The Source of the Gothic Month Name jiuleis and its Cognates

In the end of the nineteenth century, the difficulties in resolving the puzzle of the source of the Gothic month name jiuleis and its cognates led Tille to suggest searching for a solution outside the sphere of the Germanic languages. In this article I argue that the ultimate source of the Gothic word and its cognates is the Biblical term jubilee. I also argue that the word is a nomen sacrum (a sacred name) and, as such, an abbreviation.


Introduction
The difficulty in resolving the etymology of the word Giuli ('Yule') led Tille (1899, 7 ) to suggest searching for a solution in different places: But the strange fact that no satisfactory Germanic or even Aryan etymology can be given for the oldest names of Germanic three-score-day tides, Jiuleis (Gothic), Lida, Hlyda (Anglo Saxon), and perhaps Rheda, Hreda (Anglo-Saxon), and Hornung, Horo wunc (German), seems to point to the probability that these names, like the institu tions they denote, have their origin beyond the world of the Aryan family of languages and nations, and were borrowed from Egyptian and Syriac, or some other Oriental lan guage, together with the six three-score-day tides which formed the course of the year.
In this article I argue that the Gothic jiuleis is a nomen sacrum and, as such, an abbreviation.Its immediate etymon is the Greek Ιωβηλαιος and / or the Latin jobelei, both in the sense of the Biblical 'jubilee '.I propose that, in this connection, the word has adopted the sense of the 'Redeemer ' and as such became a synonymous to the word 'Christ '.

Survey of the Present Conjectures of jiuleis
In Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der Gotischen Sprache (1939, s. v. jiuleis), Feist wrote that "Etymologie nicht feststehend" and listed numerous attempts to clear the matter up.According to one conjecture, one possible source is the word jer year.From Proto Indo-European the suggestion is a word which means 'turn of year', or simply 'turn'.From Sanskrit the suggestion is a 'wheel', and from Greek 'circle ', 'game ' or 'amusement '.From Latin the suggestion was 'eye ', 'sight ' from the word oculus.Lehmann's Gothic Etymological Dictionary (1986), which is based on Feist 's book, listed some of the conjunctures and on the last ones that he mentioned he wrote that they were "even less credible " (s.v. jiuleis).
The etymological reconstruction usually quoted is *jéhwəla, following Bugge (1888, 135).Hoops (1918/ 19, s. v. Zeitmessung) wrote that " Daß der Name Giuli oder Jiuleis mit dem römischen Julius zusammenhänge, wie J. Grimm a. a. O. 75 f.und Weinhold, D. deutschen Monatsnamen, 4, annehmen, wird kein mit antiker Monatskunde Vertrauter glauben." 1 One common explanation is that word has originated from a heathen festival that lasted twelve days and predated Christianity.However, Bilfinger (1901) rejected the notion that the ' Jul ' celebration preceded Christianity in the Nordic countries.Comparing the dates and the content of the Christian celebration with what the Nordic peoples preserved as a pre-Christian tradition, he concluded that those celebrations were one and the same.He maintained that it was impossible for two different societies to develop the same type of a feast exactly on the same dates independently.If indeed there was a similar pagan holiday in the Nordic countries, he concluded, it must have originated from Christian tradition and not vice versa.I may add that the overriding fact is that the Gothic word jiuleis appears in an obviously Christian calendar at a much earlier date than any evidence of a concurrent pagan celebration.In any case, the evidence from the Nordic countries is based on oral tradition, which is not always reliable.

Nomina Sacra in the Gothic manuscripts
The term nomina sacra was coined by Traube in 1906 and since then has been extensively studied and discussed.Traube suggested that the practice of writing sacred names in contracted form began among Greek speaking Jews who sought to imitate the Hebrew consonant writing of the divine names, and that the practice was subsequently adopted by Christians (Hurtado 1998, 664).The list of abbreviated sacred names includes: Jesus, Christ, Son, God, Lord, Spirit, Savior, David, Cross, Mother, Father, 1 Grimm 1853; Weinhold 1869.Israel, Man, Jerusalem, and Heaven.The nomina sacra appear in Greek, Latin, Coptic, Slavonic, Armenian, and Gothic.
The Gothic text abounds with such abbreviations: guþ 'God' is abbrevia ted as gþ, iesus shortened to is, iesu becomes iu, xristus is xs or xaus, xristu is rendered as xu, frauja ' Lord' is written fa.The same practice is employed whenever those terms appear in declination modes: guþs become gþs, guþa is gþa, fraujan is rendered fan, fraujins is shortened to fins, iesuis reads iuis.The reconstructed full word of jiuleis might have been *jiubileis.
Below are two examples from the Codex Ambrosianus. 2 The reading follows Uppström's text (1864 -68).Figure 1 includes a text from Eph. 1, 17: " That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ …"  While the sacred names in the Codex Argenteus are marked with horizontal strokes over them, the abbreviations in the Ambrosian manuscripts are not.

