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The Origin of the Quran_s Name for Jesus · Abide Meditation App

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  Speaker 1: Sponsored by Athletic Greens. In a previous video, we explored
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  Speaker 1: the actual name of Jesus. The English name Jesus is
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  Speaker 1: a transliteration of how his name appeared in Greek Jesus,
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  Speaker 1: which itself is a transliteration of the Aramaic name Yeshua.
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  Speaker 1: Almost all of the modern names of Jesus in almost
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  Speaker 1: every modern language derive either from the Greek Jesus, like
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  Speaker 1: his Latin and Amharic names, or directly from the Aramaic.
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  Speaker 1: But there's one very prominent exception, one version of his
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  Speaker 1: name that has perplexed scholars for generations, the Arabic name
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  Speaker 1: of Jesus as it appears in the Qoran. To help
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  Speaker 1: unlock this mystery, I've enlisted the help of doctor Ahmed
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  Speaker 1: al Jalad, a professor at the Ohio State University and
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  Speaker 1: an expert in pre Islamic Arabic.
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  Speaker 2: Unlike Christian Arabic, Christian Arabic uses an Arabicized form of
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  Speaker 2: the name Yeshua, and it comes into Christian Arabic as Yuar,
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  Speaker 2: which is completely expected. But Jesus's name of the Quran
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  Speaker 2: is depending on the reading tradition. The most common reading
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  Speaker 2: tradition has on awesome renders his name as Asa, with
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  Speaker 2: an ayin at the beginning, a long yeah, a scene,
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  Speaker 2: and a final long ah vowel. But when we look
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  Speaker 2: at the Choronic spelling the consonental text of the Quran,
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  Speaker 2: the name is spelled ayin yeah, scene, yeah, and some
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  Speaker 2: reading traditions render it as as as well.
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  Speaker 1: As a non Arabic speaker, I'm not particularly good at
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  Speaker 1: pronouncing that initial ein a letter produced in the back
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  Speaker 1: of your throat called a pharyngeal consonant. I'll try my
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  Speaker 1: best throughout this video, but rely on doctor al Jlad
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  Speaker 1: for the correct pronunciation. So the name of Jesus in
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  Speaker 1: Quronic Arabic is Asa. But the problem is, unlike his
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  Speaker 1: Arabic name as pronounced by Arab Christians, his Qoronic Arabic
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  Speaker 1: name has no obvious linguistic connection to the Aramaic Yeshua.
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  Speaker 1: The iin is at the beginning instead of the end.
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  Speaker 1: The vowels don't correspond, So how did this transition happen.
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  Speaker 1: Some have argued that the pronunciation may have changed over
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  Speaker 1: the centuries as it was trans admitted from Aramaic and
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  Speaker 1: too Koronic Arabic but linguists are not satisfied with any
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  Speaker 1: explanation for how that change may have happened. The simple
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  Speaker 1: fact of the matter is the Kuran was our only evidence.
