Page:Commentaries of Ishodad of Merv, volume 1.djvu/21

Rh the floruit of our commentator, and there is, therefore, no possibility of identifying the Chinese missionary with the bishop from Merv.

The name itself is, I suppose, an analogical formation of a type to which Nestorian Christianity was much addicted, and which prevails even at the present day amongst Persian mystics and orthodox Arabs. The name Abd-isho for example, is formed on the model of the Assyrian Abed-nebo or the Hebrew Obadiah or the Arabic Abdullah. In all these cases one type persists or is imitated. In the case before us, we have one out of a group, like Ḥanan-ishoʿ, Sabr-ishoʿ, and the only difficulty lies in determining whether the suffix dad is a verb-formation, of which we have not, in Syriac, the exact equivalent, or whether it is an abbreviation from some older form of a Divine name. If it is the latter, an assumption which I believe to be untenable, we should not be surprised at the existence of the relic of a pagan name: the early Christian Church had its Bar-nebo, known to us as Bar-nabas, with an artificial translation as 'Son of Consolation,' and the early Syrian Church preserved the form Abed-nebo, more nearly than the Book of Daniel did with its Abed-nego. If the name Ishoʿdad contains a Pagan element, it should be an abbreviation of the Thunder-god Hadad, who is equated with the Babylonian Thundergod in the form Hadad-Rimmon.

It is, however, unlikely that this can be the real meaning of the name, when a simple verb-formation, with Biblical parallels, will suffice. The form dad is known to us, in the Hebrew Eldad, which must mean 'God has loved'; we have also very nearly the equivalent of Ishoʿdad in the Hebrew name Jedidiah, given to Solomon, a name commonly interpreted as 'Beloved of God,' but more probably meant to express that love in the fact of birth; and as the root appears in Syriac in a noun-formation, with the sense of 'friend,' we may properly interpret it as meaning 'Jesus has loved' or 'Jesus is [our] friend' or 'Jesus has befriended,' i.e. in the bestowal of a son. Payne Smith, s.v. suggests a Persian origin for the word in question, and says, cf. voc. Pers. donum. Under the other form of the name Dad-jesu, he quotes Bar Bahlul that Dad-jesu means 'the gift of Jesus,', and Bar Ali for the equivalent Apparently he had not thought of a Persian parallel, when cataloguing Dad-jesu, for he there suggests that  is a misreading for , and  (dōr) a translation of the Greek. On this hypothesis Jesu-dad would have to be corrected on the model of Theodore. It is,