Apostlepalooza!

Dan McClellan I've seen this claim. I don't know where it's coming from. I don't know if this has ever been argued by any scholars, but I've seen some folks try to argue that Thomas is Jesus's twin.

Dan Beecher Okay. Well, that would change the nativity stories a lot. Yeah. Now we have to hire Danny DeVito to play- ... Didymus. And we'll have

Dan McClellan him say, "Your back looks like a relief map of the Andes." Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same, which unfortunately seems always to be increasing. How are we doing today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Doing okay. I am doing my best not to increase the misinformation, though I'm a bearer of very little brain. It's not like I'm going to... I'm going to do it sometimes just by accident. It's just bound to happen.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah. And who of us is innocent of every now and then spreading a little misinformation?

Dan Beecher Yes, indeed.

Dan McClellan There is a lot of it online these days, though. And in today's episode, I understand we're going to be just full of questions. We got

Dan Beecher a whole lot of questions. It is an apostolic episode. We are going to be talking about apostles left and right. Even epistles about apostles. Yep. So, it's a good time. But to start us off, look, here's what happened. I was doing some research for one of our segments, and I went down a rabbit hole and almost didn't make it back out. So I messaged you, and I was like, "You need to help me out with this. I don't know what's going on." So let's jump into our segment, McClellan 911. Dun, dun, dun. Or

Dan McClellan I guess our audio of choice, mine anyways,

Dan Beecher boing. Let's do the segment. All righty.

Dan McClellan What are we talking about, Dan? What is your emergency?

Dan Beecher Okay. Here's the thing. I was looking up what the word apostle meant, and then I was thinking about apostles. Mm-hmm. And the original 12 came up, the 12 apostles. They're very famous. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you've heard of them, but a lot of people have.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And the thing about them was I started to ask myself, "Wait, can I name the 12 apostles? It seems like something I should know." And I got Peter, James, and John, or Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and I don't know who was an apostle. I literally suddenly realized, who's at that Last Supper? I don't know. I knew Judas was one. And then when I really racked my brains, I came up with Mr. Doubting Thomas. Mm-hmm. And then I got so confused, so I went and looked it up thinking, this is a thing that will just have an easy list- Yeah ... of names.

Dan McClellan Yeah. One would imagine, the way people talk about the 12 apostles, it seems like it's just a simple datum. Here they are.

Dan Beecher Yeah. There's 12 dudes. How hard could that possibly be? And then I go to Wikipedia, and there's a grid. There's graphics, and I was blown away. Now, I know that I've been confused before by things like name changes. Mm-hmm. Which happen way too frequently in the Bible for my comfort, for my personal comfort. Yeah. We talked about Abram becoming Abraham.

Dan McClellan We

Dan Beecher talked, there's-

Dan McClellan Jacob becomes Israel. Becomes Israel. Even God's name changes. You have God introducing themselves to Moses and saying, "Look, they all knew me by this name. They didn't know me by this other name, but I'm letting you know my actual name is this." And then you go look at those other texts, and it's like, "That name's in there, too." So yeah, even God's name is not safe. They're getting changed up.

Dan Beecher Yeah, and the other thing that I want to talk... So, okay, so we've got some names that are changing. Mm-hmm. We've got some names that are confusing. Mm-hmm. And the other thing is that I'm pretty sure that none of the names that I know are the original Aramaic names of these guys.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and this is something I get asked all the time. Did people running around this area 2,000 years ago really have names like John and Matt? And Andrew. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's some confusion going on regarding how we get the pronunciations of the names as we have them today. Okay. So yeah. Lots of fun.

Dan Beecher I'm wondering, let's start with just a few confusing things from the grid of apostles.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Hit me. One of the first things is that I have never known, I have heard the name Simon. Mm-hmm. I have heard the name Peter. I have heard the name Simon Peter, and I don't know, are these three different guys? Are they the same guy? I don't know who we're talking about.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So we've got the name Simon, which is a Greek transliteration of Shimon- Okay ... which is an older Hebrew name. And so there's nothing too-

Dan Beecher Also a frequent thing that Michael Jackson would enjoy.

Dan McClellan Yeah, which is a great interpretive key to interpreting his lyrics. So-

Dan Beecher Yes, exactly.

