# Ecce Homo

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ecce-homo/101654>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 3, 2002, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ecce-homo/101654 "2002-04-03T21:35:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ecce-homo/101654/1 "2002-04-03T21:35:23Z")

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In [another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=107298), there was this:

> [@](#):
>
> Homo is the Latin word for man in the sense of humankind – the word for man in the sense of a male human is vir.

Does that mean that Pontius Pilate actually said of Jesus, “Behold mankind” rather than the unanimously translated “Behold the man”?

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**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ecce-homo/101654/2 "2002-04-03T21:53:37Z")

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Nah… _homo_ means “man” in the sense of "an individual human being, not “mankind” except in the abstract, metaphorical sense in which the two terms are synonymous (“There are some things that man[kind] was not meant to know.” – Any 40-year-old SF B-movie)

What Pilate said was “Behold the man” (with the implication of human being) as opposed to “Behold the adult male human.”

BTW, wouldn’t that be a great title for a book suggesting that Jesus was gay? 😃

::: ducks and runs :::

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**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2002, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ecce-homo/101654/3 "2002-04-04T00:57:24Z")

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In Latin, _homo_ has the connotation of “that guy over there”, whereas _vir_ has the connotation of “macho dude”. I’m not sure that _homo_ would ever have been used for a woman, but it doesn’t suggest any degree of manliness (a quality highly-valued by the Romans).

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2002, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ecce-homo/101654/4 "2002-04-04T01:44:27Z")

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**Polycarp** wrote:

> [@](#):
>
> Nah… homo means “man” in the sense of "an individual human being, not “mankind” except in the abstract

Right, that had been my mistake. A better way to say it would have been to say that it meant `human' or `person.’ It can also be used in the universal sense, as in `mankind.’ But that sense was not relevant to the discussion **Libertarian** was quoting me from.