[MacDV] Re: Happy Easter all!

[Erica Sadun]

At 2:19 PM -0400 4/12/04, James Asherman wrote:
>On Monday, April 12, 2004, at 01:36  PM, Benjamin Ing wrote:
>
>>Is it a chicken or egg? Was Jesus a Spanish name before 
>>Christianity, or did it become popular because of Christianity?
>>
>
>There simply was no language designated as Spanish during Jesus' time.
>Didn't exist.
>Over the next 700 years the Spanish language developed and developed 
>further fromm it's original origins of LATIN, which was spoken by 
>the ROMANS in Jesus' time.
>Jesus is a Latinization of Yeshua or joshua as pointed out before.
>In lands where Spanish is the main language and Catholicism popular 
>at least until recently (Phillipines for instance) one finds Jesus 
>to be a popular name.

If I recall correctly, Latin was spoken in the Roman heartland
but they tended to use dialects of Greek in many of the provinces.
(Greek was left behind as a souvenir of the conquests of Alexander
the Great.) This is presumably why the gospels were translated to
Greek for a Roman audience. (Evidence for this includes Aramaic
grammar structure in the greek koine (yes, as in the "common
koine") gospels).

Spanish itself, particularly the Castillian dialect, didn't emerge
until the middle ages. Before then people spoke Latin (lingua vulgaris)
which began to evolve into Spanish during the Moorish occupation.
Modern Spanish has literally thousands of words with arabic roots.

-- Erica, trivia buff.
p.s. The use of Jesus as a proper name is evenly divided between
countries that use the NTSC and PAL standards <-- will stay on topic!