Dan McClellan But we have Simon also referred to as Peter in the text, and this is a name that Jesus was supposed to have given to Simon. And in the Gospel of John, it's Cephas, which would be a transliteration of the Aramaic word for rock, which is what Petros would be related to, rock of some kind. Some people try to read a lot more significance into the name than probably was there. "Oh, it means a little, itty-bitty rock. Oh, it means a bedrock. Oh, it means a boulder." I don't think it's quite so granular- Okay ... what's going on there. But yeah, Simon Peter is an individual who seems to have two names. Now, there was a tradition, evidently, I have not plumbed the depths of the data regarding this notion that anciently they would have their traditional Aramaic/Hebrew name and would also adopt a Greco-Roman name. Kind of like how when folks come here from parts of Asia, they'll be like, "My name's Sarah." It's like-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... and they've got another name that most people would just have a rough time pronouncing, and so they will adopt an anglicized name of some kind. So, conventional wisdom says that was going on back then. So Simon is already a Greek transliteration of an Aramaic/Hebrew name, and Cephas/Peter would be the same. So, it doesn't seem like that's fitting in with that tradition, and there's actually an argument to make that these may have been two different people, that Simon and Cephas were separate people. I think Bart Ehrman published an article a long time ago talking about how many early Christians understood them to be two different people. Wow. And so it's a little confusing when you look across the four different gospels and then into the Book of Acts because they're referred to in different ways. So, in Matthew, it's Simon, also known as Peter. In the other synoptic gospels, so Mark and Luke, it's Simon, whom he named Peter. And then in John, you've got Simon Cephas, which is translated Peter. In Acts, he's referred to as Peter. It's almost like there's a chronological trajectory. Starts off as Simon, and then by the end of the first century, he's completely Peter, which suggests that they're wrestling with what to do here, and you just have different texts approaching it in different ways, which could indicate they were two different people and their identities were just merged. It could indicate that he used his own name inconsistently, and they were just trying to figure out a way to make sense of it. But we don't really know for sure.

Dan Beecher I'm going to go back to something because- Okay ... I think I understood what you were saying. But so Peter, that's a transliteration of a Aramaic slash-

Dan McClellan Well, that's the Greek word Petros. Petros. Right. And if John is correct, Jesus gave him the name Cephas, and so Cephas is a translation of Petros.

Dan Beecher And so- Translation from Greek to Greek?

Dan McClellan No, Cephas would be Aramaic.

Dan Beecher Oh, Cephas is the Aramaic.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay. Got it.

Dan McClellan So, in John, we have the story that Jesus gave him the name Cephas, and then if you translate Cephas from Aramaic into Greek, you get Petros. Okay. And then in English, that is transliterated as Peter.

Dan Beecher So, Simon is a transliteration. Peter is a potential translation of Cephas.

Dan McClellan If John is to be believed.

Dan Beecher Okay. All right. Yeah. Fine. You know what? I'm done with... But he was also called Simon Peter, right?

Dan McClellan Yeah. We have in John, the double name.

Dan Beecher Okay. Then there's also, I don't want to confuse things too much, but one of the other apostles is also Simon. Am I right about that? Yes. That's- Yeah. There- You can't have... This was poor planning on the part of the Savior, I think early on.

Dan McClellan So here's the-

Dan Beecher Because there's doubles of a couple of names.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So this other Simon, who is one of the original 12, ostensibly, is not mentioned in the Gospel of John because John nowhere says, "Here are the 12 apostles." He mentions them randomly, but he does not give a list of them like the other gospels do. And when the other gospels mention this other Simon, they tag on some kind of identifier. They call him The Zealot. They call him The Canaanite. Mark calls him The Cananian or something like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And I think Luke and Acts call him The Zealot to distinguish him from Simon Peter, and John just isn't worried about it.

Dan Beecher I like The Zealot. It's like a version of, "This is Jeremy A. and Jeremy M." when you're in school or whatever, but they're just adding. If you are an elementary school teacher and you have two Johns or whatever in your class, name one of them The Zealot. It's much better than- Yeah ... just giving their last initial.

Dan McClellan Well, that's what we could do. We could be Mack and The Zealot or something like that.

Dan Beecher There you go. Because- I don't think I'm The Zealot. Between the two of us, I think the atheist is probably not The Zealot among us.

Dan McClellan Beat you in The Zealot. I don't know

Dan Beecher that you're a zealot either, so I think zealotry is actually... But you're right. How did I not think of the fact that we're two Daniels? Okay, fine. Speaking of two names- Mm-hmm ... we got two Jameses.

Dan McClellan We got, yes, two Jameses.

Dan Beecher So there's James, son of Zebedee, who is the brother of somebody, right? No, wait. There's various Zebedeeans. So there's James, and then there's another James, son of Alphaeus. Mm-hmm. And, so first of all, let's talk about the name James. What's the origin? What's the original name in its original language?