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  Speaker 1: There was no earlier attestation of this name aisa to
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  Speaker 1: help us piece together its origins until now. Maybe a
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  Speaker 1: few years ago, while surveying with his research team in
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  Speaker 1: northern Jordan, doctor Algalod made a discovery that may have
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  Speaker 1: cracked the case. A sofa at a conscription that might
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  Speaker 1: bear a pre Islamic version of the Koronic Arabic name
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  Speaker 1: of Jesus. But before we get to that, I want
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  Speaker 1: packets with your first purchase and with that back to
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  Speaker 1: the show. Safaiatic is an ancient South Semitic script that
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  Speaker 1: people in southern Syria and northern Jordan used to write
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  Speaker 1: all the various dialects of Old Arabic, which are closely
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  Speaker 1: related to Kurnic Arabic. In fact, many of the twenty
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  Speaker 1: eight Safaatic letters correspond to modern Arabic letters. Scholars think
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  Speaker 1: the script was used between the century BCE in the
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  Speaker 1: fourth century CE, give or take a few centuries, so
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  Speaker 1: this is during the late Roman period and earlier during
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  Speaker 1: the reign of the Nabataean Kingdom, an Arab kingdom that
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  Speaker 1: built the famous ruins of the city of Petra. Here
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  Speaker 1: are a few examples of Safiata conscriptions on screen. These
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  Speaker 1: inscriptions were discovered in what's now known as the Black Desert,
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  Speaker 1: a region of thousands of square kilometers of volcanic rock
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  Speaker 1: spanning southern Syria and northern Jordan, and although it looks
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  Speaker 1: like a desolate place, humans have lived in this region
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  Speaker 1: since the Neolithic period, and it was well traveled by
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  Speaker 1: traders and nomads during the Nabatian and Roman periods. Many
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  Speaker 1: of these people would stop along their journeys and carve
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  Speaker 1: Safaeta conscriptions on the rocks. One database of Sofiata conscriptions
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  Speaker 1: records over fifty thousand texts, so this supposedly desolate basalt
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  Speaker 1: desert is actually a huge wealth of archaeological data. Doctor
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  Speaker 1: Algelata and his team discovered the inscription in question during
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  Speaker 1: the twenty nineteen survey season. It was situated nearby a
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  Speaker 1: watering hole actually a rest station on a trade route.
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  Speaker 1: As you can see on screen, the text winds back
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  Speaker 1: and forth, probably because whoever inscribed it was trying to
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  Speaker 1: avoid other inscriptions on the same stone. So what does
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  Speaker 1: the inscription say?
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  Speaker 2: It contained a prayer to adity that had not yet
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  Speaker 2: appeared in the corpus, and the prayer itself was also unique.
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  Speaker 2: So this man named Babel, which could translate to the
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  Speaker 2: gift of God gift of ail, recorded being at this
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  Speaker 2: place and grieving for his uncle. And then he asks
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  Speaker 2: a deity that is spelled in sofiatic einsienia okay, so
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  Speaker 2: very close to chronic asa hein senya two ansorro min khafirika,
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  Speaker 2: so to help him against those who deny you.
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  Speaker 1: So to summarize, we have an invocation here inscribed by
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  Speaker 1: a man grieving for his recently deceased uncle. After the formula,
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  Speaker 1: he ends his invocation with a prayer based on the
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  Speaker 1: grammatical case and vocabulary of the prayer. The man seems
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  Speaker 1: to be calling upon a deity that al Jalad argues
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  Speaker 1: is compatible with the Koronic Aisa.
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  Speaker 2: Ainsena is the way you would would spell Asa and
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  Speaker 2: Sofiatic because the Sofiat script does not write internal long vowels,
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  Speaker 2: so when the long bowel occurs inside of a word,
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  Speaker 2: it's not represented graphically, but the final yeah is present,
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  Speaker 2: and that corresponds to the Arabic spelling of the name
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  Speaker 2: Asa and the Quran, which is aim yeah sena. Right.
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  Speaker 2: So this is a one to one.
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  Speaker 1: Match, a one to one match. So are we dealing
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  Speaker 1: with a prayer to Jesus Well, notice the rest of
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  Speaker 1: the prayer help him against those who deny you. Based
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  Speaker 1: on the vocabulary here, al Jalad argues that we're dealing
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  Speaker 1: with a Christian invocation. The phrase those who deny you
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  Speaker 1: in particular has a certain Christian ring to it, the
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  Speaker 1: denying of Christ being a major theme in the Gospels
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  Speaker 1: and a common motif in Christian polemics. In other words,
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  Speaker 1: a Christian may have carved this in script, and the
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  Speaker 1: divine name spelled einsinya is none other than Jesus Christ.
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  Speaker 1: This is significant because most Scholars of the past few
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  Speaker 1: decades have argued that the Koronic name Aisa was a
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  Speaker 1: much later development, the result of the Arabic name Yeshua
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  Speaker 1: being imperfectly transmitted into Arabic around the time of Muhammad
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  Speaker 1: during the sixth and seventh centuries. But if this text
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  Speaker 1: is indeed referencing Jesus, that would push back the timeline
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  Speaker 1: of this development by hundreds of years. But the question
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  Speaker 1: of its etymology remains. The origins of this name Einsenya.
