The City Of Judea?

[volgadon]

http://calba-savua.blogspot.com/2010/03/greeks-in-kingdom-of-judah.html

Gideon Fuks mentioned Yigal Yadin's theory that some of the ostraca (pottery shards used for writing) from Arad- a biblical fortress in the south of Judah- dating to the 7th century BC, are Greek.

Several ostraca from the same site in the 6th century refer to Chithtites, in all probability Aegean mercenaries employed by King Josiah. At least that is the explanation offered by the archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni.

He also considered the large amount of Greek pottery shards in Mesad Heshavyahu (a fort just north of Ashdod/Azotus) indicative of a further mercenary garrison employed by Josiah.

Several sites have revealed Greek pottery from as early as the 9th c. BC.

From the 7th c. onwards the amount increases.

The author notes that these finds are especially prevalent in layers from the middle of the 6th c. From about the same time come a few Greek coins as well.

The eminent archaeologist and scholar William F. Albright concluded that there were several minor Greek settlements along the coast of Syria, Lebanon and Israel. It should be pointed out that the evidence isn't conclusive (rarely is in archaeology).

The author concludes that although it is hard to measure the Greek influence on the region, it certainly was aware of the Greeks, and Alexander's conquest did not entail a complete culture shock. Of course, the change Hellenism wrought upon all aspects can hardly be overstated, but Greek influence had been slowly creeping in for centuries.

To the above can also be added the presence of the Philistines and other Aegean peoples, as well as the Phoenicians, who had close contacts with the Greeks. The Mulekite sailors would almost certainly have included Phoenicians, which is why I wouldn't be surprised if that was where the name Archeantus came from.

It is not as if the Greeks had no presence in the ancient Levant before the Achaemenids so a Greek name in the BoM isn't that surprising.

Judah, OTOH, is no more an accurate transliteration of Yehudah than Judea. You won't find a kingdom or a tribe in the OT called Yudah.

[LeSellers]

But what does the Aramaic "Yĕhuwd"" (which, if anything, is closer to the Hebrew "Yehudah," or Judah) have to do with the Greek "Judea"?

But the Old Testament place name is "Judah," not "Judea."

"Judea" is what the Greeks and Romans called "Judah," so how would a Nephite city have gotten that name?

Neither the Greek nor the Hebrew has a "J sound" (more technically the diaphoneme affricate /dʒ/, as in jet).

The words "Judah", Judea", "Jonah/s" are Anglicizations of Greek or Hebrew words that all begin with י (yodh: Hebrew) or Ι, ι (iota: Greek).

When Joseph translated the Book of Mormon he used, when possible, Anglicanized forms of familiar words. Thus "Judea", which (in either Hebrew or Greek) would have been Iudea (or some near variant: we don't know what form the Nephite "Hebrew" would have taken 850+ years after the Lehites left Jerusalem—language drifts dramatically in much less time: George Washington, a mere 220 years ago, pronounced the name of our seventh month as "YOOlee", and would be confused hearing us say "JoolEYE"). It is conceivable, however unlikely, that, in Joseph's day, he and others around him pronounced "Judea" as "YooDAYuh" [with a "long A" replacing the "long E" we commonly use today] given that not all speakers had translated "J" to the current /dʒ/.

The key, even though most of this post has been about pronunciation, is that whatever words Joseph dictated to Oliver, they were in his own "idiolect": his own personal language, one not identical to anyone else's in the world. So, on seeing whatever reformed Egyptian characters, or a concept on his mind-screen, he would have spoken what he interpreted that idea to be in sounds he was comfortable using. Iudea was not a word he was at ease with, but the English form of that word, "Judea", was. That was what he had Oliver write down.

There are many words (names, primarily) in the Book of Mormon that have no English counterpart. Joseph did not face this issue with those words: he had Oliver transcribe them as he transliterated them. We do the same thing frequently: Михаил Сергеевич Горбачёв becomes Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (a fair approximation of the Russian pronunciation: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov). But we write "Moscow", not Moskva, for Москва́.

Lehi

[volgadon]

Could the Nephites have had trans-Atlantic contact with the Greeks, or with their own countrymen, learned of the new name given their homeland, and named a city after it?

I don't think that there was trans-Atlantic contact or that Judea was actually how the Nephites woould have pronounced the name of their city.

And did Joseph (when working from the reformed Egyptian on the gold plates, and using the interpreters buried with them) correctly see "Judea" as the name of the city?

Spelled that way? Probably not.