Dan McClellan So James actually comes from a Hebrew name, Ya'akov. Jacob.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And, so if you go look in the Greek, you're actually going to see Iakobos is what the Greek says there. Now- Okay ... we use James today because that has become conventionalized, that particular transliteration. And there's actually, we can trace the development of this name through different languages to get us from Jacob to James. And this was just a side note, this was always a complication in translating the "Book of Mormon" because you have the book of Jacob. And you also have, when you're saying, well, there's also the Epistle of James in the Bible, and so when you're referring to these, you've got to distinguish somehow. But in many languages, they don't distinguish Jacob from James, so.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Anyway, that's not important here. But, yeah. Jacob, when you go into Latin, you get Iacobus, which is very close to the Greek, but there are some dialects where you have kind of a nasalization of the B, and it's Iacombus- Oh ... which is how it sounds. And then, there are, as that name is used, there are some places where the B drops out, and you get Iacomus, and then you get Iacomo- Mm-hmm ... which is a name that we find in some languages. And then the hard C sound that we have in the-- Or the M drops off entirely, and the hard C sound will turn into a G or something like that. Iago is- Okay, yeah ... derives from this name. And then, so San Diego, contrary to the conventional wisdom- Of a being without a whale? ... has nothing to do with a whale, right. But is St. James or St. Jacob, San Diego. So Diego is also a variation on this name. Santiago is a variation on this name. Tiago is a variation on this name. And when it gets into English, we have James as one of the variations on this. And so I forget exactly the path that we have to trace, what countries we have to go through to get from the Latin to the English. But these are just different ways that people pronounce these things based on the conventions that their languages held in their particular region in their particular time, and this is going to have relevance when we talk about how we get from Yeshu to Jesus. Uh-oh. Yeah. Which we'll talk about a little bit later,

Dan Beecher but- I'm just going to say that of all of the names that you went through that are versions of this original Iacob or whatever, what was the original in the Hebrew?

Dan McClellan Ya'akov.

Dan Beecher Ya'akov. I feel like James is the worst- ... of all of-- You've gone way too far down the road. Let's back it up a few steps,

Dan McClellan but okay. Yeah. We've got a couple of Jamies. We've also got Jaime and Jamie, and we've got a bunch of different variations that are derived from that as well. So yeah, it's a bit of a mess, but- Yeah ... but I think it's fascinating. Linguistically- Yeah,

Dan Beecher it is fascinating

Dan McClellan ... bit my lips until my lips were blue.

Dan Beecher And I think we can do the same kind of crazy name tree with James' brother, John. Mm-hmm. So do we know what the original Hebrew/Aramaic name for that was?

Dan McClellan Yochanan. Yochanan. Yes.

Dan Beecher Which sounds like-- So, I know the German Johannes- Mm-hmm ... would be a variant of John. That sounds more like Yochanan than John. Yeah. But at least I can see a thread through all of those better than I can with James. But yeah, there's 1,000 different John variants.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So when people are like, "Was there really a dude named John living in Syria-Palestine 2,000 years ago?" And no, they were Yochanan, or if they were using Greek, Ioannis or something like that. And then that goes into a bunch of different languages. We have Ian is developed from this. We have Giannis develops from this. John, hundreds of different variations. Yeah. In fact, this was something I discovered when I was living in England and did a little research on my own last name, McClellan. There are over 100 different names that derive from the name McClellan. My spelling isn't the original spelling by any stretch of the imagination, but we have neighbors, the Gillilands, who their last name is a derivation of McClellan as well. Oh, wow. So many names are related and derived from other names. It's so fascinating when you look into it. But I think some people get confused and think because some of these things have relationships like that, that they can just arbitrarily imagine relationships that exist between other words. Yeah. Which is a problem that I am constantly trying to respond to on my social media channels when people are like, "Well, this..." What did I just hear? Oh, demos from democratic. So I just saw a video 30 minutes ago where somebody was like, "That looks like demon." So, Democrats are demons. And it's like, okay, so they both come from Greek, but they don't look at all alike in Greek. And so yeah. There are a lot of amateur etymologists out there that should not quit their day job, but should quit being amateur etymologists.

Dan Beecher Well, or at very least, we should all quit listening to them. Yeah. If they're going to approach this without credentials, at very least, we can all reject whatever it is that they have to say. Yeah. I'm going to dive into-- As a refresher, as a little palate cleanser, I'm going to say that in the massive grid of who's named what and where they are in the lineup and everything, Philip is delightfully easy -

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... of all of our-

Dan McClellan Non-controversial. Yeah.

Dan Beecher Everyone calls him Philip. No one calls him anything else. No one tacks anything onto his name or anything. Yeah. Just Philip.

Dan McClellan He didn't cause any problems. He showed up on time. He did what he was asked to do. And yeah, didn't cause any issues.

