This morning I signed onto Facebook. A friend of mine, sober 32 years and struggling with the spirituality (or lack thereof) of some of the people he encounters, wrote a scathing open letter to people who call themselves Christian but act less then stellar in their day-to-day dealings. Understood. I get the anger and I understand how frustrating it is dealing with those wounded souls who have been fed a lot of hogwash about what it takes to run the race. I understand his rant and, frankly, agree with it though I must plead guilty to not always being the best Christian I can be on a daily basis.
It was the response of one of his friends that just made my mouth drop open in total disbelief.
"Jesus", he wrote, "is Hebrew for Hail Zeus".
What the WHAT?
Employing my best apologetics voice, I asked him to provide a cite source for his claim. He went off again about Jesus looking like Cesar Borgia in paintings, Columbus discovering America and how 'they' will never tell me the truth about what His Name means. Again, acting with calmness and the fortitude learned from years of listening to Jimmy Akin on the radio, I asked him for a cite source. I also added that Jesus is a pretty common name and that it was difficult for me to believe that the ancient Israelites would use a name that referenced a foreign (and false) god. He let lose with more weird Internet conspiracy fueled nonsense, suggesting I 'look it up'. I declined, requested a cite source from him so I could show it to some of MY people. I even suggested he could personally message me and I would give him some sources he could reference.
I have not heard from him. I doubt I will.
I couldn't resist, however, and I did google the phrase "jesus' name is hail zeus'.
Oh. My. GAWD.
The number of wacko websites out there are absolutely mind boggling. None of them seem to hold even a passing resemblance to historical scholarship of any kind. In fact the sheer number, complete with YouTube videos and poor sentence structure, give credence to my personal belief that there are a ton of people out there who should not be allowed to vote. Or drive a car.
I did decide to pose the question to the Apologists at Catholic Answers. I promise to post their response, if I get a response. I don't know if they will be able to answer me through the laughter.
It is difficult today to sort through this kind of garbage because of the height of the mound. However, I am glad I challenged this guy. It won't do any good. He will continue to believe his heresy just like Rosie O'Donnell believes George Bush blew up the Twin Towers and Donald Trump believes he is a business man. My job?
Keep trudging the road of happy destiny, one day at a time....and try not to laugh out loud when someone asks me if I have heard that there is a race of super beings living beneath Mt Shasta.
5 comments:
Courtesy of Father Charles Grodin:
Jesus' name in Hebrew is Yeshua. The name in Hebrew loosely means God/Lord is salvation. It was one of the most popular names at the time of Jesus. Even if we were to ignore basic Hebrew root words present in the name, its highly doubtful that devout Jews would have given their children names of pagan gods.
Yeshua was translated into Greek as Iēsous and then later in Latin as Jesus.
The Greek translation of Yeshua comes to us from the authors of the New Testament itself. Are we really to think that devout Jews who became followers of Jesus of Nazareth suddenly wanted to link him to Zeus?
The burden of an argument is always on the one making the claim. I can find no linguistic scholar who supports any link between the names Jesus and Zeus.
Leslie,
“Hail Zeus!” Wow, sort of like the redneck dictionary (Jeff Foxworthy). And dang, imagine that! Christians that are not PERFECT. Might as well quit now and trash the whole concept. Only I can’t. I won’t. A little bit of Christ really screws up my ignorance.
Robert
Leslie,
After thinking about this for a couple of days it occurred to me that this may be a Joseph Campbell artifact. “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” his book describing the monomyth, goes into the Jesus/Zues similarities as regards ancient mythology. People never read the material anymore, but they watched the PBS series “The Power of Myth” in the 80’s or listen to a college anthropology professor prattle on about Campbell’s work being rooted in some kind of reality that only “enlightened” students could grasp. Or at least those students who wanted a passing grade. Anyway, it gets second and third handed down and about until it is “fact” and ends up on your facebook page. Personally, Campbell’s work is interesting to me because the monomyth theory seems to point to an underlying structure in the human brain/mind. He is so anti-Catholic that his work is almost unreadable. In that regard he needs a tranq dart as much as Dawkins.
Robert
I REMEMBER that guy...didn't he get really popular around the same time as that book and movies about ancient space travellers...Gods of the Sky or something? I forget now...
Yeah, his work seems to be periodically resurrected according to what ever new age phenomena or book, be it "Chariots of the Gods?", "The Celestine Prophesy", the comet Hale-Bopp, or the Mayan calendar.
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