S4E5: Are the names in the Gospels historically accurate?

In this episode, Peter Williams, Principal of Tyndale House, explains how names can help us to assess the historical reliability of the Gospels. By looking at name records we can see what the most popular names were outside of the Gospels at the same time and place. Peter then compares these with the names we see in the Gospels to see whether they line up. He and Tony also discuss Jesus calling himself ‘The Son of Man’ and what we should make of that.

Edited by Tyndale House 

Music – Acoustic Happy Background used with a standard license from Adobe Stock.

Transcript

00:00:05:18 - 00:00:06:01
Hello.

00:00:06:01 - 00:00:09:00
Welcome to another episode of the Tyndale House podcast.

00:00:09:00 - 00:00:10:07
This is episode six [five].

00:00:10:07 - 00:00:15:15
In the second series of names in the Bible and the ancient World,

00:00:15:15 - 00:00:18:20
which is series 4 overall. Are you keeping track of where we are in our

00:00:18:20 - 00:00:20:01
podcasts?

00:00:20:01 - 00:00:23:19
And today I'm joined by Peter Williams, who is Principal of Tyndale House.

00:00:24:05 - 00:00:27:05
And we're going to be talking about names in the New Testament.

00:00:27:06 - 00:00:31:17
So far in the last series and this series, our focus has been on names

00:00:31:17 - 00:00:35:19
in the Old Testament, and we’ve just touched briefly on New Testament names.

00:00:35:19 - 00:00:38:19
But now we're going to to look a little bit more

00:00:38:19 - 00:00:41:19
at names in the Gospels and Acts in particular.

00:00:41:21 - 00:00:45:15
And in the next episode, we've got an episode with, a conversation

00:00:45:15 - 00:00:46:17
with Steve Walton,

00:00:46:17 - 00:00:50:23
particularly looking at Saul and Paul and the patterns of Roman namings.

00:00:51:23 - 00:00:53:16
So, looking forward to that.

00:00:53:16 - 00:00:56:02
T: So good morning, Peter, good to have you with us P: Good to be with you

00:00:56:02 - 00:00:58:11
T: nice to get into the New Testament at last.

00:00:58:14 - 00:01:01:12
Absolutely.

00:01:01:12 - 00:01:05:04
So you have written a little bit about names in your book,

00:01:05:04 - 00:01:08:03
‘Can We Trust the Gospels?’

00:01:08:03 - 00:01:11:03
And talked about it a little bit in series one of our podcast,

00:01:11:10 - 00:01:14:10
which was quite some time ago now.

00:01:14:12 - 00:01:18:05
One of the things you talk about in the book is that there are patterns

00:01:18:05 - 00:01:22:22
of popularity of names that are seen to be right in the New Testament.

00:01:22:23 - 00:01:25:14
P: Yeah. T: Can you just expand on that for us a little bit please?

00:01:25:14 - 00:01:25:17
Yeah.

00:01:25:17 - 00:01:25:22
Yeah.

00:01:25:22 - 00:01:31:03
So people are able to gather data on names from ossuaries –

00:01:31:03 - 00:01:34:03
bone boxes – and from historians like

00:01:34:03 - 00:01:38:01
Josephus and and so on, and gather a sense of of

00:01:38:01 - 00:01:41:07
what were the most popular names at the time.

00:01:42:14 - 00:01:44:07
It's worth saying that the time period

00:01:44:07 - 00:01:47:16
that we measure names can often be quite wide.

00:01:48:03 - 00:01:52:23
So we may be going from, say, 300 BC to, say AD 70.

00:01:53:10 - 00:01:55:17
But what we can say is in that period,

00:01:55:17 - 00:01:58:17
the sort of names we're getting in the New Testament are

00:01:59:04 - 00:01:59:20
right.

00:01:59:20 - 00:02:02:13
There is a change after the Maccabees

00:02:02:13 - 00:02:05:10
P: in the second century BC T: Right.

00:02:05:10 - 00:02:08:10
have a successful military revolution.

00:02:08:15 - 00:02:11:18
Because that makes some of their names become more popular.

00:02:12:02 - 00:02:15:07
And some of the names of the patriarchs, become quite popular.

00:02:15:07 - 00:02:17:12
Say, say, Jacob becomes popular.

00:02:17:12 - 00:02:19:17
Where, if you go through the Old Testament,

00:02:19:17 - 00:02:21:05
it's it's there in the early period

00:02:21:05 - 00:02:24:24
T: it disappears completely, yeah, right. P: and then nothing for a while, and then it revives.

00:02:25:15 - 00:02:29:00
And what it falls out is some, some obvious results, for instance,

00:02:29:00 - 00:02:31:08
is that Simon is the most popular

00:02:31:08 - 00:02:34:11
male name for a Jew

00:02:36:19 - 00:02:37:14
from Palestine.

00:02:37:14 - 00:02:39:15
So Judea,

00:02:39:15 - 00:02:41:17
and Galilee.

00:02:41:17 - 00:02:43:23
And that's because of the, Simon the Maccabees?

00:02:43:23 - 00:02:45:18
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

00:02:45:18 - 00:02:48:05
So it's, it's it's been around for a while.

00:02:48:05 - 00:02:51:05
There have been other Simeons because Simon is simply

00:02:51:11 - 00:02:53:11
a name like Simeon, although it's interesting

00:02:53:11 - 00:02:56:11
because it also has a Greek meaning, snub nosed.

00:02:56:14 - 00:02:59:08
So it doesn't mean that someone has to be that to get the name,

00:02:59:08 - 00:03:03:03
but it's one of those, names that works in both languages.

00:03:04:05 - 00:03:06:18
So I'm, I'm Peter, and I sometimes wonder, you know,

00:03:06:18 - 00:03:09:18
when I go to France, should I be a Pierre or should I just say Peter?

00:03:10:05 - 00:03:13:00
And you can do, you know, and you find people,

00:03:13:00 - 00:03:15:21
can work either way on this, but it gives some flexibility.

00:03:15:21 - 00:03:19:17
It's nice to have that with a name. And Mary becomes the most popular

00:03:19:23 - 00:03:20:21
female name.