Dan Beecher Do we know what that name was in the original?

Dan McClellan In the original, it probably has to do with Philippos, which would be lover of horses or something like that, if I'm remembering correctly. But I haven't looked that one up in a long time.

Dan Beecher I didn't expect you to look up all of them. I will say, so let's see. We've had all of those. Bartholomew looks almost as clean as Philip until you get to the Gospel of John. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Doesn't mention him.

Dan Beecher Well, in this thing, in my grid here, it says Nathaniel is associated somehow with Bartholomew.

Dan McClellan So Nathaniel is mentioned in the Gospel of John. And so the algebra here is, okay, John mentions a bunch of other people who are mentioned in the Synoptics. Uh-huh. John doesn't ever mention Bartholomew, but he does mention this guy, Nathaniel, who's not mentioned in the Synoptics. Ah. Nathaniel must therefore be Bartholomew. By the process of elimination, if we assume that they're telling the same story with the same characters, Nathaniel would have to be Bartholomew. There's an argument to make for that. There's an argument to make against that. I don't know for sure. I don't have strong feelings about that identification.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But Nathaniel would be a good Hebrew name. God has given or gift of God. So Nathaniel in Hebrew would be the same as Theodore in Greek. Oh. Gift of God. Okay. So that would be like the-

Dan Beecher Oh, Theodore. Okay ...

Dan McClellan Peter Cephas thing. Yeah, that would be a translation into Greek

Dan Beecher of the same. So in those two, the God part would be the L in Nathaniel- Mm-hmm ... and the theos in Theo in Theodore. Is that what we're talking about? Am I sounding smart at all?

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Okay. All right. After Bartholomew/Nathaniel, we have Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, and then Thomas also called Didymus.

Dan McClellan Didymus, yes, which means twin.

Dan Beecher Okay. Cute.

Dan McClellan And I've seen this claim. I don't know where it's coming from. I don't know if this has ever been argued by any scholars, but I've seen some folks try to argue that Thomas is Jesus' twin. And I think this may come from a Gnostic text-

Dan Beecher Oh, interesting ...

Dan McClellan from later on. But I have not looked deeply enough into that to have any more information than to say somebody once suggested that they think Thomas was Jesus's twin.

Dan Beecher Okay. Well, that would change the nativity stories a lot. Yeah. I mean, now we have to hire Danny DeVito to play Didymus. And we'll have him

Dan McClellan say, "Your back looks like a relief map of the Andes." Well, no, I was thinking of "Life of Brian" when they realize that Jesus is actually next door, and they come back and take the gifts away from

Dan Beecher the- Right ... from Brian. Oh, from Didymus. From Thomas.

Dan McClellan Yeah, Thomas. Thomas is just sitting there like, "Why is he getting all the attention?"

Dan Beecher Yeah. So now I want to get to Matthew-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... who is referred to in the Gospel of Matthew as the publican.

Dan McClellan The publican, yeah.

Dan Beecher Is this the same Matthew? I mean, are these meant to be the same Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew and Matthew the publican?

Dan McClellan So that identification seems to be made by Papias between 120, 130 CE. Says, "Hey, tax collector Matthew, he wrote down sayings of Jesus in Hebrew." And a lot of people think, oh, he's talking about the Gospel of Matthew, but it's not for another 50 to 60 years before anybody identifies this gospel as the Gospel according to Matthew. So, and I would also argue that the text as Papias describes it is not our Gospel of Matthew. It was definitely not written in Hebrew, and it's not a sayings gospel. And so when we do finally have this identification of the Gospel of Matthew as written by Matthew, I would argue that this is based on Papias' identification. They're looking for an author, and they're like, "Papias says Matthew wrote one." This one mentions Matthew. This is the only one that actually mentions the calling of Matthew by Jesus as the tax collector. And so- They're like, "Natch. That one was written by Matthew." Because the other ones talk about the calling of Levi.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Not the calling of Matthew.

Dan Beecher And so in our grid, it says Matthew/Levi-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... on the Mark and Luke gospels.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So they've just made an association between-- Potentially, these are not the same person, or are they? How are we-

Dan McClellan Again, a lot of people would say they're the same person, and other people would be like, "Maybe they're not."

Dan Beecher Okay. And again, not mentioned by John. Not mentioned, which feels a little catty. John not mentioning- Yeah ... the name of another author, or at least of a gospel.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then- Why couldn't he be more like Philip? John would've been happy- Right ... to name him if he was more like Philip.

Dan Beecher If he could've been more like Philip, or be like Simon Peter, and get multiple names. Yeah. Get all the names. All right. Then we got another James. This is son of Alphaeus. And then Thaddaeus, who is also Judas. What the heck? Thaddaeus or Lebbaeus.

