{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/009/0090266.htm","path":"chr/ecf/009/0090266.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/009/0090266.htm","text":"27. Significance of the Names of John and of His Parents.\nThe force that is in names may be applied p. 342 in many matters, and it may be worth our while to ask at this point what is the significance of the names John and Zacharias. The relatives wish, as the giving of a name is a thing not to be lightly disposed of, to call the child Zacharias, and are surprised that Elisabeth should want him to be called John. Zacharias then writes, \u201cHis name is John,\u201d and is at once freed from his troublesome silence. On examining the names, then, we find \u201cJoannes\u201d to be \u201cJoa\u201d without the \u201cnes.\u201d The New Testament gives Hebrew names a Greek form and treats them as Greek words; Jacob is changed into Jacobus, Symeon into Simon, and Joannes is the same as Joa. Zacharias is said to be memory, and Elisabeth \u201coath of my God,\u201d or \u201cstrength of my God.\u201d John then came into the world from grace of God (=Joa=Joannes), and his parents were Memory (about God) and the Oath of our God, about the fathers. Thus was he born to make ready for the Lord a people fit for Him, at the end of the Covenant now grown old, which is the end of the Sabbatic period. Hence it is not possible that the rest after the Sabbath should have come into existence from the seventh of our God; on the contrary, it is our Saviour who, after the pattern of His own rest, caused us to be made in the likeness of His death, and hence also of His resurrection. 4759\nOrigen appears to be pointing to the fact that the Christian rest which is connected in its origin with the resurrection of Christ is not held as the Jewish Sabbath rest on the seventh but on the first day of the week. John marking the end of the old period is the son of Elisabeth the oath, or seventh, of God, and is thus connected with the seventh day; but not so Jesus.","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol IX: Epistle to Gregory and Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John.: Chapter XXVII","type":"page"}