The Arabic name of Jesus عيسى >ysy has perplexed scholars since the be- ginning of source-critical studies of the Qur’an. It cannot be derived directly from any Northwest Semitic source, neither the Hebrew/yēšûa, nor the Syriac حمد in either its West/yešū/ or East /išō/ vocalizations, nor can it be explained by appealing to Greek Ἰησοῦς or its Ethiopic form ১৯৭৯. /iyasus/. The name had seemed to appear for the first time in the Qur’an, where its identification as Jesus is unambiguous. Early Christian Arabic, however, makes use of the expected Arabic reflex of ישוע, namely, yasu.
- Discovery
- In terms of chronology, scholars have very cautiously sug- gested a range between the first century BCE to the fourth century CE. These dates are not based on any archaeological evidence; rather, they are defined by the contents of a minority of Safaitic inscriptions. A small num- ber of texts are dated using the formula snt (“year”) followed by the de- scription of a prominent event. While many are dated to local happenings now lost to history, those that are recognizable tend to anchor in events that transpired in the Nabataean and Roman periods. Such texts therefore became the basis for the conventional first century BCE starting date of the Safaitic corpus.
However, the recent archaeological excavations in the Jebel Qurma region led by P. Akkermans have made a good case for pushing back the terminus post quem to at least the third century BCE.
Inscription:
Reading/Interpretation:
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