[soc.religion.christian] Surnames in the bible

dg@pallio.uucp (David Goodenough) (09/23/90)

I say:
> Also, if you read all up and down the Bible, nowhere do you find the
> equivalent of a surname.

And I am corrected:
> Judas Maccabee? Pontius Pilate? Judas Iscariot?

Are these surnames? - I had always taken to be like Simon Peter (or "Simon,
who is also called Peter"). I.e. people with two first names, like I am
David Peter (Goodenough).

If they _ARE_ then I will retract my statement above, since it is (obviously)
wrong. Again, comments would be most welcome.
-- 
	dg@pallio.UUCP - David Goodenough		+---+
						IHS	| +-+-+
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[Maccabee is a nickname, meaning "hammer", though apparently it was
applied to a group of brothers, so in some sense it was used as a
family name.  The Pontii constituted a "gens", somewhere between a
family and a clan.  So Pontius was in effect Pilate's family name.
About Iscariot there are only guesses.  One common guess is that
Iscariot means "from Kerioth".  In Jn. 6:71 and 13:26 he is said to be
some of Simon Iscariot.  I'd say both Maccabee and Iscariot were not
really family names in the modern American sense, but epithets which
could however characterize brothers or father and son.  I don't think
anyone has claimed that Christ was used as a family name.  If used as
a name at all (and the NT seems to be mixed here, using it sometimes
as a title and sometimes as a name) it really be an epithet.  If Jesus
had had children, I rather doubt that it would have been passed on.
--clh]