Dan McClellan Well, we have-- And this is a textual thing. Some manuscripts say Thaddaeus, some manuscripts say Judas. And the differences there are probably a product of the fact that some of the other gospels seem to put the name Judas in the place where they're expecting Thaddaeus. And so maybe some people made some corrections here or there. So, yeah, it's confusing. And this

Dan Beecher Judas. So if it's not Thaddaeus, so in Matthew and Mark, we've got Thaddaeus. In Matthew, it says it's Thaddaeus or Lebbaeus- Mm-hmm ... called Judas the Zealot. We've got another zealot with all this zealotry. Then in Matthew, Mark, Luke, we've got Judas. It's listed as Judas, quote, "Son of James." And then Judas, and then in John, Judas not Iscariot.

Dan McClellan Not that one. Just the other one.

Dan Beecher And then, yeah. So that's-

Dan McClellan I can see the author being like, "And then Judas. Oh, not the Judas I just talked about. This was another guy."

Dan Beecher No, not that one. Just- Not that one

Dan McClellan ... another Judas.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And then, we've got Simon that we already talked about, who's the Canaanite or the Canaanian or the Zealot, or just not mentioned by John because he's kind of prone to that. And then Judas Iscariot, son of, confusingly, Simon Iscariot, which we don't need any more Simons.

Dan McClellan According to John.

Dan Beecher According to John.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I'm just going to read. I do want to get to the most important name in the New Testament in just a moment. But I did want to read this. There's a sentence that I wanted to read from the Wikipedia article that made my head explode. And I just thought I'd share it.

Dan McClellan You've built up nicely.

Dan Beecher Yeah, thank you. Is it this one? "Since the father of both James, son of Alphaeus, and Matthew is named Alphaeus, according to the tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the two were brothers as well." Oh, that's crazy right there. And then there's another one that says, "According to the tradition of the Catholic Church, based on the writings of the Apostolic Father Papias, the apostles of James, son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus were brothers and sons of Alphaeus, also named Clopas, and his wife, Mary of Clopas, was the sister of the mother of Jesus." Mary had a sister named Mary? What's happening? Do we have a George Foreman situation here? I had to read that sentence 22 times to figure out

Dan McClellan what was happening. Make sure you understood it right. Yeah. Well, there have been, when these traditions kind of accrete around specific locations and specific leaders and specific manuscripts and texts and things like that, they develop their own little ways to deal with a lot of these incongruities, and they don't compare notes with the other guys. They just, "We're going to do it our way." And sometimes those ways sound more rational than others. And so yeah, it's an issue. Yeah. But certainly not the biggest issue in all of biblical interpretation. No. But certainly one that I think a lot of people overlook, assuming that, yeah, there were 12 apostles, and that's that. But you can memorize a little song to help you remember the books of the New Testament in order or something like that, largely uncontroversially. But the song you've got to memorize

Dan Beecher for this kind of goes- Somebody- ... according to

Dan McClellan John and according to Matthew, but then if you don't, and then he's not mentioned.

Dan Beecher Somebody write this song. Yeah. It's going to be 24 verses long, but I want this song to exist where it's like Simon, who was Peter, who was

Dan McClellan Cephas- Also known as Cephas, who was not the Simon that's mentioned by John in the other part of this book in the manuscript witness from the 3rd century.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I like it. Somebody's got to write this song, and I'll bet they will. Anyway, let's get quickly-- We could probably do a whole segment on the name of Jesus. Just because-

Dan McClellan That's not his name Well- I just want you to-

Dan Beecher That's a good point. I feel like

Dan McClellan you have had a lot of- Oh,

Dan Beecher I can't sing.

Dan McClellan Okay, sorry.

Dan Beecher You've had a lot of people on your TikTok come after you about that one name and- Yeah ... and you've also exposed a lot of people who claim that they know the original name, and there's meaning behind it and all of this stuff.

Dan McClellan Yeah. There's a weird genre of entrepreneurial bro, who just randomly starts sharing videos about Jesus' name and where it comes from, and obviously not even remotely informed about these things. But for some reason, this adds value to their entrepreneurial endeavors on social media. I don't understand it. Well, and

Dan Beecher they do this. You call them a bro. They have this braggadocio about them where it's like, "If you really knew the real name of Jesus, you wouldn't be coming at me with your nonsense." Yeah. "I know the real name of Jesus, and therefore I'm somehow better." Yeah. So, okay.

Dan McClellan Obviously- Doesn't believe any of it either, but wants to- Right ... let you know that I know better than you.

Dan Beecher So, there wasn't a guy walking around in Judea named Jesus.