00:03:20:21 - 00:03:21:21
Obviously, Mary

00:03:21:21 - 00:03:24:23
is ultimately a form of Miriam, which is ultimately an Egyptian name.

00:03:25:24 - 00:03:28:10
But it's, you know, it takes

00:03:28:10 - 00:03:32:23
on a great deal of significance, and there are various ways of spelling, Mary.

00:03:32:23 - 00:03:36:06
But what we're finding is, broadly speaking, the

00:03:36:18 - 00:03:39:18
the names that we're getting in the Gospels, they're definitely,

00:03:39:18 - 00:03:41:12
not Egyptian Jewish.

00:03:41:12 - 00:03:44:12
They're not, Turkish Jewish,

00:03:44:18 - 00:03:47:18
or Asia minor or anything like that, they’re not Roman Jewish.

00:03:48:18 - 00:03:50:19
So they, they fit with the land.

00:03:50:19 - 00:03:53:07
P: And that makes a lot of sense. T: Right?

00:03:53:07 - 00:03:58:03
And the, the levels of popularity . . . the the numbers of names,

00:03:58:03 - 00:04:01:20
the proportions of names within the Gospels, they pretty much echo

00:04:02:10 - 00:04:04:03
the proportions of names within Palestine?

00:04:04:03 - 00:04:05:03
They do.

00:04:05:03 - 00:04:10:02
So although these don't reach what people call statistical significance.

00:04:10:02 - 00:04:10:23
Right.

00:04:10:23 - 00:04:13:23
That doesn't mean that it is not significant.

00:04:13:23 - 00:04:18:02
So what I mean by that, that differentiation is

00:04:18:17 - 00:04:21:17
the fact is, you could look at a very surface level,

00:04:22:11 - 00:04:24:16
at a story from another country, and you would just have

00:04:24:16 - 00:04:26:01
a different palette of names.

00:04:26:01 - 00:04:29:00
Here you get the right sort of names.

00:04:29:00 - 00:04:32:03
And then we get with the more common names, Simon being the most popular.

00:04:32:09 - 00:04:33:21
Joseph the second amongst men.

00:04:34:24 - 00:04:37:03
And a lot of the other ones towards the top

00:04:37:03 - 00:04:40:14
of the list, that they have a tendency to add a disambiguator.

00:04:40:15 - 00:04:45:21
So that's why Jesus has two disciples called Simon, one called Simon Peter,

00:04:46:01 - 00:04:48:24
or sometimes Simon Cephas, although we never actually find the form

00:04:48:24 - 00:04:51:17
Simon Cephas but we presume that what it was.

00:04:51:17 - 00:04:52:05
Right.

00:04:52:05 - 00:04:55:05
And another one, would be Simon the Zealot.

00:04:56:08 - 00:04:58:08
And there's a question about does that mean

00:04:58:08 - 00:05:01:09
zealot in a technical later sense of an actual revolutionary.

00:05:02:05 - 00:05:06:00
Because certainly, by the time that there's a Jewish rebellion

00:05:06:05 - 00:05:09:06
against the Romans in the year 66, there are zealot

00:05:09:08 - 00:05:12:08
means you're actually a revolutionary

00:05:12:17 - 00:05:14:13
But, he's got another name.

00:05:14:13 - 00:05:16:07
Simon the Cananite.

00:05:16:07 - 00:05:19:13
And we can often think of that as meaning like Old Testament

00:05:19:13 - 00:05:25:24
Canaanite with a c, a, n, double a, n, i, t, e

00:05:25:24 - 00:05:28:08
and really, it's not that name.

00:05:28:08 - 00:05:31:11
It doesn't have that double ‘a’, it's to do with the

00:05:32:00 - 00:05:35:04
P: Hebrew and Aramaic to be zealous, qanai T: Ah, I see

00:05:35:10 - 00:05:38:16
So God is, so zealous and jealous relate.

00:05:38:16 - 00:05:40:07
And so that's, that's what he's called.

00:05:40:07 - 00:05:44:09
But again, he's got that extra bit added to his name.

00:05:44:09 - 00:05:48:05
And you find this happening again with the Marys. Mary Magdalene,

00:05:48:17 - 00:05:51:21
Mary from Magdala, Mary, the mother of James and Joseph.

00:05:51:22 - 00:05:53:22
And this is happening in the narratives regularly.

00:05:53:22 - 00:05:56:24
So it's exactly the sort of names that you would expect,

00:05:57:06 - 00:06:00:15
if you're using local information and not really

00:06:00:15 - 00:06:03:15
the sort of thing that would be easy to get

00:06:03:17 - 00:06:05:23
if you weren't

00:06:05:23 - 00:06:09:10
local, or had serious conversations with locals.

00:06:09:11 - 00:06:13:24
Now, there are some people that push back on elements of that argument.

00:06:13:24 - 00:06:16:13
If it's used too much as a sort of knockdown argument

00:06:16:13 - 00:06:17:19
and you can whittle away at it.

00:06:17:19 - 00:06:21:07
But I think, broadly speaking, it still stands

00:06:21:17 - 00:06:25:07
and you got control samples and if you like, with,

00:06:26:02 - 00:06:29:23
some of the apocryphal gospels, which don't seem to do so well.

00:06:29:24 - 00:06:33:09
So the Coptic version of the Gospel of Thomas begins with,

00:06:33:09 - 00:06:36:14
‘These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke, and which Didymus

00:06:36:14 - 00:06:40:14
Judas Thomas wrote down’, and that is really twin Judas, twin

00:06:41:07 - 00:06:44:14
which is not really a very plausible name at all.

00:06:44:15 - 00:06:45:15
Yeah.

00:06:45:15 - 00:06:49:12
And so you find that, yes, it's easy to get these things wrong.

00:06:49:13 - 00:06:52:23
And so you, you would notice if they were wrong or if, for instance,

00:06:52:23 - 00:06:56:01
you are reading Luke's genealogy of Jesus in Matthew,

00:06:56:22 - 00:07:02:07
sorry in Luke chapter three, and you were to be, let's say, before the exile

00:07:02:09 - 00:07:05:09
and you were getting a Herod or a Philip, you would suddenly think,

00:07:05:10 - 00:07:09:03
that doesn't really work, you know, there weren’t Greeks around at that time.

