on 8 in Jesus

[Anthony Grant]

Since the French missionaries were literate in Greek, they would have
been familiar with the fact that Jesus in Greek is spelt EEsous, with an
/ou/ digraph, an maybe that's why the used 8 when writing Jesus' name.


For the record, spelings using 8 are found in 17th century Mohawk
liturgical materials in which the name of the Christian God is taken
from French 'Dieu', suitably palatallised, eg. Ki8.

And let's remember tat many languages in which French missionaries in N
America workd lacked a phonemic distinction between mid-back amd
upper-back oral vowels anyway. (Illinois, for instance.)

Anthony