Dan McClellan Right. They didn't say, "Hey, Jesus," back in the first century CE.

Dan Beecher So, what did they say?

Dan McClellan That's tricky. We have to reconstruct what was going on anciently. But to begin, we go back to the Hebrew Bible, and we got this name that is usually translated as Joshua. Yehoshua is how it is used in the Hebrew. And it means Adonai saves or Adonai delivers or something like that. And this is Joshua, son of Nun, who takes over after Moses. And when we get into the post-exilic period into the Greco-Roman period, so we're talking about after 500 BCE, between 500 and the period of the New Testament, the name seems to change into this Aramaic variant that seems to be spelled, at least in the text, it's spelled Yeshua. And the Greek transliteration as we have it seems to be Iesous. Now, the transliteration into Iesous or Iesous is how some folks do it. There are different ways to reconstruct the pronunciation. But that transliteration predates the New Testament, predates the birth of Jesus. It comes from a couple centuries BCE.

Dan Beecher Oh, interesting.

Dan McClellan A transliteration of this Aramaic variant on the name Yehoshua, Joshua. And so we already see what we find in the Greek New Testament in the Septuagint translation, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. And so this is just like we've been talking about Petros, an English transliteration is Peter. Iesous is a transliteration of however this Aramaic name were pronounced. Now, Jesus walking around in Galilee was not being referred to in a Greek transliteration, was being referred to in Aramaic. And scholars have pointed out that the pronunciation conventions in the Galilee were probably slightly different from what we get in other regions. And one of the things that they've noted is there's a letter called an ayin, which is in this name, and it's kind of a glottal stop. And so there are indications from not many contemporary texts, but particularly from later rabbinic texts, that the Galileans were known for not really pronouncing their ayins very well or just dropping them off entirely. And so if the ayin was pronounced anciently in Aramaic, the name Yeshua would've been Yeshu, and then we have this glottal stop. Mm. And if the Galileans didn't pronounce that glottal stop or pronounced it poorly, it would've just been Yeshu or Yeshu, so with a short E or a long E at the beginning. Right. But that A was probably something that was added later in the manuscripts. There's a complex linguistic argument for why that is. But in short, I think the scholarship is moving in the direction of suggesting if you were talking to Jesus in Galilee in the early first century CE, he would've referred to himself as Yeshu or Yeshu. So that's probably how his name was pronounced. When it goes into Greek, we have Iesous. Now, so we still don't have that A on the end. It's not Yeshu-ha or anything like that, or Iesu-ha in the Greek transliteration. It's just Iesous or Iesous or however you want to reconstruct that pronunciation. And then that goes into Latin as Iesus or something, or words to that effect. So the earliest English translations of the Bible actually transliterates straight from the Latin, which is pretty cut and dry, I-E-S-U-S. Iesus or Iesus or Iesus. Yeah. It was probably pronounced a bunch of different ways. So the first edition of the King James Version, which by the way, wasn't remotely the first English translation of the Bible, but for many years, the King James Version used I-E-S-U-S. And it was not until decades later that we get the introduction of the J in the English alphabet. And some folks argue that the I was being pronounced close to what the J represent in the 17th century. Other folks say, no, the J kind of altered the way the I was pronounced. But once we get the J, that stands in as the consonantal use of I. So it starts the word, and we're going to use it more as a consonant than as a vowel, so we get Jesus. Right. So it is a natural development within the language. It's not like it's a different name. Right. There are some people who are like, "Oh, Jesus means Hail Zeus," which is absolutely laughable.

Dan Beecher I've never heard that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's crazy. I love that. So they're like, "That's not his name. That means Hail Zeus." It doesn't mean anything remotely like Hail Zeus. Right. It's just a transliteration that has been following the phonetic development of the English language. And so Jesus is a perfectly legitimate transliteration of this, just like James is a perfectly legitimate transliteration of Yaakov. Right. Or Jacob. And so there's no reason to be upset about this. There are folks who think there is some kind of metaphysical power in how we pronounce the name, who are like, "You have to say Joshua." Well, that's wrong, too. "Oh, you have to say Yeshua." Well, that's also kind of wrong, too. So if there's metaphysical power in that, there are very few people who are getting it right. And so I think people need to just chill about the name. Jesus is perfectly fine. I think a lot of people are just trying to make themselves sound better informed than other people to try to prop themselves up. And it has a lot more to do with pride than being more informed about these things.