00:07:09:03 - 00:07:12:11
So so that's where we find the names just are

00:07:13:12 - 00:07:14:11
very plausible.

00:07:14:11 - 00:07:16:04
They work for their time and culture.

00:07:16:04 - 00:07:16:11
They work for their time and culture.

00:07:16:11 - 00:07:17:04
Yeah.

00:07:17:04 - 00:07:20:24
So you mentioned that the, the two Simons.

00:07:21:09 - 00:07:24:24
There's other ambiguation isn't there, in in the list of the apostles here

00:07:25:00 - 00:07:30:06
in Matthew 10 so P: Yeah Matthew 10 is fascinating because basically you can find a correlation

00:07:30:06 - 00:07:34:05
between whether there is a disambiguation and how popular the name is.

00:07:34:05 - 00:07:36:17
So you got first Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew,

00:07:36:17 - 00:07:40:07
his brother. Andrew is not that common a name, but he's explained in relation to

00:07:40:15 - 00:07:41:04
his brother.

00:07:41:04 - 00:07:42:08
Yeah it’s not a disambiguation is it

00:07:42:08 - 00:07:45:22
James is a popular name, so it's the son of Zebedee and John

00:07:45:22 - 00:07:47:05
his brother John, the popular name.

00:07:47:05 - 00:07:49:22
But he's again disambiguated. Philip,

00:07:49:22 - 00:07:51:14
actually, less popular.

00:07:51:14 - 00:07:53:02
Bartholomew less popular.

00:07:53:02 - 00:07:55:20
Thomas less less popular.

00:07:55:20 - 00:07:59:22
So they, those all lack disambiguators. Matthew the tax collector.

00:07:59:22 - 00:08:03:10
So Matthew was a fair,  you know in the top

00:08:04:09 - 00:08:05:24
ten names.

00:08:05:24 - 00:08:07:17
James quite high ranking.

00:08:07:17 - 00:08:11:01
So again, the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, low ranking Simon

00:08:11:01 - 00:08:14:01
the Cananite and Judas Iscariot.

00:08:14:01 - 00:08:15:14
So, Judas was,

00:08:15:14 - 00:08:17:13
you know, about the fourth most common name.

00:08:17:13 - 00:08:21:21
And these statistics may vary a bit because there's new primary information

00:08:21:21 - 00:08:23:19
to be found. So

00:08:23:19 - 00:08:25:24
I should talk a little bit about the primary information

00:08:25:24 - 00:08:26:05
here?

00:08:26:05 - 00:08:30:24
So, there's a lexicon by Tal Ilan of proper names.

00:08:31:00 - 00:08:33:22
Several, actually, but one for this period.

00:08:33:22 - 00:08:36:15
And she's basing that on what other people have done.

00:08:36:15 - 00:08:40:11
So the data are changing all the time because people are coming up

00:08:40:12 - 00:08:42:02
with new inscriptions.

00:08:42:02 - 00:08:44:20
Every time you find a new,

00:08:44:20 - 00:08:47:16
thing with anyone's name on that's actually changing the data so that

00:08:47:16 - 00:08:49:11
that will be change on a yearly basis.

00:08:49:11 - 00:08:52:13
So just to go back to where you started, you mentioned that this data was coming

00:08:52:13 - 00:08:54:03
from a text like Josephus

00:08:54:03 - 00:08:58:03
and whatever, but also ossuaries and and other epigraphic material? P: Yes, yes

00:08:58:03 - 00:09:04:02
So any, any anything written down any historical record will do.

00:09:04:02 - 00:09:06:06
They will also include the New Testament in these texts.

00:09:06:06 - 00:09:09:00
So you got to be careful, you know, when you can have a column of data,

00:09:09:00 - 00:09:12:15
including New Testament compared with a column of data, which,

00:09:12:24 - 00:09:13:24
is the New Testament.

00:09:13:24 - 00:09:15:22
And so that's where you got to be careful. But,

00:09:17:00 - 00:09:18:09
Dead Sea Scrolls, of course.

00:09:18:09 - 00:09:19:20
Give us some figures as well.

00:09:19:20 - 00:09:24:12
So, those are the sorts of things that are feeding into that.

00:09:25:06 - 00:09:28:21
But it is changing, not dramatically, I think,

00:09:28:24 - 00:09:31:24
you know, Simon's going to stay about in first place.

00:09:32:07 - 00:09:34:08
For the men, and Mary first place for the women.

00:09:34:08 - 00:09:37:18
I don't think that's likely to change with more data, but you never know.

00:09:37:23 - 00:09:40:07
Yeah, sure. Yeah.

00:09:40:07 - 00:09:40:19
Okay.

00:09:40:19 - 00:09:44:13
That, tell us on the disambiguation thing,

00:09:44:13 - 00:09:49:08
how the narrator of the gospels and the things that he,

00:09:49:17 - 00:09:53:12
the speech that is recording how those differ because there's P: Yeah,

00:09:53:13 - 00:09:55:05
T: there's some interesting differences there aren’t there? P: there is.

00:09:55:05 - 00:10:00:10
So if you look at Matthew chapter 14, what you find is you've got the story of,

00:10:01:03 - 00:10:04:03
John the Baptist, getting beheaded.

00:10:04:03 - 00:10:08:04
And, you remember that Herod the tetrarch tetrarch has a,

00:10:09:03 - 00:10:10:23
a feast for his birthday.

00:10:10:23 - 00:10:14:24
And, then he makes a rash oath,

00:10:15:20 - 00:10:18:08
and, then has to fulfill it.

00:10:18:08 - 00:10:23:17
And what's interesting there is that every time someone talks about

00:10:23:17 - 00:10:27:18
John the Baptist in the narrative, they say the Baptist.

00:10:27:18 - 00:10:29:19
P: Because actually, John is quite a common name T: Right

00:10:29:19 - 00:10:33:09
So you can't just say, well, you can't say about Jesus, for instance, in,

00:10:33:24 - 00:10:38:07
Matthew chapter 14, verse two, he said to his servants, this is John the Baptist.

00:10:38:07 - 00:10:41:07
He couldn't just simply say, this is John

00:10:41:14 - 00:10:43:13
He's saying, you know John the Baptist, who,

00:10:43:13 - 00:10:46:13
risen from the dead because that wouldn't make sense.

