Against the Jews

[Tallguy88]

Can we get back to the original topic of St. Chrysosyom?

Thanks to everyone who has replied so far. I'm glad you don't just dismiss him outright like a lot of Christians seem to.

 

[GregConstantine]

exactly. Hebrew was a liturgical language at that time. It was not spoken on the street casually.

This insistence to speak the Name in it's Aramaic form is ridiculous. It's like insisting on pronouncing "Los Angeles" as "Lohs Ahnhelays" because that's how it's pronounced in Spanish. I mean, really? If I were to hang out with a bunch of native Spanish speaking people and pronounce Los Angeles in the correct Spanish pronunciation while speaking in English, they would laugh at me. And they'll be right to do so.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

Getting back on the original topic, I don't think anything inflammatory that St. Chrysostom said should automatically invalidate the other contributions he made to the Church. I do know that in the time he lived, there was still a steady stream of Greek-speaking diaspora Jews converting to Christianity. I honestly think his sermons are more about the push-pull of these new converts attempting to Judaize Christianity than it is as a hateful, antisemitic attack on Jews.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

And for what it's worth, you contradict yourself. If Iesous is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew, then it absolutely means something in Hebrew -- it's just how the Greeks were capable of saying it and explaining it with their particular set of phonemes. I'm illiterate of Hebrew, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "Sh" sound in Hebrew is the letter "shin", which in turn would be transliterated to the "s" sound in Greek (which is the letter "sigma").

Iesous means nothing in Hebrew. But Yeshua does.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Getting back on the original topic, I don't think anything inflammatory that St. Chrysostom said should automatically invalidate the other contributions he made to the Church. I do know that in the time he lived, there was still a steady stream of Greek-speaking diaspora Jews converting to Christianity. I honestly think his sermons are more about the push-pull of these new converts attempting to Judaize Christianity than it is as a hateful, antisemitic attack on Jews.

I agree with you.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

I still don't understand the point of using Hebraic or Aramaic terms, when, for instance the majority of religious Jews who spoke these languages outright rejected Christ as Messiah. And those Jews who typically accepted him as the Messiah were mostly Hellenized Jews of the diaspora (who spoke Greek and not Hebrew or Aramaic), which precipitated the conversion of Greek-speaking Gentiles, and then eventually this spread to the rest of the Roman Empire. I mean, we base a great deal of our OT on the construction of the Septuagint, which was specifically translated for Hellenized Jews who didn't understand Hebrew. But apparently it's disrespectful not to use his Aramaic name, because using it makes us more reverent!!

The Greeks spoke Greek, the Russians spoke Russian, etc...So why do we say Golgatha and other Hebraic terms? I never said it was disrespectful, I just said I prefer using it.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

You do realize that that doesn't necessarily contradict anything I said, right? Yeshua is not the phonetic rendering, but is the transliteration from Hebrew and Aramaic characters to Western alphabets. The point, which you missed, is that they're all forms of the same name, names with the same meaning; however, Jesus is the established English rendering of the name, so English speakers insisting on Yeshua just screams pretension and condescension to me.

It is the ENGLISH spelling of the original. JESUS is the ENGLISH spelling of the GREEK "IESOUS". YESHUA is spelled in ENGLISH letters how it is said PHONETICALLY.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

I did a little more digging in some historical sources. It also looks like the mainstream Jewish diaspora oddly enough became pretty powerful around the Roman Empire after the destruction of the Temple. This seems to have been particularly true in Antioch, and where was St. John Chrysostom at the time of these particular sermons? Antioch.

The Greeks spoke Greek, the Russians spoke Russian, etc...So why do we say Golgatha and other Hebraic terms? I never said it was disrespectful, I just said I prefer using it.

Thank you for that clarification that you don't find it disrespectful. I mistakenly assumed that you and the other poster who mentioned "Yeshua" as the appropriate term felt this way. However, Golgatha (as we see it and use it today) is actually a Greek transcription/transliteration of the Hebraic or Aramaic term, although they ended up being very similar phonetically.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

It is the ENGLISH spelling of the original. JESUS is the ENGLISH spelling of the GREEK "IESOUS". YESHUA is spelled in ENGLISH letters how it is said PHONETICALLY.

I don't want to derail this thread even further, but essentially they are the same name. Christianity, for all intents and purposes, was an incredibly Hellenized religion for many reasons. It's not surprising that the culture the Church as we know it arose from (people who spoke the Greek language), would transliterate it as "Iesous", and that English successors to the Greek would use the Latinized transliteration of "Jesus". Historically, English speakers have used the term "Jesus". I think it's silly and unnecessarily puritanical to go back and use the term "Yeshua" against established tradition.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

@Yeshua HaDerekh - I get why everyone else is annoyed with your use of it, but I get why you do it, and I'm getting to the point that while I find it unnecessary to call "Jesus", "Yeshua", I think it's petty for all of us to continue quibbling over something this ultimately insignificant. I guess the youngins say "You do you" these days, or something like that.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

After you have practically every single poster calling you out on this and pointing out the silliness and futility of transcribing the Lord's name in Aramaic for everyone, one would think you'd learn from this? Should I say "Miriyam" for the Theotokos? Should I say "Kepha" for Peter or "Yohannon" for John? We could say "Shmuel" for Samuel and "Dawid" for David, and "Zapanathpanea" for Joseph in the OT each time, but what's the point? It's distracting, odd, and it makes one not want to read the post. Like Jeremy pointed out, the G_d" and "YWHY" stuff is utterly unnecessary, so why "Yeshua" each time. I just think you find it cool to say the Lord's name in his original form, cool, so you keep it up despite Rus's obviously correct position that such names shouldn't be handled that way according to the norms and rules of the languages in use today. If I bust out slavonic and call the Theotokos "Mater Boga" or "Mater Dei" and other terms, but they'd not fit the cultural context of Orthodox conversations in here. What if I wanted to start this with Latin? Where does it end?

