rakovsky wrote: ↑Tue Mar 13, 2018 4:11 pm
Oscan was still spoken in central Italy in 100 AD about the time of writing, and Josephus was narrating Rome's events at that point, so a Roman name would be chosen even if the character were fictional and the audience were Greek. Decius and Decimus aren't Greek, but nor is Mundus. Deci shows up as a root word meaning Tenth in numerous languages like Sicilian IIRC, and deca is Greek, so it looks discernible. I would not be surprised if as you asked some Greek readers could discern the etymology of Decius and others could not.
Well, if you
ask people what something means, you have kind of tipped them off to the fact that it means
something that may not have sprung to mind on its own.
I think that your concern is that my idea of "tenth" as an alluded meaning in Josephus' Decius is too cryptic for the average reader....
Yes. To expect readers of Greek to pick up on the Oscan origins of a Latin name to get "tenth," and then to skip right past the usual meanings of the cognomen to get "world" (instead of "elegant" or "decoration") seems like madness to me. It helps a bit if all that was expected was to compare Decius to
decimus in a punning sort of way; but, even then, as I have said, Decius was a real name and probably would have raised no more flags than "Brenda" or "Phil" do in English.
And what message would Josephus be conveying with "tenth world" or whatever? What is the payoff?
...but I find Josephus to be intentionally cryptic here. For example, when on my own in reading Antiquities looking for cryptic allusions to Jesus, I first read the story of the 4 Jewish swindlers in Book 18, chapter 3, I considered if it could refer to Christianity. But I ruled that out, not seeing anything clearly related even as a metaphor - there were no crucifixions, fishermen, Galileans, etc. in the story. Its only after reading the scholars' comments that I came to see it as a reference to Paul collecting money for the Jerusalem church and its three leaders.
If Josephus is being intentionally cryptic here, does that mean, on your view, that he himself thought of "tenth world" when he made up the name Decius Mundus, but had no intention of his readers picking up on that meaning?