Was this the actual phonetic sound of the name the Nephites gave the city,

A very good question. I don't know what the actual phonetic sound was, even for the OT.

Judah, as I've noted, isn't particularly accurate either, but it is the convention in English. You are used to it being that way, which is probably why Judea jars. If neither though are accurate transliterations, why worry?

and does it actually have some historical connection to the Hellenized name the Greeks and Romans gave "Judah"?

No. I think that Robert and BCS have given the most likely explanations. Judea appears in the KJV of the OT, but it also is a convenient device in English for separating the New World city from the Old World kingdom.

[volgadon]

It might also have been peeled off of "Joiakim", Nehemiah 12:10. Maybe Joseph Smith borrowed part of a word the same way the good citizens of jeruSALEM, Massachusetts did?

You mean to say that he already found it in the Bible as a separate word?

[volgadon]

"Judea" seems to be a Greek corruption of a Hebrew name,

Judah is an English corruption, so why is one corruption to be preffered over another?

so why would an infallible translation

I don't think that it was an infallible translation, especially not when it came to minor, technical aspects such as transliteration.

[TAO]

It might also have been peeled off of "Joiakim", Nehemiah 12:10. Maybe Joseph Smith borrowed part of a word the same way the good citizens of jeruSALEM, Massachusetts did?

That seems to be a bit too obscure to be believable.

[inquiringmind]

...I don't think that it was an infallible translation, especially not when it came to minor, technical aspects such as transliteration.

Maybe that's the short answer, but there's a lot I don't understand here.

The source of the confusion is that the KJV translators were divided into committees which took different parts of the Bible, and the OT was based heavily on the Hebrew Bible as well as on the Septuagint Greek, while the New Testament is based on manuscripts overwhelmingly influenced by the Septuagint Greek Bible – the OT in Greek (there is no Hebrew version of the NT), which was the primary Bible of early Christianity. The separate KJV committees did not arrange for a single system of transliteration of names...

I don't understand why God would intentionally carry this confusion over into the translation of the Book of Mormon (done not by committees, but by Joseph and Oliver, under His inspiration.)

I don't think that there was trans-Atlantic contact or that Judea was actually how the Nephites would have pronounced the name of their city.

Spelled that way? Probably not.

A very good question. I don't know what the actual phonetic sound was, even for the OT.

Judah, as I've noted, isn't particularly accurate either, but it is the convention in English. You are used to it being that way, which is probably why Judea jars. If neither though are accurate transliterations, why worry?

No. I think that Robert and BCS have given the most likely explanations. Judea appears in the KJV of the OT, but it also is a convenient device in English for separating the New World city from the Old World kingdom.

It's that device I don't understand.

To English speaking, 19th century readers of the King James Bible, both Judah and Judea referred to a geographical area in the Old World.

The same geographical area that was "the Old World Kingdom" of Judah when Lehi's party left Jerusalem, and became "the Old World" province of Judea (centuries latter, when the Jews returned from exile.)

You're saying "Judea" was chosen by Divine Providence (in preference to "Judah") to distinguish the new world city from this larger geographical area--an area that was known by both labels ("Judah" and "Judea", or words that were the origin of these King James labels) in the Old World, and (as you yourself point out) was unknown to the Nephites (in their own language) by either label.

That makes no sense to me.

I don't see how it provides "a convenient device" to anyone but anti-Mormon critics, to do anything but point to it as an anachronism (and evidence of the human origin of the Book of Mormon.)

Why would God intentionally arm them with this weapon?

What other purpose does it serve?

Edited February 1, 2012 by inquiringmind

[inquiringmind]

No Nephite ever used the English words Judah or Judea, and they are not Hebrew and Greek. Instead the translators (Joseph, Oliver, et al.), who were familiar with the Bible, applied reasonable English transliterations when they came to the Egyptian spelling of these names on the plates of Mormon.

The process was not infallible or inerrant, but simply a practical way to represent various names.

So when they came to the Egyptian spelling of names, they weren't given the English Translation?

They were just left to apply "reasonable English transliterations" themselves?

What does that mean exactly?

Reformed Egyptian would have been totally meaningless to them on their own, so how would they have known what were "reasonable English transliterations"?

Did God give them the understanding that certain characters corresponded to certain letters in English (or to certain phonetic sounds in English), and then leave them to figure out what were "reasonable English transliterations"?

Edited February 1, 2012 by inquiringmind

[volgadon]

Judah and Judea were often used interchangably in the 19th c., so relly, the issue is more recent.

