If in a story (assumed to be symbolical for a lot of other reasons) it is said obsessively that "Pelet releases someone", then one can't fail to remember that "Pelet" means "deliverance"
therefore (i.e.: not coincidentially) he is portrayed while he releases/delivers someone, as according to his name. [/quote]
Giuseppe, I think you’re focusing so much on tiny details you’ve picked out that they become exaggerated in your mind and you lose track of the whole picture.
Firstly, in the story we’re looking at, it’s
not ‘said obsessively that “Pelet releases someone”’. It is said
once that
Pilatos releases someone. Not only that, but, in context, this is a) a minor part of the story and b) presented strongly as something for which Pilatos doesn’t even take responsibility. The actual story is about the execution of Jesus, presented with Pilate as unwilling executioner pressured into it by the Jews. The only reason the release of Barabbas is even presented within the story is as a way of showing that the Jews (with Pilate as their unwilling tool) could have had Jesus freed but deliberately chose not to.
Yet your claims would require an author to be trying to present this story as making this - Pilate’s minor action of freeing Barabbas, performed only under pressure – into his
main trait. Your claims would require this to be such a key action in the author’s mind that he bases Pilate’s name on it. You’re claiming that, on the basis of this one secondary and unwanted action, Pilate is described not even as a ‘releaser’, but as a ‘deliverer’, which is a word which typically carries connotations of active rescue and help rather than just passively releasing someone in response to pressure. (While it’s hard to be certain of the extent to which that works in the Hebrew, the implication from the bits we’ve looked at so far certainly seem to be there.) And yet you’re also claiming that, despite finding this so important, this author also chooses the name on the basis of wordplay in another language that he knows most of the intended readership won’t even know.
And you’re insisting that this chain of events is not only plausible, but the only possible explanation, because you don’t believe that ‘three of the four consonants in this person’s name happened to coincide with a term of some tangential relevance in another language’ is feasible at all as a coincidence.
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 5:05 am
As parallel, consider the etymology of Judas’s nickname ’Iskariṓt(h): one can derive it from the Hebrew/Aramaic verb šāqar/šeqar (“to lie, deceive, slander”, sc. “to violate (a treaty, etc.)”, “to betray” [the latter meaning is attested in Samaritan Aramaic]
therefore (i.e.: not coincidentially) he is portrayed while he betrayes/deceives someone, as according to his name.
But you and Secret Alias are claiming that Judas Iskarioth can't be rendered as "Judash the one who deceives/betrayes"
because there is none prefix "h" that allows a reading of "šāqar" in the active sense and different from the meaning of "the one who is deceived/betrayed", with the comical result that legitimacy is given to the interpretation of Iskarioth as the victim (
sic) and not the author of the betrayal.
Well, I wasn't claiming this because I’d never heard that interpretation previously; I’d heard theories that ‘Iscariot’ meant either ‘man from Kerioth’ or ‘knife-man’. But based on what you say, yes, I agree that the name doesn't seem to be referring to 'betrayer'. However, with this one at least you’re starting with a higher probability, in that betraying Jesus
is Judas’s main function within the story, whereas ‘delivering’ Barabbas, if it can even be called that, is an incidental side-effect of what Pilate does in the story.
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 5:05 am
Hence the my point is that
the context dictates the choice of the active sense over the passive sense, or viceversa.
The immediate context decides that the "deliverance" read in Pilate must be interpreted in the active sense as "the one who releases",
contra the opposed reading of "deliverance" in Pilate as "the one who is released by God".
No, because the ‘immediate context’ here is that Pilate’s main role of the story is the
complete opposite of ‘deliverer’. His role in the story is a) to order Jesus’s
execution and b) to object to the way those nasty Jews are making him do it.
Do you seriously believe that an author looked at that story and saw Barabbas’s release as the main thing for which Pilate should be named? And that that’s more likely than the idea that three consonants in Pilate’s name just coincidentally happened to correspond to something vaguely similar in another language?