00:10:46:14 - 00:10:49:14
You'd actually have to say which John, because they're probably several

00:10:49:14 - 00:10:53:05
Johns working in Herod's palace, so that just doesn't make any sense.

00:10:53:05 - 00:10:53:12
Okay.

00:10:53:12 - 00:10:58:13
And likewise, when Herodias’s daughter asks for the head of John the Baptist,

00:10:58:13 - 00:11:00:10
she doesn't say, just give me the head of John.

00:11:00:10 - 00:11:02:18
Might have got the head of the wrong John, you know?

00:11:02:18 - 00:11:05:04
So she actually is very specific in asking

00:11:05:04 - 00:11:08:04
for the head of John the Baptist, but the narrator can simply say John.

00:11:08:10 - 00:11:11:21
Now, the other striking thing is that happens with the name Jesus as well.

00:11:12:03 - 00:11:14:23
And it happens basically in all four gospels that when you have

00:11:14:23 - 00:11:19:03
people in speech context talking about Jesus,

00:11:19:07 - 00:11:24:02
they say Jesus plus something extra Jesus, teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus,

00:11:24:06 - 00:11:29:22
Son of David, all sorts of things that they add to disambiguate him.

00:11:29:22 - 00:11:32:02
Two exceptions are, 

00:11:32:02 - 00:11:34:24
John, chapter nine, when you've got a figure who's asked

00:11:34:24 - 00:11:38:10
who healed you, man born blind and he seems actually in

00:11:39:06 - 00:11:43:10
to be portrayed as sort of, half seeing spiritually at this point.

00:11:43:10 - 00:11:43:15
Yeah.

00:11:43:15 - 00:11:48:01
And he gives a half definition of, of, of Jesus by saying yes the man

00:11:49:00 - 00:11:50:08
Jesus did it,

00:11:50:08 - 00:11:54:05
which won't actually help you identify amongst all the various Jesuses in Jerusalem.

00:11:54:24 - 00:11:57:00
And the other case is the thief on the cross.

00:11:57:00 - 00:11:59:02
And again, people on crosses don't waste words.

00:11:59:02 - 00:12:02:01
P: And it's not a crowd situation. It's, it's, you know, it's 1 to 1. T: Yeah. Right.

00:12:02:01 - 00:12:05:24
But what you can find is, in the narratives for instance, if a, a servant

00:12:05:24 - 00:12:10:21
girl comes up to Peter and says, you know, you were with him or you're one of them,

00:12:10:21 - 00:12:14:17
she's, she's going to say you were with Jesus the Galilean, Jesus of Nazareth.

00:12:14:17 - 00:12:17:03
T: Yeah. P: This is happening in, in

00:12:17:03 - 00:12:21:09
Matthew 26 but straight afterwards, the narrator will simply talk about Jesus.

00:12:21:09 - 00:12:21:17
Right.

00:12:21:17 - 00:12:26:18
So you've got this interesting differentiation between, yes,

00:12:27:19 - 00:12:30:03
the way the narrator speaks and the way the characters speak.

00:12:30:03 - 00:12:30:12
Yeah.

00:12:30:12 - 00:12:32:22
And of course, you've actually got a three fold differentiation, really,

00:12:32:22 - 00:12:36:23
in the Gospels, because Jesus talks about himself as the Son of Man,

00:12:36:23 - 00:12:38:14
Which no one else seems to do.

00:12:38:14 - 00:12:41:16
And then the characters in the narrative talk about him as Jesus,

00:12:41:16 - 00:12:42:22
plus something extra. Then

00:12:42:22 - 00:12:44:19
the narrators just calling him Jesus.

00:12:44:19 - 00:12:50:06
And so it's it's a very interesting, set of things that really, again, works.

00:12:50:06 - 00:12:53:06
If Jesus really did call himself the Son of Man, cryptically,

00:12:53:07 - 00:12:56:13
if he really is a figure who needs to be distinguished

00:12:56:13 - 00:12:59:09
at the time, and it's describing the way people would have spoken.

00:12:59:09 - 00:13:00:00
Yeah.

00:13:00:00 - 00:13:03:03
You know, if you had been in Rome, you wouldn't have needed to disambiguate the name,

00:13:04:08 - 00:13:05:00
Jesus.

00:13:05:00 - 00:13:10:11
And if the Gospels were written 100 years into the spread of Christianity again,

00:13:10:11 - 00:13:12:24
you see, people don't feel the need to differentiate Jesus.

00:13:12:24 - 00:13:15:12
And it's quite clear which Jesus we're talking about.

00:13:15:12 - 00:13:18:06
But at this stage it would be very different.

00:13:18:06 - 00:13:22:22
P: I mean . . . T: does the name Jesus drop out of, of general use because of Jesus?

00:13:22:22 - 00:13:27:00
Yes it does, I mean, so obviously nowadays, you know, today we find in the Spanish

00:13:27:00 - 00:13:28:16
speaking world that Jesus is quite a popular

00:13:28:16 - 00:13:31:23
name sometimes in a compound,

00:13:32:01 - 00:13:36:05
but in most other settings, people aren't using the name,

00:13:37:07 - 00:13:37:16
Jesus.

00:13:37:16 - 00:13:40:06
And that's quite an interesting thing.

00:13:40:06 - 00:13:43:05
And, and so, yeah, I don't know anyone who's called their child

00:13:43:05 - 00:13:43:18
Jesus.

00:13:43:18 - 00:13:47:08
No, no, It just, it feels unthinkable.

00:13:47:13 - 00:13:50:00
And yet, it is, as you say, it is common in a Spanish culture

00:13:50:00 - 00:13:50:09
Yeah.

00:13:50:09 - 00:13:55:24
To which which for us in a non Spanish speaking culture can lead to some amusing

00:13:56:04 - 00:14:00:13
P: Yeah, yeah absolutely T: Some amusing situations but but yeah it seems, it seems an unthinkable thing.

00:14:00:22 - 00:14:02:23
P: Yeah. T: For, for a Brit to, to do that.