[LeSellers]

Were they given to understand that certain characters in reformed Egyptian corresponded to certain letters in English (or certain phonetic sounds in English), and then left to figure out what to do with that on their own?

First, the Egyptian characters on the plates did not record the Egyptian language. I understand that you know this, but it is important to differentiate between the reformed Egyptian characters and the language Nephi and Mormon used to record their nation's history.

A symbol does not have to be a single phoneme. In fact, many people around the world use a single symbol to mean a whole word, or even a phrase. Chinese scripts are the most familiar ideographs, but they are not alone.

For example, in almost every land on earth, the symbol "$" represents the USmerican currency, the US dollar. People use it to stand for other currencies, too, but usually the name of that currency is "dollar", as in the New Zealand dollar. But this is not universally true. In Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay, they use the $ to represent their pesos, In Tonga, it's for the Pa'anga, and in Nicaragua, it's the Cordoba. Now, how do we pronounce "$"?

What's this: "/" ? Correct answer, a virgule. You might have said, "slash".

When Joseph saw a symbol (I'll use "¥", the symbol for the Japanese Yen, although I'm not using it for that), he may or may not have known its pronunciation in Nephite Hebrew. It's unlikely he did. It may have meant "Zerahemla". There is nothing there he could have used to determine how to pronounce the word. But every time he saw ¥ he knew to dictate "Zerahemla". Let's say, however, that the symbol "Ǿ" means "usurper". It's a common name in English, "Jacob", but it is a word in its own right. When used as a name, Joseph would not think "usurper", he'd think "Jacob". However, in Hebrew "jacob" is pronounced "Yacob" (or something near). If you were writing to be understood, as Joseph was while dictating the Book of Mormon, it would not make sense to use "Yacob"; the far better choice is the one he was familiar with (along with his readers). Thus Ǿ became "Jacob".

Lehi

Edited February 2, 2012 by LeSellers

[inquiringmind]

Judah and Judea were often used interchangably in the 19th c., so relly, the issue is more recent.

But were the sources of these words used interchangeably in the time of Lehi?

Whether the issue is more recent, or more ancient, isn't time all one eternal round to God?

Wouldn't He have been aware of the issue?

Wouldn't he have known that it might become a stumbling block?

I'm reminded of the passage that says "And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men: wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ," and maybe that's the answer.

But if things like this are the mistakes of men, I don't understand what men, or how they entered in.

As you pointed out, the Nephites could not have written "Judea" on the golden plates, and Joseph and Oliver were translating them with the gift and power of God, so I guess this brings me back to the question I asked Robert F. Smith.

So when they came to the Egyptian spelling of names, they weren't given the English Translation?

They were just left to apply "reasonable English transliterations" themselves?

What does that mean exactly?

Reformed Egyptian would have been totally meaningless to them on their own, so how would they have known what were "reasonable English transliterations"?

Did God give them the understanding that certain characters corresponded to certain letters in English (or to certain phonetic sounds in English), and then leave them to figure out what were "reasonable English transliterations"?

Lehi wrote

First, the Egyptian characters on the plates did not record the Egyptian language. I understand that you know this, but it is important to differentiate between the reformed Egyptian characters and the language Nephi and Mormon used to record their nation's history.

A symbol does not have to be a single phoneme. In fact, most people around the world use a single symbol to mean a whole word, or even a phrase. Chinese scripts are the most familiar ideographs, but they are not alone.

For example, in almost every land on earth, the symbol "$" represents the USmerican currency, the US dollar. People use it to stand for other currencies, too, but usually the name of that currency is "dollar", as in the New Zealand dollar. But this is not universally true. In Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay, they use the $ to represent their pesos, In Tonga, it's for the Pa'anga, and in Nicaragua, it's the Cordoba. Now, how do we pronounce "$"?

What's this: "/" ? Correct answer, a virgule. You might have said, "slash".

When Joseph saw a symbol (I'll use "¥", the symbol for the Japanese Yen, although I'm not using it for that), he may or may not have known its pronunciation in Nephite Hebrew. It's unlikely he did. It may have meant "Zerahemla". There is nothing there he could have used to determine how to pronounce the word. But every time he saw ¥ he knew to dictate "Zerahemla". Let's say, however, that the symbol "Ǿ" means "usurper". It's a common name in English, "Jacob", but it is a word in its own right. When used as a name, Joseph would not think "usurper", he'd think "Jacob". However, in Hebrew "jacob" is pronounced "Yacob" (or something near). If you were writing to be understood, as Joseph was while dictating the Book of Mormon, it would not make sense to use "Yacob"; the far better choice is the one he was familiar with (along with his readers). Thus Ǿ became "Jacob".

