Who Was Bar Jesus (Acts 13,6-12)? 79 ‘son of the Name’. The Syriac Peshitta, for example, reads bar π¨m˝ (in some Greek manuscripts, transliterated, barsouma) and some other Greek manuscripts read barihsou'm. Professor S. Brock (Oxford) says that Barπ¨m˝ is not a normal Syriac name, and that -π¨m˝ implies a Palestinian Aramaic pronunciation (43). In any case, these variants indicate that the man is called ‘son of the Name’. It is not difficult to see how ‘son of Jesus’ might be altered to ‘son of the Name’. After all, in Acts, Jesus is the Name given for salvation (4,12); it is the name of the heavenly being who speaks to Paul near Damascus (9,5); and it the name into which people are baptised (2,38) and upon whom believers call (2,14). So there is a close relation between Jesus and the Name, so close that it is not unexpected that some might out of devotion to Jesus, in fact call him The Name. As Barrett notes, ‘in rabbinic use µv (name) may stand for God; a Syriac translator who could not bring himself to say bar yesu might make the corresponding substitution’ (44). Haenchen claims, “Now anybody with the faintest knowledge of Aramaic knew that Bar-Jesus meant ‘son of Jesus’, and Luke carefully refrains from alerting other readers also to the fact that this rascal bore the sacred name of Jesus as part of his own” (45). I suggest that Luke is doing precisely the opposite. He wants to show that not only is Bar Jesus a false prophet, but that his very name illustrates his falseness. He is not a son of Jesus. Luke draws attention to the name factor by repeating, in v 8, the noun o[noma that he had already used in v 6. The Syriac translations appear to have picked up on this repetition by repeating the name Barπ¨m˝, used in v 6, in v 8. In addition, by translating the name, Luke is drawing further attention to it. The point for now is that there is a conceptual link between Jesus and The Name, a link made by Luke himself in Acts (4,12). So if one is a son of Jesus, one is also a son of the Name. But, Luke wants to show, the etymology of this man’s name is to be found not in Jesus the Name but elsewhere. To explain this other etymology, Luke constructs word-play links between Bar Jesus and Elymas. The latter appears not to be a Greek name; however, it might be a contracted form of a longer name (46). Indeed, according to Schmiedel, G. Dalman thought that it is a contracted form of ∆Elumai'o" and that the name has something to do (43) In personal email communication, 14.10.02. (44) BARRETT, Acts, I, 613. (45) HAENCHEN, Acts, 402. (46) See F. BLASS – A. DEBRUNNER – R. FUNK, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago – London 1961) §125.