00:14:02:23 - 00:14:07:01
I mean if I can give a sort of opposite example is such a bad example,

00:14:07:01 - 00:14:08:24
but I can't think of anyone else

00:14:08:24 - 00:14:12:03
its like, if you had said in 1850,

00:14:12:03 - 00:14:15:20
in Germany, the name Adolf, again there were loads of them around.

00:14:15:20 - 00:14:17:23
T: Yeah right. P: And no one would know which

00:14:17:23 - 00:14:23:00
you were talking about it becomes almost unthinkable to call your child,

00:14:23:13 - 00:14:26:02
Adolf after the Second World War for understandable reasons.

00:14:26:02 - 00:14:29:00
So that's one of those things where you get a change,

00:14:29:00 - 00:14:32:12
where a name gets very associated with that one particular individual,

00:14:33:03 - 00:14:35:01
who becomes a well-known. Now obviously

00:14:35:01 - 00:14:37:23
very bad example because its just the opposite

00:14:39:01 - 00:14:41:04
I'm illustrating I'd love to have a better example,

00:14:41:04 - 00:14:44:10
but but that, you know, I think it gets the point across.

00:14:44:10 - 00:14:46:19
T: Yeah it does. P: The name Jesus becomes really popular.

00:14:46:19 - 00:14:49:16
And then at a later stage you don't need to disambiguate.

00:14:49:16 - 00:14:52:09
But as we are at this stage in the Gospels, they do.

00:14:52:09 - 00:14:54:06
And this is an amazing thing.

00:14:54:06 - 00:14:59:07
So you’re reading Luke's gospel, Luke 24 and you've got the two on the road

00:14:59:07 - 00:14:59:22
to Emmaus.

00:14:59:22 - 00:15:02:08
Along comes Jesus, they don’t recognize who he is.

00:15:02:08 - 00:15:04:14
And they say, well, haven’t you know what's going on?

00:15:04:14 - 00:15:05:10
He says what things?

00:15:05:10 - 00:15:08:01
And they say, oh, the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth.

00:15:08:01 - 00:15:10:23
And that they have to disambiguate who they're talking about.

00:15:10:23 - 00:15:13:14
And again, that's exactly the way people would have had to have spoken.

00:15:13:14 - 00:15:14:22
Yeah, yeah.

00:15:14:22 - 00:15:19:03
It occurs to me that one of the reasons why you can't think of a good example,

00:15:19:18 - 00:15:22:18
you have to use that negative example of Adolf, is because

00:15:23:03 - 00:15:27:00
when somebody is a very significant figure in the modern world,

00:15:27:06 - 00:15:31:12
people will name their children after them, so there’s been a rise in royal names

00:15:31:12 - 00:15:33:21
of George and Arthur and those kinds of things in recent years.

00:15:35:03 - 00:15:35:13
Whereas

00:15:35:13 - 00:15:38:13
they, they dropped out of use, but they're back in.

00:15:39:09 - 00:15:44:10
So is the reluctance to call children Jesus in in the

00:15:44:21 - 00:15:47:21
you know, within the Christian community in the early centuries

00:15:48:08 - 00:15:53:17
is that related to the whole idea of the holiness of the name of God and of . . .

00:15:53:22 - 00:15:57:11
T: those kind of things? P: I mean, obviously at an early stage in the New Testament, you get a,

00:15:58:14 - 00:16:01:14
P: Jesus called Justus. T: Yep.

00:16:01:14 - 00:16:04:03
And and you,

00:16:04:03 - 00:16:06:07
Bar-Jesus, not a particularly good example

00:16:06:07 - 00:16:09:21
in the book of Acts because he's a, he's a sorcerer.

00:16:10:23 - 00:16:13:05
But you can have others.

00:16:13:05 - 00:16:16:00
But, you know, over time, there's a sense of reverence.

00:16:16:00 - 00:16:17:01
I mean, as in,

00:16:17:01 - 00:16:17:16
you don't want to

00:16:17:16 - 00:16:21:18
claim this about yourself, so that's why people move away from that.

00:16:21:18 - 00:16:23:04
P: Yeah T: Yeah.

00:16:23:04 - 00:16:26:04
There's an article in the next issue of ink by

00:16:26:09 - 00:16:30:06
Dirk about writing the Name of God and and how it's,

00:16:32:10 - 00:16:33:11
the the

00:16:33:11 - 00:16:37:11
Yahweh becomes the Tetragrammaton is just written in the Old Testament

00:16:37:11 - 00:16:40:23
and that kind of thing happening in the New Testament manuscripts as well.

00:16:40:23 - 00:16:41:08
So, yeah.

00:16:41:08 - 00:16:44:08
So we find as we go through church history, of course, people will,

00:16:44:16 - 00:16:47:10
you’ll have, you know,

00:16:47:10 - 00:16:50:01
more than one Augustine, you’ll have more than one Gregory.

00:16:50:01 - 00:16:56:04
And you because once one’s successful, it sort of it takes off.

00:16:56:04 - 00:16:58:10
But people don't do that with, with Jesus.

00:16:58:10 - 00:16:59:11
And so you don't have a sort of

00:16:59:11 - 00:17:02:11
Saint Jesus halfway through the church history, you know?

00:17:03:12 - 00:17:04:10
P: No. T: Yeah.

00:17:04:10 - 00:17:07:10
Yeah, that's that's very interesting.

00:17:07:14 - 00:17:10:14
How does this is

00:17:10:14 - 00:17:14:06
this is going back a little bit, but one of the, the, the arguments

00:17:14:06 - 00:17:17:06
that’s sometimes leveled against the Gospels is that

00:17:18:08 - 00:17:21:08
somebody has invented all of this.

00:17:21:12 - 00:17:25:08
There are multiple lines of argument why that doesn't stand up.

00:17:25:08 - 00:17:26:07
And you've

00:17:26:07 - 00:17:30:20
you've outlined some reasons for this, but why could it not be that somebody

00:17:30:20 - 00:17:36:13
from another Jewish community say in Alexandria or Rome, why,

00:17:36:22 - 00:17:40:07
why would, could they not have written this stuff and and still had the right

00:17:40:07 - 00:17:41:23
T: kind of balance of names that you were talking about earlier? P: Well, I mean

00:17:41:23 - 00:17:45:14
So in Alexandria, certain names would have been popular, like Sabatius

00:17:45:14 - 00:17:49:19
P: Dosithius, Pappus, Ptolemias T: You don't see those in the New Testament

00:17:49:20 - 00:17:50:24
P: You don't see those in the New Testament.

