Three Jewish witnesses: She will crush your head, in Gen 3:15

Started by Xavier, August 01, 2018, 12:14:11 AM

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Daniel

Quote from: Vetus Ordo on December 10, 2019, 04:36:52 PM
Quote from: Xavier on December 10, 2019, 12:40:31 PMGuadalupe literally means, She (feminine!) Who Crushes the Serpent!

Guadalupe is the name of a river in Spain, a tributary of the Guadiana. Its name comes from the Arabic ???? ???????, Wâdî al-Lubb, meaning either "hidden river" or "river of the wolf" in the local Andalusian Arabic dialect.

This river lent its name to the nearby town and to the renowned Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the second most important pilgrimage site in Spain after Santiago. It was in this river that a statue of the Blessed Virgin was found by a shepherd in the late 13th century, giving rise to the devotion of Our Lady of Guadalupe that would soon become the patroness of Spain and Queen of all Spanish-speaking peoples. As the crown of Castile pressed forward into the Americas, Guadalupe also lent its name to the Guadeloupe island in the Caribbean, as well as to many other places in Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Costa Rica, etc.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Spain is a medieval black Madonna, unlike that of Mexico which is mestiza. This devotion was surely imported to the New World by the colonizers.

This is all correct, but it might be only half the story. Nobody's denying the Arabic/Spanish etymology for the name of the original apparition in Spain, but the Arabic/Spanish etymology doesn't necessarily exclude the Nahuatl etymology/pseudoetymology for the name of the other apparition in Mexico. Many believe there's a dual or convergent etymology going on here. In Arabic/Spanish it means 'wolf river' or 'hidden river', but there are various hypothetical homophonous names in Nahuatl which each mean something else (perhaps the name given by the apparition was Coatlaxopeuh 'one who crushes the serpent', from coatla 'the serpent' + xopeuh 'to crush'; though there are other hypotheses as well).

I'll point out that this sort of etymological convergence isn't unheard of. Some other examples which come to mind are:
- 'Zaphnath-Paaneah' was originally from ancient Egyptian (it might mean 'God speaks and he lives' though there's some debate)... but in Hebrew it means something else ('revealer of secrets')... and in Coptic means something else ('the saviour of the world'... the Vulgate uses this Coptic derivation)
- 'Moses' was (probably) originally from ancient Egyptian (related to the word 'water' and/or 'born'), but in Hebrew means something else (related to the word 'to draw'; the Bible itself endorses this Hebrew derivation)... and, apparently, in Greek means something else ('to hide')
- 'Mary' might have originally been from ancient Egyptian (there's a somewhat similar Egyptian given name, Meret, which means 'beloved')... yet in Hebrew means something else ('bitter')... and in Aramaic supposedly means something else ('lady')... and in Latin means something else ('seas')