Dan Beecher I am fascinated. I don't want to get too deep into this. We're this segment's going along, but I do love that it does seem weird that we don't call him Joshua. It just seems like that as a transliteration is so much closer and has also just as much of a sort of traditional

Dan McClellan train. Well, there are two reasons for that I would point out. First, Joshua is directly from Yehoshua, which preserves the H-O sound. Yeah. Which is absent from the Aramaic variant Yeshu. Okay. So the H-O isn't there in the way Jesus's name was pronounced in the first century, so Joshua would also be inaccurate in that regard. But also, and this is a part that a lot of people get uncomfortable with, Jesus is only attested in Greek texts, and so we are going with what the texts use rather than saying, "I'm going to artificially impose what the text should have been using," or something like that.

Dan Beecher Okay, that makes sense.

Dan McClellan And so, Joshua would be saying, "Eh, we're not going to do what the gospel authors said. We're not going to do what the original text that referred to Jesus said. We're going to go back and say we're taken from this earlier tradition that is not connected to Jesus." So- Right ... and you can disagree with that. There are folks who will try to use an Aramaic transliteration in their renderings of the text, and you're not going to get struck by lightning. Not by me, at least. So there's nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, yeah, there are perfectly good and valid reasons for doing it the way folks are doing it.

Dan Beecher Okay. Well, then I will agree to not call Jesus Joshua, but I am going to start calling James Jacob, because that just seems- Yeah. ... obvious to me.

Dan McClellan Yeah. All right. And yeah, that would be fine.

Dan Beecher Okay, good. There is another fascinating apostle that we need to get to, so I say we move on to that.

Dan McClellan Okay, let's do it.

Dan Beecher Okay. We're introducing this new segment, Women in the Bible, because it's something we've already talked about a few times without calling it its own segment, but it is an important thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And we're taking as our reading for the day, Romans 16. This is the final chapter of St. Paul's Epistle- Mm-hmm ... to the Romans, and it's nice. He's just calling out to a whole bunch of friends, "Hey, say hi to our friends here and our friends there,"

Dan McClellan and- Shout out Amplias.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Who's a great guy. Everybody loves him. The family of Narcissus and whatever. But right in the middle, there is something that has befuddled and bedeviled many a reader of it, which is verse seven- Mm-hmm ... where he says, "Greet and..." Now, this is from the NRSV.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And that will become important in a minute because different translations definitely have a different take on this particular

Dan McClellan verse. Yeah. Strong feelings about this.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So from the NRSV, "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Israelites, who were in prison with me. They are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was." Now, there's a lot packed into that one thing. Mm-hmm. But I think the thing that we're going to focus on is that name Junia, and the idea that this person could have been prominent among the apostles. Yeah. Is it me, or is that a lady apostle?

Dan McClellan So yes, the academic consensus right now, I would argue, and I think I'm supported by most scholars, is that this name is a feminine name. Now, there has been controversy for some time, but a lot of people might be surprised to hear that this controversy is actually quite new regarding how we accentuate this name, because this name could be masculine or feminine with the spelling that we find in the Greek of Romans 16:7. The difference would be what accent you put on what syllable of the word. And unfortunately, the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament, in fact, the manuscripts for centuries after the New Testament was written, did not put in accents. Accents were added centuries later. And so we are basically going with traditional accentuation, or if we want to try to revise that accentuation, that's just based on our own judgment calls. And there is no early Christian author who identifies this name as a masculine name until the 1200s.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And we have several early Christian authors and authorities who make reference to Junia, either just acknowledging that it is a feminine name or actually praising Junia for being a woman apostle. In fact, there's a prominent, I think Bishop of Constantinople, if I'm not wrong, John Chrysostom, writing just before or around the year 400 CE, basically says, "Wow, can you imagine how cool this person was to be a woman apostle? Just being an apostle is one thing, but to be a woman apostle, how great she must have been." And we have no disagreements with this identification of Junia as a woman until the 13th century. And so the record is not strong for those who are arguing that this is a masculine name. Additionally, if we go look into other occurrences of this name, this name doesn't really appear much in Greek. Primarily, it appears in Latin, but there are over 200 occurrences of this name in Latin in the first century CE, and every single one of them is a feminine name. There's one occurrence in all of known history of this name as a masculine name, and that comes from a century later.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And so the data do not support the identification of Junia as a man. The data overwhelmingly support identifying Junia as a woman. And so it would seem to suggest that Andronicus and Junia, now frequently when Paul mentions a man and a woman together, they're either relatives of each other, more often they are husband and wife. So some folks suggest that Andronicus and Junia are husband and wife. Interesting. That may or may not be the case. I'm not arguing for that right now, but I would argue that Junia is definitely a feminine name.