Lehi

Thank you Bro. Lehi, but how does that help me here?

What could Joseph have seen when he came to the name of the city of Judea, how (or why) could he (himself) have come up with "Judea," why was this good (or good enough), and why would God allow it if it really wasn't the best way it could have been translated?

Edited February 1, 2012 by inquiringmind

[volgadon]

If Judah and Judea were used interchangeably in Joseph's day, why is this an issue?

[inquiringmind]

If Judah and Judea were used interchangeably in Joseph's day, why is this an issue?

Is the city of Judea ever called the city of Judah?

If not, "Judah" and "Judea" were not always used interchangeably in Joseph's day.

He didn't use them interchangeably in the Book of Mormon.

Judah seems to be used exclusively of the geographical area north of Egypt and south of Syria (where the city of Jerusalem was located.)

Judea (in the BOM) seems to be used exclusively of the "city of Judea," when it was also the King James representation of the name that was given the newly created province of Judea (after the Jews returned from exile.)

If translation means anything, if Joseph's translation of the Book of Mormon was Divinely guided, and if a Divinely guided translation is "inerrant" (and I have difficulty conceiving of a Divinely guided translation that isn't infallible and inerrant), then it seems to me that there must be some reason for "Judea," and not "Judah."

P.S. If the problem is that I have a misconception regarding the translation process, please help me to understand it better.

Edited February 1, 2012 by inquiringmind

[volgadon]

Is the city of Judea ever called the city of Judah?

If not, "Judah" and "Judea" were not always used interchangeably in Joseph's day.

He didn't use them interchangeably in the Book of Mormon.

Judah seems to be used exclusively of the geographical area north of Egypt and south of Syria (where the city of Jerusalem was located.)

Judea (in the BOM) seems to be used exclusively of the "city of Judea," when it was also the King James representation of the name that was given the newly created province of Judea (after the Jews returned from exile.)

If translation means anything, if Joseph's translation of the Book of Mormon was Divinely guided, and if a Divinely guided translation is "inerrant" (and I have difficulty conceiving of a Divinely guided translation that isn't infallible and inerrant), then it seems to me that there must be some reason for "Judea," and not "Judah."

P.S. If the problem is that I have a misconception regarding the translation process, please help me to understand it better.

Allow me to rephrase. If in Joseph's day Judea could be used to refer to the OT world then why is Joseph's use of it such a troubling anachronism? I don't know that the Nephite text had different spellings for the city vs. the land. It could very well be that Joseph thought of that device himself in order to indicate the difference.

[inquiringmind]

I'm not sure if it answers my questions, but I got this from a FAIR apologist today.

Hey again, Mike,

Just two quick things...I still just want to make sure that my first note stands, that my opinions don't necessarily reflect the official opinions of FAIR or the LDS Church -- have to make sure I'm covered, haha. Second though, congratulations, my friend, I'm so happy to hear that you've got a date for baptism, I wish you all the blessings in the world in your decision

Now as for the Greek words that are pretty present in the Book of Mormon, there's nothing to worry about with these things, to be quite honest...here's the second theory, and this is the one that I think really fills in the blanks for the first. In the sixth century BCE, when Lehi and his family left Jerusalem for the New World, this was a time when Egyptian culture and influence was very interwoven into that of Jerusalem, which is one of the reasons Babylon actually came storming in in the first place -- because an enemy nation was getting too cozy in an important city under Babylonian control. But what's important about Egypt's presence in Jerusalem is that the Greeks were in turn very present in Egypt, as well as in neighboring nations like Phoenicia. And, as logic stands, Greeks typically have Greek names (little dry humor, haha), so it's not inconceivable at all that a Timothy or Lachoneus or two joined, for instance, Mulek on his way to the New World after Nephi's departure, and that the name was handed down over the centuries until it landed on a particular historical figure mentioned in the Book of Mormon narrative (this also doesn't assume that the persons in the BoM named Timothy and Lachoneus weren't just given names that were closely derived from those original Greek names (for instance, calling the Savior "Jesus" instead of "Yeshua")). This would also conceivably explain the presence of Greek place names, or, rather, seemingly Greek place names (we must always be open to the thought that we haven't actually landed on a Greek name just because the roots look like they're spelled the same in places (though this also doesn't automatically mean that there aren't Greek names present)).