Nobody was bashing Jews. Rather, JUDAIZERS. Nobody says early Christian Jews were bad folks. Far from it. But there was a Judaizing movement within the Church that was unhealthy....trying to "Jew up" the church and go back to Sabbath and Levitical stuff, etc. So when people in here are concerned about Judaizing, they're not concerned with early Christian Jews just for ethnically being Jews?

Using G_d is not about vowels. Rabbinic Jews use it as a sign of respect for His Name. Your funny, the Apostolic Council was held BY JEWS. Polycarp and St. John were Judaizers according to your understanding of it...

There were 2 camps, both being Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus for all of you that want or need to use His anglicized Greek name). Jewish believers were at the head of The Church. The question was not that Jewish believers should or should not remain Jews, but should GENTILES have to become Jews to be part of The Body of believers. Some said yes, others said no.

 

[dzheremi]

This Hebrew/Aramaic vs. Greek diversion is just bizarre. I'm the only person in this thread so far who is actually in communion with an Aramaic-speaking (well, Neo-Aramaic) church, yet I've never met an actual Syriac person who pulls the kind of nonsense Yeshua HaLarpkh is pulling here. It's only the modern-day Judaizers who do this, and most of them thankfully stick to Protestantism (which is where their actual roots lie), not Eastern Orthodoxy. I almost feel bad for you guys that you have one among your ranks here, until I remember that he's probably the only one who any of you have ever interacted with either, since the vast majority of actual Orthodox Christians -- like actual Jews -- apparently have better things to do.

Anyway, back to the original topic. Tallguy88, I would say that St. John Chrysostom's writings in this area are considered controversial primarily due to later, more modern events and attitudes for which the saint himself cannot be blamed. One could make an analogy here to various early saints' writings on Islam which, to the modern Western person, would probably read as though littered with "Islamophobia", but in reality are rooted in the quite sensible Christian rejection of what amounts to another gospel and a false religion built around it. Judaism is likewise a false religion, and we, like St. John Chrysostom, do well to remember that and not soft-peddle it out of fear of seeming "anti-Semitic" -- a concept which would have had absolutely no currency before the modern era (the term "Semitic" to refer to peoples does not predate the 19th century, and is intimately tied to thankfully discredited European pseudoscientific theories on race; it always kind of shocks me that even Jews and non-Jews of today find it completely acceptable to use...never waste perfectly good political capital, I guess).

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

I don't think we should judge St. John Chrysostom's sermons based on our own modern sensibilities on things like anti-Semitism, because the way Jews were treated then compared to how they have been treated within the past century are very different. He's a product of his time, yes, but then by the same logic, we are products of our time. As such, we have no right to judge the merits of his sermons based on our own preconceptions. We absolutely have to look at his sermons through the lens of the Church, Scriptures, history and the cultural climate of the times he lived and preached. Of course, none of this precludes the fact that he was arguing against the Jewish culture and Jewish religion of the time; that doesn't make the Church anti-Semitic or complicit in the persecution of Jews in more recent times. However, that doesn't mean that some rulers in Europe haven't abused the content of these sermons and related literature as a reason to persecute Jewish peoples in Europe. In the time that St. John Chrysostom lived, there were issues of Judaizing Christians and Jewish persecutions of Christians. Just a continuation of my previous $0.02. So I guess now, on topic, I'm up to about $0.06.

 

[rusmeister]

Iesous means nothing in Hebrew. But Yeshua does.

We. Don't. Speak. Hebrew.
You are speaking what you like, without consideration for us.

If I speak what I like, I could say that твое неуважение к носителям английского языка отвергает всех нас от чего либо, что Вы бы хотели предлагать. Вы, может быть, сможете это читать и понимать. Но всё равно, грубо так себя вести. Speak English, please!!

 

[seekingsolace]

In consideration, I would like to point members back to the OP on St. John Chrysostom.

"The beginning of strife is like letting out water,
So abandon the quarrel before it breaks out."

 

[GregConstantine]

"Iesous means nothing in Hebrew. But Yeshua does."

And "apple" means nothing in Spanish, but "manzana" does.

 

[GregConstantine]

"Yeshua" means nothing in English, but "Jesus" does.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I was thinking this exact same thing yesterday. I concur.

твое неуважение к носителям английского языка отвергает всех нас от чего либо, что Вы бы хотели предлагать. Вы, может быть, сможете это читать и понимать. Но всё равно, грубо так себя вести.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I'm going to start speaking Romulan in here out of nowhere.

 

[Shieldmaiden4Christ]

I'm going to start speaking Romulan in here out of nowhere.

I demand a reading of Shakespeare in the original Klingon.