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  Speaker 1: Why would this hypothetical Christian inscribing a prayer for his
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  Speaker 1: uncle in the middle of the Black desert spelled the
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  Speaker 1: name of Jesus like this instead of something that sounds
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  Speaker 1: more like Yeshua. There is just no obvious linguistic relationship
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  Speaker 1: between these two names, so what's the etymology.
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  Speaker 2: First thing to note is that the name Asa Einsenya
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  Speaker 2: is attested as a personal name in Sofia k in
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  Speaker 2: a pagan context as well, so it was a pre
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  Speaker 2: existing Arabian name. And what seems to be the case
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  Speaker 2: is that Arabic speakers equated a pre existing Arabian name
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  Speaker 2: with the name Yeshwa right through perhaps phono semantic.
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  Speaker 1: Matching Phono semantic matching. This is when people incorporate a
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  Speaker 1: foreign word into one's language by matching it with a
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  Speaker 1: pre existing word with a similar sound and or a
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  Speaker 1: significant meaning. Phono semantic matching happens in the Qoran. Take
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  Speaker 1: for example, John the Baptist. The English name John comes
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  Speaker 1: from the Greek Joannes, which itself derives from the Hebrew
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  Speaker 1: name Johanan. But in the Quran, John the Baptist is
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  Speaker 1: called Yahyeh, which is not related to the name Yohanan,
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  Speaker 1: but rather is a pre existing Arabic name that we
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  Speaker 1: find in Safiata conscriptions, and it was just adopted for
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  Speaker 1: John the Baptist. Al Jaalad argues that the same thing
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  Speaker 1: happened for the Quronic name of Jesus.
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  Speaker 2: So the name, I say, could mean purchaser or redeemer
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  Speaker 2: right this now pattern is reverse to one who does
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  Speaker 2: the action of herb right sort of partisan, so it
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  Speaker 2: would be the purchaser or redeemer, And perhaps that meaning
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  Speaker 2: motivated Arabic speaking Christians to equate the name with Jesus,
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  Speaker 2: because Jesus, unlike the pre Islamic pagan gods, was a
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  Speaker 2: redeeming savior. You have lots of inscriptions that invoked the
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  Speaker 2: gods for salvation, for escape, or deliverance. But the gods
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  Speaker 2: never the ancient gods never pay or give up anything
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  Speaker 2: to do this right. They simply grant these which they're
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  Speaker 2: simply meant to grant, these boons and wishes. But Jesus
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  Speaker 2: would have been distinguished from these other gods because of
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  Speaker 2: this redemptive aspect, and therefore it's possible that the name
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  Speaker 2: I say, which they would have understood to mean redeemer,
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  Speaker 2: was equated with Jesus because of that aspect of redemption.
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  Speaker 1: Thus, based on phono semantic matching, some Christian Arabic speakers
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  Speaker 1: may have adopted this name as the name for Jesus,
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  Speaker 1: not because it was directly related to Yashi in any
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  Speaker 1: linguistic sense, but rather because it was an existing name
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  Speaker 1: in their culture that had a significant meaning related to
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  Speaker 1: Jesus's divine role in their theology. Al Jalad concludes that
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  Speaker 1: if he's correct that this text mentions Jesus, then this
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  Speaker 1: is the earliest Arabic evidence of Christianity ever found, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: pre dating the fifth century. Christian authors like Saint Jerome
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  Speaker 1: do mention Arab nomads converting to Christianity in the fourth century,
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  Speaker 1: but these are second hand sources, so this unique text
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  Speaker 1: may be a rare witness to the transition from Arabian
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  Speaker 1: paganism to Christianity among the nomads of the fourth century.
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  Speaker 1: And Moreover, this evidence may explain the name of Jesus
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  Speaker 1: in the Quran, as it would have been known to
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  Speaker 1: Muhammad and his contemporaries on the Arabian Peninsula during the
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  Speaker 1: early formative years of Islam.