Acts and Translations help?

[alyssa]

Can anyone provide inisight on this?

Acts 1:13- somtimes (in diff. translations) Judas is “son of James” and sometimes “brother of James”

Can it be determined from the origional which it is, or has anyone ever figured this out and can help me, or is this just an unknown?

Thanks!

 

[Pug]

It actually says Judas of James. This means it could be Judas, son of James, or it could be Judas, brother of James. It is the Judas that is related to James and not the Judas Iscariot person.

In fact, the “of” isn’t there as a word. There is a kind of construction in Greek that you can use to say stuff like “the book of James” which means James’s book. So, the problem is that there is no word there to tell us if they mean son or brother, so the translators are guessing.

However, son is reasonable because in that same list they mention James of Alphaeus, but there is a James that is the son of an Alphaeus in the bible, so it is reasonable to assume they mean the one who is a son of him here. I guess they then go with the son thing for Judas of James, too, seeing as how it is in the same verse.

I’m not a translator, however. Just my opinion.