(Gina Meeks)
It is high time the English-speaking church recovers the long-lost
letter of Jacob. For 500 years, we have wrongly called this the letter
of James, despite the fact that the Greek does not say James, but rather
Jacob (as in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), and despite the fact that in
every other language, the letter of Jacob is rightly identified as such.
By
calling this the letter of James, and by referring to the apostle James
rather than the apostle Jacob (not to mention Jacob the brother of
Jesus, also wrongly called James, who led the congregation in
Jerusalem), we have produced theological confusion and cut off an
important Jewish dimension to the roots of the Christian faith.
Consider
for a moment that in German or Dutch Bibles, this is the letter of
Jakobus, while in French it is Jacques and in Polish, Jakub. Check this
out in 50 different languages, and in every one, you will find a
variation of Jacob. Even the Spanish name “Santiago” comes from San
Diego (Saint Diego, which is also a variant of Jacob). Only our English
Bibles say James, completely without justification. (The name was
corrupted as it passed from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English,
ultimately morphing into James.)
Consider also that when English
translators of the Bible saw the name of the patriarch Jacob in verses
like Matthew 1:2, they did not translate it to James. Otherwise, we
would have had absolutely bizarre statements like, “Abraham was the
father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of James, and James the father of
Judah and his brothers,” or Jesus would have made reference to “the God
of Abraham, Isaac and James” (see Matt. 22:32).
Yet, when it comes
to the apostle Jacob or the letter of Jacob, virtually all English
translations—with the primary exception of Messianic Jewish
versions—refer to this Jacob as James. Why? Does it sound too Jewish?
If
so, what do you do with the names of the twelve apostles, as listed in
Matthew 10:2-4, which originally sounded like this: “First, Shim‘on,
called Kefa, and Andrew [Andrai] his brother, Ya‘akov Ben-Zavdai and
Yochanan his brother, Philip [Philippos] and Bar-Talmai, T’oma and
Mattityahu the tax-collector, Ya‘akov Bar-Halfai and Taddai, Shim‘on the
Zealot, and Y’hudah from K’riot, who betrayed him” (Complete Jewish
Bible).
To be perfectly clear, I have no problem rendering the Hebrew name Ya‘akov (Iakobus
in Greek) with the English name Jacob. In fact, that is the correct
English translation. But I have a real problem calling him James. That
is not who he was, and that is not how he should be known.
