Why Is Ιακώβ and Ιάκωβον trans. Jacob & James respective

[NuGrkStu]

Why in Matt 4:21 αλλους δύο αδελφούς, Ιάκωβον (translated James) and in John 4:5 ὸ έδωκεν Ιακὼβ (translated Jacob)?

[jeidsath]

John 4:5 refers to nominative Ἰακώβ, but it would be the same in other tenses (your dictionary will tell you that it's indeclinable), because that is the standard way Hebrew names are treated by the Septuagint translators. In fact the verse refers to a character from the Old Testament.

In Matt 4:21, Ἰάκωβον is the accusative of Ἰάκωβος. This is a declinable, Hellenized version of the Hebrew name.

It's possible that Matthew didn't have a mental picture of Jesus' contemporaries all speaking Aramaic with each other.

[NuGrkStu]

Hello jeidsath -

Thanks for the understanding of the tenses but what I was actually getting at is why translate one 'Jacob' and the other 'James?'

[jeidsath]

The part about tenses was incidental. What you should take away is that Ιακώβ (nominative tense) and Ιάκωβος (nominative tense) are two different names in Greek. One is Hellenized, the other not.

Because they were different names in Greek, the Vulgate translated them into two different names in Latin (Iacob and Iacobus). In Late Latin Iacobus was Iacomus, which entered the English tongue as James.

[NuGrkStu]

Perfect. Thank You.

[mwh]

jeidsath meant not “tense” but “case.” Only verbs have tenses.

Two stages. (1) In the NT the OT Jacob was distinguished from other Jacobs by keeping his name as Ιακωβ (the transliterated Hebrew form), while contemporary Jacobs were naturalized in their Greek environment with their name declined (Ιακωβ-ος, -ον, etc., 2nd declension), as tends to happen with originally non-Greek names. They’re really the same name, of course.
(2) English translators rendered the one as Jacob but the other as James because by a quite complicated series of linguistic developments the name Ιακωβ(ος) had ended up as James in English. That’s why the King James Version is not the King Jacob Version.