00:17:50:24 - 00:17:53:24
So what you're finding is amongst the chart of the top names,

00:17:54:13 - 00:17:57:00
that they have there, those those aren't making it over.

00:17:57:00 - 00:18:00:11
Of course, in Alexandria, Jews were basically Greek speaking.

00:18:00:14 - 00:18:03:12
What we're finding with Jesus disciples, we've got two Greek names,

00:18:03:12 - 00:18:04:05
Andrew and Philip.

00:18:04:05 - 00:18:07:01
The rest are, Hebrew, Aramaic,

00:18:08:01 - 00:18:08:16
I mean,

00:18:08:16 - 00:18:12:14
it's interesting the way the, the names line up.

00:18:12:14 - 00:18:13:23
And of course, with our Gospels,

00:18:13:23 - 00:18:18:01
two of the four gospel names are Latin, Mark and Luke.

00:18:18:05 - 00:18:20:01
Which is fascinating.

00:18:20:01 - 00:18:22:06
So you've got this mixture of languages,

00:18:22:06 - 00:18:24:24
but it's it's just very difficult to falsify that.

00:18:24:24 - 00:18:27:09
And to have the mindset to do so.

00:18:27:09 - 00:18:31:02
And if you are going to falsify a story, you don't just have to falsify

00:18:31:09 - 00:18:34:03
and make sure you can get the right names to look plausible.

00:18:34:03 - 00:18:35:04
You need everything else.

00:18:35:04 - 00:18:38:04
You need the geography. You need

00:18:38:04 - 00:18:42:06
the coinage, the weather, the trees, the social stratification.

00:18:42:16 - 00:18:44:16
Now, this is not an easy thing to do.

00:18:44:16 - 00:18:47:14
And the reason why is because travel is difficult and potentially dangerous.

00:18:47:14 - 00:18:51:05
I mean, you know, you you can get robbed, you can get ill, you know,

00:18:53:04 - 00:18:53:19
what what

00:18:53:19 - 00:18:56:19
can go wrong when, when you're traveling?

00:18:56:22 - 00:19:00:12
It's not something you do just for no particular reason.

00:19:00:12 - 00:19:05:07
So people are generally traveling for for trade and these sorts of reasons.

00:19:05:20 - 00:19:08:20
And you find it, one of the greatest,

00:19:09:22 - 00:19:12:09
geographers at the time is Strabo.

00:19:12:09 - 00:19:16:01
And, yet, he can get fantastically confused,

00:19:16:21 - 00:19:21:08
well he gets confused about the Dead Sea and a lake in Egypt.

00:19:21:08 - 00:19:24:16
P: And you think, how can the top geographer do this? T: Wow

00:19:24:16 - 00:19:25:20
Yeah.

00:19:25:20 - 00:19:29:17
And it's again, it's because people haven't been to these places.

00:19:29:17 - 00:19:33:10
P: It's it's a really big deal T: they rely on secondhand information.

00:19:34:17 - 00:19:37:02
And so I think, you know,

00:19:37:02 - 00:19:40:14
I’ve been once to Australia, okay, I'm 53, once to Australia.

00:19:40:15 - 00:19:41:16
It was quite a big journey.

00:19:41:16 - 00:19:43:14
You know, I'd be glad to go back there again.

00:19:43:14 - 00:19:46:07
But but it's not something you do lightly.

00:19:46:07 - 00:19:49:19
And so a lot of the time people may be very well

00:19:49:19 - 00:19:52:24
educated, but they're getting the knowledge of geography from books,

00:19:54:01 - 00:19:56:01
and knowledge of culture and other things.

00:19:56:01 - 00:19:59:17
And that isn't enough, actually, to give them the ability

00:19:59:17 - 00:20:02:17
to write a story with all of the right details

00:20:02:21 - 00:20:06:05
in and actually, names are one of the things that you wouldn't

00:20:06:05 - 00:20:09:24
necessarily think you might think, oh, there are Jewish names.

00:20:10:04 - 00:20:14:06
You don't think, no, there are Jewish names for this land and for that land

00:20:14:06 - 00:20:17:06
and for that, and so this social stratification, that social stratification.

00:20:17:13 - 00:20:20:22
And to actually get a bit more subtle about it, it's like if I were to ask,

00:20:21:22 - 00:20:24:23
sort of, a typical Western person to write me

00:20:24:23 - 00:20:28:22
a story about Libya or Algeria or whatever it is to

00:20:29:00 - 00:20:32:14
for someone to be able to come up with the right sort of names

00:20:32:21 - 00:20:35:21
that would be incredibly difficult, they might have some vague idea.

00:20:35:22 - 00:20:38:22
Yeah, of some figures, from a land.

00:20:39:00 - 00:20:42:00
But getting the right mixture in Algeria of, of,

00:20:42:05 - 00:20:45:11
Berber and Kabyle names as opposed to the Arabic.

00:20:45:16 - 00:20:47:07
There's no way you're going to do that.

00:20:47:07 - 00:20:48:14
So I just think it's,

00:20:49:18 - 00:20:50:04
again, it's

00:20:50:04 - 00:20:53:22
not a knockdown proof that these accounts are true.

00:20:53:22 - 00:20:58:06
It it just fits very well, with true reporting,

00:20:59:03 - 00:21:02:04
and it's about the simplicity

00:21:02:04 - 00:21:05:04
of the hypothesis that this is straightforward narrative.

00:21:05:20 - 00:21:09:03
That's a simple hypothesis that's going to explain the data, now it's over to you

00:21:09:09 - 00:21:12:09
to try and give me something that's equally simple.

00:21:12:12 - 00:21:14:23
Yeah. Yeah.

00:21:14:23 - 00:21:17:13
Can we talk about the name Jesus and,

00:21:17:13 - 00:21:20:19
and his his use of the Son of Man?

00:21:20:21 - 00:21:21:12
Yeah, sure.

