROI, which NIV well translates
>>unperjoratively as 'islanders.'  BARBAROI is an onomatopoetic word: to the
>>Greeks and Romans strange languages sounded like 'bar-bar-bar,' hence the
>>word 'barbarian.' "  This struck me as rather curious, so I thought I'd
>check to see if it's true.  Does anyone know?



       My understanding of its origin is that it derives from the Greeks'
encounter with Aramaic-speaking peoples.  As you may have noticed, the
Aramaic names contain the 'bar' element which simply indicates "son of" --
Simon bar Kochbah, Simon bar Jonah, etc.  It is like names we are used to
such as 'Johnson', 'Anderson' or German names such as 'Mendelsohn'.  In a
society where there were so true surnames or family names the method of
identifying which 'Simon' or 'John' was being referenced was by stating his
father's name.  To the Greeks this may have seemed that Aramaic-speakers
were continually saying "bar -- bar -- bar"; hence, BARBAROS or 'barbarian'.

gfsomsel



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