Tribes, peoples and their leaders

[ualarauans]

Hi Michael

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Michael Erwin <merwin at ...> wrote:
>
> Koine Greek and Gothic political institutions aren't the same, so
> their political vocabulary shouldn't line up. Wulfila faced several
> problems, including 1:1 translation. He could line up the Gothic
> words with the Greek originals according to scale, according to
> nature, or some combination. I doubt Wulfila would describe Jesus 
as
> a raider-king... which suggests nih thiudans nih frauja generally
> mean war-leaders.

Certainly frauja does not. Trying to reconstruct its pre-Christian 
semantics I'd rather think it was an item in the sacral vocabulary 
of the fertility cult which we discuss. It's not only ON Yngvi-Freyr 
where this element was kept petrified while having long disappeared 
from the current speech. Broader parallels may be drawn between 
distant cultures that used the epithet "Lord" or the like towards 
their particular divine personification of the natural fertility. 
West-Semitic Adonis (Phoenician `adon "Lord"), Baal (Hebrew 
ba'al "master"), Egyptian Osiris, invoked as nebi "my Lord", are 
probably just a few examples. As the Germanic "Wanen-mythology" 
including the Freyr-cult is sometimes regarded as pre-Indo-European 
heritage, is it possible to assume some genetic links to the Middle-
East mythological data?

What about thiudans, so it could have referred specifically to 
wartime leader long before Wulfila, indeed before the Goths 
migrating south. In the time of the Bible translation thiudans was 
meaning just "king". But even if some of the old semantics was still 
connoted, it wouldn't have been a serious obstacle for Wulfila to 
use it. Observations were made that, if we try to read the Gothic 
Bible and other early Germanic versions ignoring everything we know 
of Christianity but instead bearing in mind the pagan associations 
of the words used to describe Jesus and his disciples, we'll get an 
idea of a military commander surrounded by a troop of his bodyguards 
rather than a teacher of love and mercy.

- ith Seimon Paitrus habands hairu, uslauk ina jah sloh this 
auhumistins gudjins skalk jah afmaimait imma auso taihswo (Joh 18:10)

at which words all the bearded and fell-clad auditory shaking their 
weapons shouted "Yeah!!!"

Ualarauans





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