How might this "second theory" relate to the place name "Judea"?

Edited February 1, 2012 by inquiringmind

[volgadon]

How might this "second theory" relate to the place name "Judea"?

I don't think it does. It helps explain names like Archeantus, though. Judea would reflect the usage of Joseph's day, which is far from saying that he made it up.

If you want a real gaffe, try the translation of a section of the Book of the Dead my professor handed out that has a Russian city in it.

[why me]

I'm not sure if it answers my questions, but I got this from a FAIR apologist today.

How might this "second theory" relate to the place name "Judea"?

I think that you got a pretty good answer in this response. But the question as to whether you want to accept the explanations remains to be seen. What answer would you be satisfied with? I think that we will need to start from there.

Edited February 1, 2012 by why me

[Buckeye]

I'm sort of late to this topic. My two cents are that the name is mostly likely explained through the translation process, which unfortunately we don't know too much about. The problem is similar to Jacob's use of the french/english word "adieu" - which certainly post-dates Mormon's death. FAIR does have write-up for "adieu": http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms/Language/%22Adieu%22

[volgadon]

Just for the record, and aimed at none in particular, IM has shown himself to be sincere. Even if I don't consider the question posed a particularly difficult, he is struggling with it and his question is sincere.

[Bond...James Bond]

You mean to say that he already found it in the Bible as a separate word?

I'd say it's more likely Kim was peeled off of an existing name from the Bible than it was a given name from Asia as TAO hinted at.

[volgadon]

The problem is similar to Jacob's use of the french/english word "adieu" - which certainly post-dates Mormon's death.

Adieu was a perfectly normal ENGLISH word in Joseph's day. It is odd to us now because it has fallen out of use in English and we tend to know it only as a French word.

[Bond...James Bond]

That seems to be a bit too obscure to be believable.

As opposed to "Kim" coming from an Asian name as you hinted at?

(Btw that "it's a bit too obscure to be believable" idea you had is the same one that critics have every time someone digs up a really obscure "bullseye" about the BoM. My little "Joiakim" name was a simple google search at 5 a.m. and probably not where Smith got "Kim", but it's as about as good an argument as the general apologetics on this board.)

Edited February 1, 2012 by Bond...James Bond

[Bond...James Bond]

But that's boring.

Reality is boring sometimes. I'd much prefer if we lived in the world of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series and there really were dragons.

[zerinus]

I just finished reading Alma 56, and I have a question that's bothering me.

(I've learned that when I come up with a question like this, it usually has an answer, but that doesn't keep this from bothering me right now.)

If Lehi and family arrived here in the new world in the 6th century B.C., and their children (the Nephites and the Lamanites) had no contact with Greco/Roman civilization, how could there be a new world city named "Judea"?

Judea was a Roman province, and I always thought the name was a Hellenization of "Judah."

Without knowing of the Roman province (and without any Greek influence on their language), why would the Nephites or the Lamanites name a city "Judea"?

Can anyone help me here?

Judea is an English word, and since the Book of Mormon is translated into English, no surprise that English words are found in it.

[inquiringmind]

Judea is an English word, and since the Book of Mormon is translated into English, no surprise that English words are found in it.

I think that's an oversimplification.

Judea is an Anglicization of the Hellenization of the Hebrew "Yehuda" (or the Aramaic "Yehuwd")

Judah is the more direct Anglicization of the Hebrew "Yehuda."

I'm sort of late to this topic. My two cents are that the name is mostly likely explained through the translation process, which unfortunately we don't know too much about. The problem is similar to Jacob's use of the french/english word "adieu" - which certainly post-dates Mormon's death. FAIR does have write-up for "adieu": http://en.fairmormon...age/%22Adieu%22

I read that, and I found this interesting.

Whatever character, word, or phrase that had been engraved on the plates was translated by Joseph Smith into what he felt was an approximate equivalent in English.

http://en.fairmormon...age/%22Adieu%22

That's not how I've imagined the translation process.

I thought that "whatever character, word, or phrase" Joseph saw engraved on the plates was translated by God into whatever English word or phrase Joseph dictated to Oliver.

I suspect you're right when you say "the name is most likely explained through the translation process," and I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that process?.

Specifically, how Joseph could have had any input.

That's what I think I'm missing.

How much of it was God, how much of it was Joseph, and how could he (Joseph) really have any input at all (when English was the only language that he could read or write at the time)?

Edited February 1, 2012 by inquiringmind