00:21:21:12 - 00:21:25:08
Because it's, it's a it's a fascinating term and . . .

00:21:25:10 - 00:21:27:13
Yeah,

00:21:27:13 - 00:21:28:22
we, people struggle with it

00:21:28:22 - 00:21:32:08
because, you know, is is it is is just Daniel 7?

00:21:32:11 - 00:21:34:23
But then why does Ezekiel keep,

00:21:34:23 - 00:21:38:11
why does God call Ezekiel, consistently through the book of Ezekiel,

00:21:38:11 - 00:21:39:03
son of man?

00:21:39:03 - 00:21:43:06
Is Jesus drawing on Ezekiel, is he drawing on Daniel? Why is he doing this?

00:21:43:06 - 00:21:47:01
So we find in the early church, and in a sense, in popular culture,

00:21:47:01 - 00:21:50:16
it's very easy to think of an opposition between Son of Man and Son of God.

00:21:50:18 - 00:21:53:14
That's that's that's the simple way it works.

00:21:53:14 - 00:21:58:14
But of course, Son of Man was often a, an expression just for a person.

00:21:58:20 - 00:22:02:19
So in Aramaic, son of man you might well just call there’s a son of man over there.

00:22:02:19 - 00:22:03:15
I mean,

00:22:03:24 - 00:22:04:20
it's got that,

00:22:04:20 - 00:22:08:15
but then you've got this fact that you've got Daniel 7:13–14,

00:22:08:15 - 00:22:10:17
which talks about one like a son of man

00:22:10:17 - 00:22:14:04
coming to the ancient of the days, receiving power and authority.

00:22:14:11 - 00:22:17:05
And all nations serving him.

00:22:17:05 - 00:22:20:15
And Jesus certainly seems to be using it sometimes in that sort of way,

00:22:20:15 - 00:22:24:24
he will pick up the language of authority.

00:22:25:14 - 00:22:28:15
Being, given, to the Son of Man

00:22:28:15 - 00:22:31:20
that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, for instance.

00:22:32:03 - 00:22:34:07
So that's where it's interesting.

00:22:34:07 - 00:22:36:06
He seems to be

00:22:36:06 - 00:22:38:01
referencing

00:22:38:01 - 00:22:40:20
back to

00:22:40:20 - 00:22:42:19
Daniel.

00:22:42:19 - 00:22:44:07
Reference to Ezekiel,

00:22:44:07 - 00:22:45:16
that's that's a tougher one.

00:22:45:16 - 00:22:47:12
And I'm not sure I can solve that.

00:22:47:12 - 00:22:49:12
T: That's very disappointing. P: On the spot

00:22:49:12 - 00:22:52:12
But I'm really sorry to disappoint you there.

00:22:52:20 - 00:22:55:15
The I mean, the other thing is that you actually find

00:22:55:15 - 00:22:59:18
some of the features with the way the Son of Man phrase is used

00:23:00:04 - 00:23:03:00
where it actually works, not just for Matthew, Mark and Luke,

00:23:03:00 - 00:23:05:18
but also for John, which is a bit different as a gospel.

00:23:05:18 - 00:23:08:13
Right. Where you find it talking about,

00:23:09:21 - 00:23:11:09
the Son of Man being glorified.

00:23:11:09 - 00:23:15:18
And again, that that fits with the Daniel 7 sort of reference.

00:23:16:00 - 00:23:20:23
So, I think it's a carefully chosen term

00:23:20:23 - 00:23:27:22
because, Jesus is not proclaiming himself

00:23:28:08 - 00:23:31:21
publicly as the Messiah, because that would have been misunderstood.

00:23:32:21 - 00:23:35:21
And so he's able to point people to

00:23:36:18 - 00:23:40:05
Old Testament texts and expectation using this and

00:23:41:15 - 00:23:45:11
this third person locution which clearly, when you look at the end of things, is

00:23:45:11 - 00:23:47:10
P: referring to himself. T: Yeah, right.

00:23:47:10 - 00:23:51:05
And nobody seems to question it in the Gospels they, when he talks

00:23:51:05 - 00:23:54:18
about himself as the Son of Man, I can't think of any instance where people

00:23:55:04 - 00:23:57:21
T: question that use of the term P: There’s a ‘who is this son of man?’ isn’t there?

00:23:57:21 - 00:23:59:07
P: Yes. T: Yeah.

00:23:59:07 - 00:24:01:21
Whereas whereas when,

00:24:01:21 - 00:24:04:02
when he's identifying himself

00:24:04:02 - 00:24:08:00
more obviously with God or as God,

00:24:08:24 - 00:24:09:19
forgiving sins

00:24:09:19 - 00:24:12:19
for example, in the healing of the paralytic,

00:24:12:21 - 00:24:15:21
T: that's not so much of what he says, but what he does. P: Yes.

00:24:16:00 - 00:24:19:03
But but nevertheless, the Pharisees are up in arms about that. And

00:24:19:03 - 00:24:20:01
T: Yet P: Yes.

00:24:20:01 - 00:24:23:05
So the Son of Man seems to be able to work as a, as a title.

00:24:23:05 - 00:24:25:18
T: That can go under the radar. P: Yeah.

00:24:25:18 - 00:24:30:06
And I think some of what Jesus says actually works at two levels.

00:24:30:06 - 00:24:30:16
Right.

00:24:30:16 - 00:24:35:13
So you, you will see this in, in say, John chapter six where a modern translation

00:24:35:13 - 00:24:36:19
might be inclined to think

00:24:36:19 - 00:24:40:00
shall we talk about father with a capital ‘F’ or father with a

00:24:40:00 - 00:24:41:19
small ‘f’?

00:24:41:19 - 00:24:43:19
And of course,

00:24:43:19 - 00:24:46:19
that distinction didn't exist at the

00:24:46:24 - 00:24:47:21
time of Jesus.

00:24:47:21 - 00:24:49:04
And so,

00:24:49:04 - 00:24:52:08
you have possibility to misunderstand

00:24:52:08 - 00:24:54:15
what Jesus is saying when he's talking about my father.

00:24:54:15 - 00:24:55:17
I mean, this even happens,

00:24:55:17 - 00:24:58:05
You know, didn't you know, I had to be about my father's business.

