Page 7 - Christianity among the Arabs

attempts at explaining ‘ysy, from confusion on the part of
Muhammed to far-fetched sound changes as the word
passed from a hypothetical form of Aramaic into Arabic. The

presence of ‘sy in Safaitic disqualifies all these explanations.
In fact, within Safaitic texts, Tsay appears frequently as a
regular personal name as well, though in inscriptions that

were clearly written by pagan authors, as in the following
text from the Syrian Harra, just north of our area:

/ qdm bn ‘sy w h

rdw ’ws-h

By Qadam son of

Tsay; O Rodaw
(an ancient

Arabian god)

grant him a

boon.

So how did this pre-lslamic Arabian name become the name
of Jesus in Arabic? Perhaps a clue lies in the way the
nomads were initially converted to Christianity. If we return to

Jerome’s account, St. Hilarion does not seem to have
provided any theological instruction to the Saracens who
accepted Christianity. Rather, conversion was often simply a

matter of grafting the new onto the old.(3) The nomads would

have learned the basic elements of Christian monotheism
and returned to their business in the desert, leaving a lot of

room for religious syncretism.

While the pagan gods are frequently invoked for

deliverance, Jesus would have been distinguished by the
redemptive aspect of his salvation. This salient theological
difference could have motivated the phonosemantic
matching (a process of loaning a word by equating it with a

similar sounding and meaning word in the adopting
language) of the name Yeshua with a pre-existing Arabic

name Tsay, which likely meant “ransomer” or “redeemer.”
Indeed, the root 'sy means “to purchase” or “to acquire” in
several languages of ancient Arabia. A similar name is found
in modern Arabic: Fadi (“ransomer”), derived from the root

fdy, “to ransom.”