What's in a Name?

King James I, so it seems, wanted his name to be associated with the most revered English translation of the Bible. However, the translators, we suppose, all of them members in good standing of the Church of England (did it exist at that time?) and faithful subjects of His Majesty, went a little bit further, deleted the name of one of the New Testament writers and stamped their beloved and pious King's name on Jacob's letter. "Jacob, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" was the man. The Letter of James, as we know it, is in fact the Letter of Jacob. The name is there, in the Greek New Testament, for anyone to see. There seems to be no doubt about it. It is Iakoubos, another spelling for Iakoub, but Jacob, never James.

To make things look coherent, the translators also changed other occurrences of Iakoubos in other places of the NT. Examples are Matthew 4:21; 10:3; 15:5. Mark 10:35; 15:40. Luke 6:14; 20:10. However, in Matthew 1:2 we have Ikoub and it is maintained and translated as Jacob. The same happens in the Letter to the Romans 9:13 and to the Hebrews 11:9.

Sure, there is a tiny difference between Iakoubos and Iakoub, but both are Jacob. There is no reasonable explanation to translate one as Jacob and the other as James except, as we think, for the fact that the translators wanted to please His Highness James I. James sounds nice as an English name but awkward as a Jewish name.

The Portuguese translations, to give an example, followed the lead and called our man Tiago, or Thiago. Not so bad, we must admit. After all, Tiago or Thiago comes, some experts say, from the Spanish Santo Iago, hence Santiago, hence Tiago. Many Spanish people have Santo Iago as their surnames. I personally knew one, a catholic priest friend of mine, called Josemaria Asturbes de Alarcon y Santo Iago, a nice sounding name, by the way. No wonder, therefore, that Spanish translations have Santiago as the epistle of Jacob, and the Portuguese ones, Tiago. But even in this case, Jacó or Jacob would be the right thing to do..

It is interesting that no modern translations in Portuguese or English has ever attempted to restore Jacob's signature onto his document. Not even a radically different (but very good) one like The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures did it. Jacob was simply erased and in his place James was enthroned. After all, James was a King, and Jacob was a mere slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who cares about him?


This curious royal misappropriation of an author's copyrights tells us some important things, and please note that this an extrapolation of my main point. First, we must not trust translations as if they were inspired word of God. As any primary student of the Bible knows, the theories of inspiration do not extend to translations or copies but only to the original, the very first document. Only the original was inspired and nothing else. In many cases, as we also know, the very first original was not written but spoken, and this poses some thorny questions to start with.

In the second place, we must bear in mind that there are many fishy things going on out there in matters regarding translations and we had better watch out. The last two examples I stumbled upon were very interesting. The first example is The Living Bible and its rendering of 2 Timothy 3:16-17. It is a falsification of the original from beginning to end with the obvious intention of justifying and giving credence to a certain theory of inspiration prevalent among some Protestant quarters.

The second example is The New Living Translation and its rendering of James, I mean, Jacob 1:12-16. If this passage is a translation of Iakoubos in the original, then my name is Supilulilmas. I have a strong impression that the experts working on the NLT did a lot of tampering with the original and came up with that horrible thing. It worth seeing verse16 where the NLT says: "So don't be misled my dear brothers and sisters." This is in fact a timely warning to the readers of the NLT. Before I forget, James, I mean, Jacob, forgot to include the "dear sisters" in his stern warning and only mentioned his "dear brothers".The NLT translators apologise for his forgetfulness and set the recod straight. A heartfelt and humble "thank you" note from the dear sisters.

The above might be just a story, perhaps invented by some disgruntled subjects of His Majesty, on how the English name James sneaked into a letter by a Jewish guy called Jacob. If the story proves someday to be false and to have neither reason nor rhyme or neither rhyme nor reason, I will offer public recantation of my heretical opinions. And if any reader (I'm afraid they won't be many) have any information that can clarify such a momentous issue, I will be happy to hear it.

Before I finish, I found out just yesterday that in the German translations the name is Jacobus and in the Vulgate it is Iakobi. In French is Jacques, but that doesn't say much because in France when it is not Jacques it is Jean-Jacques.

My most sincere regards.
Frank Simmons