00:24:58:05 - 00:25:01:05
In Luke chapter two, he says this, to,

00:25:01:09 - 00:25:03:18
Mary, Mary and Joseph, and they’re a bit puzzled, ‘What?’

00:25:04:15 - 00:25:06:09
‘What’s that?’, you know,

00:25:06:09 - 00:25:09:09
so so that's where I think there are,

00:25:10:07 - 00:25:14:07
yeah, there's possibility to read Jesus words at more than one level,

00:25:15:02 - 00:25:19:05
about, father and you do see this sort of thing going on in

00:25:19:07 - 00:25:23:16
John chapter six, not necessarily prepped to take, take you to it right now, but, yeah.

00:25:24:20 - 00:25:26:05
Yeah.

00:25:26:05 - 00:25:27:24
Okay.

00:25:27:24 - 00:25:30:03
Finally, what about the significance of some of the names

00:25:30:03 - 00:25:31:24
in in our Old Testament discussions,

00:25:31:24 - 00:25:36:18
we've we've seen a, a number of incidents, instances where people's names are,

00:25:38:02 - 00:25:40:10
the meaning of the name is highly appropriate.

00:25:40:10 - 00:25:43:05
T: And obviously that works for Jesus. P: Yeah.

00:25:43:05 - 00:25:45:09
P: Which I want to talk about. Yeah. T: Yeah. So.

00:25:45:09 - 00:25:46:08
So tell us about that.

00:25:46:08 - 00:25:48:15
And are there other examples, other names

00:25:48:15 - 00:25:53:02
T: in the New Testament? P: And it's interesting when you look at, Jesus's, family,

00:25:53:17 - 00:25:56:17
they get named in, Matthew chapter five.

00:25:57:09 - 00:26:02:05
Sorry, 13 verse 55, where they say, isn't his mother called

00:26:02:05 - 00:26:06:05
Mary and his brothers are James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?

00:26:06:12 - 00:26:08:16
Well, if you think of five

00:26:09:23 - 00:26:11:08
brothers,

00:26:11:08 - 00:26:14:08
Jesus, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas,

00:26:14:19 - 00:26:18:13
what's striking is there's only one of those that fits with a saviour.

00:26:19:13 - 00:26:20:01
Yes, it’s

00:26:20:01 - 00:26:23:19
You know, he's the one who's going to save. Jacob means trickster.

00:26:23:19 - 00:26:25:04
P: And it's interesting that he’s . . . T: Which is James P: James

00:26:25:04 - 00:26:28:04
James, that the,

00:26:29:02 - 00:26:31:23
on my understanding, they are Jesus's half brothers.

00:26:31:23 - 00:26:32:07
Okay.

00:26:32:07 - 00:26:34:14
I know their are other understandings about that. 

00:26:34:14 - 00:26:37:09
And so the first born after Jesus

00:26:37:09 - 00:26:40:11
is called Iakobos which becomes James.

00:26:40:11 - 00:26:40:21
Yeah.

00:26:40:21 - 00:26:43:23
And Iakobos is just the Greek ending of Iakob [Jacob].

00:26:44:18 - 00:26:47:06
And it's interesting that Joseph's

00:26:47:06 - 00:26:50:06
father in Matthew's genealogy is called Iakob [Jacob].

00:26:50:13 - 00:26:53:03
So it's the common thing of paponymy

00:26:53:03 - 00:26:55:02
of, when you call someone after their

00:26:55:02 - 00:26:56:22
Grandfather.

00:26:56:22 - 00:26:57:01
Yeah.

00:26:57:01 - 00:27:00:22
But you can't do it in the case of Jesus because he's actually been given

00:27:00:22 - 00:27:03:06
a different name by the angels. Are you going to call, 

00:27:03:06 - 00:27:05:18
You know, the first born Jesus.

00:27:05:18 - 00:27:07:20
And then they they go on to this,

00:27:08:19 - 00:27:12:14
Jacob. Joseph, Simon, and Judas.

00:27:12:14 - 00:27:15:20
Of course, they're all, sons of Jacob,

00:27:15:20 - 00:27:18:20
which is an interesting feature. And,

00:27:19:03 - 00:27:22:20
one's an outlier the name Iesus [Jesus] which is of course a form of the name

00:27:22:22 - 00:27:24:00
P: Joshua. T: Yeah.

00:27:24:00 - 00:27:27:00
But it is an outlier in terms of the naming pattern,

00:27:27:06 - 00:27:30:21
because there was a time when Jacob,

00:27:31:18 - 00:27:36:02
Joseph, Simeon and Judah would have been

00:27:36:02 - 00:27:39:22
in the tent together at one stage, you know, in the Old Testament.

00:27:40:02 - 00:27:42:12
And there's one outlier name, and that's the one,

00:27:42:12 - 00:27:43:05
Jesus. And I think

00:27:43:05 - 00:27:45:09
it's just a fascinating

00:27:45:09 - 00:27:47:11
P: thing you can try and T: It is isn’t it?

00:27:47:11 - 00:27:49:07
P: meditate on. T: Yeah.

00:27:49:07 - 00:27:51:24
Maybe that's a very good place to bring this to a close.

00:27:51:24 - 00:27:54:00
T: Pete, thank you very much for your time today. P: Thank you

00:27:54:00 - 00:27:57:00
That's been really interesting join us again for, as I said

00:27:57:02 - 00:27:58:14
at the beginning, conversation with Steve

00:27:58:14 - 00:28:02:18
Walton next time talking about the patterns of, of names within the Roman world

00:28:02:18 - 00:28:05:19
and particularly Saul, and whether he changed his name to Paul

00:28:05:19 - 00:28:10:02
or whether that's just a different use of, different versions of the same name.

00:28:11:04 - 00:28:12:02
No plot spoilers.

00:28:12:02 - 00:28:13:17
We'll leave that hanging for next time.

00:28:13:17 - 00:28:15:05
So please do subscribe

00:28:15:05 - 00:28:17:18
to the podcast, rate and review us wherever you get your podcast.

00:28:17:18 - 00:28:20:22
That really helps us, to make it known to other people.

00:28:20:22 - 00:28:22:01
Thank you for joining us.