Why is it that so many names of Judeans in the New Testement are so different from the typical names in the Old Testement? Mark, Luke, Matthew, James don’t sound like the same sort of names as Nehemiah, Ezekiel, Joshaphat, or Elija. Are the names in the New Testement Greek or Latinized versions of Hebrew names?
Probably because they’re anglicized versions of Greek names.
Also, you have to remember that after about 922 bce and before 722?bce there were the northern kingdoms of Isreal and the southern kingodm of Judea. After the Assyrians wiped out Israel, Judea was taken over by the Babylonians (560 bce?). Then there is the Egyptian time, the Mesopotamian times etc. So the names in the Hebrew bible come from many different backgrounds and regions, even different languages. Hence the different names. The Christian addition of the “New Testament” centers chiefly around one area over a limited time, and is written by fewer authors, so it makes sense that the names would all be relatively similiar.
The ocean of liquor, I drank to forget her, is gonna kill me, but I’ll drink till then.- George Jones Still Doin Time
Doobieous and SirJoe each have hold of part of the answer.
Remember that “Mark” and “Luke” aren’t Hebrew names; they’re Latin (“Marcus”) and Greek (“Loukas”) respectively.
Also, the “New Testament” wasn’t written in Hebrew; it was written in Greek (the elusive Q document, possibly the source of the synoptic gospels, may have been written in a Semitic tongue, but we don’t have it). Thus, those names that are derived from Hebrew are “naturally” Hellenized, so to speak, and are treated differently from Hebrew names in the Tanakh.
Another thread (the exact provenance of which I forget) mentions “Noe” (the Latinized Douai version of “Noah” (the final sound is different from the English “h”)).
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
Agreeing with Akat (as usual), it’s mostly a case of a name in one language being translated and spelt in another language.
Greek and Latin, for instance, didn’t have the kh-sound, so Hebrew No-akh became Noah, Khavah became Eve.
Pronunciations also changed: the Hebrew Dah-VEED became David.
Also, for classical and ancient languages, the end of the word was important, because the case changed by changing the ending. Thus Hebrew Mattiyahu became Greek Mattithias became Latin/English Matthew.
I would imagine that Acts 13:9 would be a good starting point for research on this question:
A good example, Keeves.
“Shuh-ul” is reasonable approximation of the Hebrew name of the first king of the Israelites. This came into Greek/Latin/English as Saul. How it got to Paul, that’s another story.
Which in French (and I would guess some other European languages) IS “Dah-VEED”.
> This came into Greek/Latin/English as Saul. >How it got to Paul, that’s another story.
I would assume it was because Paulus was a fairly common Latin name, and if you’re, like Paul seems to have been, a Romanized Jew, you’re going to indicate your status as a citizen by having a Roman, vs. a “foreign” name…and Paulus is similar enough to Saul, that that would be the one you’d pick…