Dan Beecher I did read an article that linked them as husband and wife, was absolutely certain of it, and not only was certain that they were husband and wife, but literally kept pounding it home. Which I didn't understand. I didn't understand why it was important to that author to make sure that we all understood that this was a couple who was a husband and wife.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But yeah. There are certainly situations where that would be more meaningful than others. But for the context of our discussion right now, I think it suffices to mention that it's certainly possible, it's certainly plausible that that's the case. But it's interesting what Paul says about them. Uses this word singenis in Greek, which means my kin. Together, and then genus is what the other word is in Greek. So, kinsmen, family. I think you read fellow Israelites, is that what the- Yeah ... edition you read?

Dan Beecher That's what the NRSV has.

Dan McClellan Is that the NRSVUE?

Dan Beecher NRSV, yeah. The

Dan McClellan NRSVUE, yeah. UE? Okay. That's interesting because the previous NRSV reads my relatives. Okay. Relatives or compatriots. But yeah, the idea is kin. Yeah. And that's probably figurative, but who knows? And then fellow prisoners, and then it goes on to say they were of note among the apostles or prominent among the apostles. And here's where the folks who don't like the idea of a woman apostle have another opportunity to try to make their case against that. There is another way to read the Greek here, where instead of saying they are prominent among the apostles, is to say they are well-known to the apostles. Right. That is a possible reading of the Greek. And there are some people who have argued very strenuously for that reading.

Dan Beecher And that's what the English Standard Version has. They are well-known to the

Dan McClellan apostles. Oh, yeah. Well, the ESV is a translation that was executed by complementarians who were basically upset that the NIV and the RSV and the NRSV were not as misogynistic as they felt they should have been. So the ESV is- In a lot of ways, it's a perfectly adequate translation. In other ways, it is an awful

Dan Beecher translation, particularly

Dan McClellan when it comes- It's the

Dan Beecher he-man woman hater translation?

Dan McClellan Yes, in a lot of ways. So it's one of the newer translations that have come out of the Bible, and it's quite popular, but a lot of people don't realize that the purpose of the ESV was to push back against what they saw as too much progressivism with the NIV of all things. Wow. So, yeah. And there's a great sociologist who works with the sociology of religion named Samuel Perry, who has published a wonderful article discussing how the ESV intentionally tries to structure power directly over and against the interests of women. But anyway, getting back to that. So the ESV says they're well known to the apostles. Possible reading of the Greek here. There are a handful of reasons I don't think this makes sense. One is that this is Paul writing. Paul was not a huge fan of the other apostles and didn't really care what the other apostles thought. So for Paul to say, "Hey, Andronicus and Junia, these are cool folks. Even the other apostles thought they were really cool," is out of character for Paul. The estimation of the other apostles is no big deal for Paul. He does not care what the other apostles think. And then the last clause of the verse is, "They were in Christ before me," which would fit with Paul's rhetorical bent elsewhere of always wanting to remind everybody that he is the last one who gets to be called an apostle. That everyone else who was called an apostle was in Christ before him, and he's the last apostle. So I think the way that this verse is set up and the way Paul's rhetoric is in the genuine Pauline epistles, pretty firmly point in the direction of interpreting that passage to say who are prominent among the apostles. In other words, these are prominent apostles. Yeah. Which would identify Junia as a woman apostle, which despite Paul's misogyny elsewhere, I think he was willing to call balls and strikes when it came to who was occupying what office, what position elsewhere in the church, because he refers to other women as leaders in the church and is not shy about that.

Dan Beecher So since we're using this word apostle-

Dan McClellan Yeah ...

Dan Beecher how are we defining it? What does that mean here?

Dan McClellan So you know I don't like defining stuff.

Dan Beecher That's a great point.

Dan McClellan But we're using the word, so we need to- Yeah. I will describe it. Yeah ...

Dan Beecher in some way what we're talking about.

Dan McClellan So it comes from a Greek word that means one who is sent, and the idea is messenger, emissary, delegate. It's not just somebody sent some person. It's this person is traveling on my behalf to execute some function for me, whether it's deliver a message or whether it is actually do something or something like that. So it comes from the idea of one who is sent out, and by the time of the New Testament, though, because of its use in the New Testament, it takes on status as kind of an office. Right. That this person may have been sent out, but they're not an apostle because that is a specific assignment, a specific designation that kind of is cordoned off, and only certain special people get to be called that kind of messenger. And so it becomes an office, a duty, an honorific title later on. And by the time of Paul, then that's where Paul is coming in and being like, "I'm an apostle." And he gets upset with-- He kind of sarcastically refers to other folks as super apostles. He's like, "Ugh. These people, these super apostles going around doing all this stuff." But the idea is that this is a special designation, a special calling, a special assignment that somebody has. But yeah, it fundamentally comes from the idea of emissary, delegate, maybe messenger