The term Jubilee in Early Christian Writings
Hippolytus of Rome, who wrote in the early third century, discussed the term Jubilee in his deliberation concerning the Psalms:4 3. Let us inquire, further, why there are one hundred and fifty psalms.That the number fifty is sacred, is manifest from the days of the celebrated festival of Pentecost, which indicates release from labours, and (the possession of) joy… Of which times there was a shadow in the land of Israel in the year called among the Hebrews " Jobel" (Jubilee), which is the fiftieth year in number, and brings with it liberty for the slave, and release from debt, and the like… Thus, then, it was also meet that the hymns to God on account of the destruction of enemies, and in thanksgiving for the goodness of God, should contain not simply one set of fifty, but three such, for the name of Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.5 (Emphasis added) In the above text Hyppolytus associates Jubilee and the Trinity.In the original Greek text Jobel is render as Ιωβηλ and Jubilee as Ιωβηλαιος (Lampe 1961, s. v. Ιωβηλ and Ιωβηλαιος).
Hippolytus continued: The Source of the Gothic Month Name jiuleis and its Cognates 4. The number fifty, moreover, contains seven sevens, or a Sabbath of Sabbaths; … And the fiftieth psalm is a prayer for the remission of sins, and a confession.For as, according to the Gospel, the fiftieth obtained remission, confirming thereby that understanding of the jubilee, so he who offers up such petitions in full confession hopes to gain remission in no other number than the fiftieth.(Emphasis added) Eusebius, the fourth-century church historian, used the jubilees reckoning in the second part of his Chronicle, also known as the Chronological Canons.Eusebius' work was translated into Latin by Jerome and survived extant in different versions to the present.Eusebius used the birth of Abraham as year number one and from that time kept counting the years until the twentieth year of Constantine's reign which, following this chronology, was the year 2345.Empires appear in the table as parallel columns when they arise and flourish, and then gradually disappear as the years go on.Eventually the Roman Empire outlived them all and remained the sole occupier of that chronology.Table 1 displays the beginning of Eusebius' chronology (1866 -75, 265, 266).At year 51 of the Hebrew column, the second jubilee (Iobel ) commences.
Bede of Jarrow, the eighth-century scholar, while describing the Germanic calendar, mentioned one month Giuli as December and another Giuli as January: Primusque eorum mensis, quidem Latini Januarium vocant, dicitur Giuli… December Giuli, eodem Januarius nomine, vocatur.Incipiebant autem annum ab octavo Calendarum Januariarum die, ubi nunc natale Domini celebramus.(Beda Venerabilis: De Temporum Ratione, Caput XV: De mensibus Anglorum6 ) The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; … December, Giuli, the same name by which January is called.They began their year on the 8th kalends of January [25 December], when we celebrate the birth of the Lord.(Bede 2004, chapter 15: The English Months) I suggest that jiuleis is an abbreviation and that its etymon is either the Greek word Ιωβηλαιος, which ends in the sound /s/ and or the Latin jobe laei.The Biblical sense of the word jubilee is 'redemption' and in this context an interpretation of the word would be the 'Redeemer ', which, like the ' Lord ' (frauja), should be abbreviated.One possible model for the ab breviation of Ιωβηλαιος into jiuleis is the rendering of ουρανος ' heaven (s) '.In its abbreviated form, the word is rendered as ουνος where the medial ν is preserved.
The transformation of the Latin /o/ into the Germanic /u / is explained by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (s.v. Jubilee) in this manner: The Source of the Gothic Month Name jiuleis and its Cognates The Latin form jubilaeus instead of jobelaeus shows associations of the Old Testament word with the native Latin jubilum wild cry, shout, and jubilare to shout to, shout, halloo, huzza; and in Christian Latin there was established an association of sense between these words and the Hebrew 'jubilee', which has extended to the modern languages of Western Christendom.
Another possible explanation, more native to Gothic, is the confusion bet ween u and o.According to Marchand (1956, 147 ) "we find u written for o 4 times in our MSS ".One example is sunjus sometimes written as sunjos.Marchand suggested the possibility that "if this confusion of symbols has any significance, phonetically speaking , it can only mean that the two sound types have fallen together".I suggest that the Finnish cognate joulu, which is pronounced the way it is written -[joulu], is probably the ulti mate manifestation of this confusion.According to the OED (s.v. jubilee), in Italian the term 'jubilee ' is spelt giubbileo where the first three letter are identical to Bede's Latin Giuli.
One major problem concerning my suggestion is the appearance of the letter h in the Old English cognates of the Gothic word, such as geoh (h) ol, gehhel, or the Finnish juhla.The fact that Finnish has both forms joulu and juhla, suggests that the word was borrowed twice, in two different paths.On the face of it, the existence of h in some of the cognates may indicate that the original word included h and that that sound was eventually dis appeared in newer formations.This is the apparently the source of Bugge's reconstruction (* jéhwəla).
However, I suggest that the h is unetymological and was added as an ortho graphic means to give the word a divine connotation; h appears in the Biblical name of God ( YHWH ).Adding an h does not neces sarily change the pronunciation of the word.Since antiquity the letter h is known to carry various meanings.Here is one example (Gen.17,5, King James Version): Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.(Emphasis added) The earliest examples which include h the OED cites are from the begin ning of the tenth century, for example gehhol from Laws of AElfred, 901.
One example of adding the letter h is the word Jesus.In Gothic it is iesus, in Old English it was rendered as Healend ‚saviour ' and in Middle English as Iesu.However, in Tindale Bible (1526) it is spelt in two places as Ihesu s but elsewhere usually Iesus (OED, s. v. Jesus).In Wyclif Bible (1388) the OED cites a spelling Jhesus (s.v. ghost).
Examining various terms in the OED reveals that the addition of 'h ' is not that uncommon.In Old English 'church' appears as cirice, circe.The word 'ghost ' appears constantly as gaest in the Exeter Book and 49 times in the Hatton MS.The spelling with gh appears first in Caxton, who, according to the dictionary, was probably influenced by the Flemish gheest.The spelling with gh remained rare until the middle of the sixteenth century and was not completely established before about 1590.In Old English 'Christ ' was written as crist.The dictionary states that "this word and its derivatives and cognates were very rarely (and perh.only accidentally) spelt with ch-in ME., but this has been the regular fashion since 1500 ".
Another major problem is the gemination of h which usually means a loss of /x / with compensatory lengthening.However I offer another possible explanation.According to the OED (s.v. H ): After a vowel, h is regularly silent, and such a vowel usually long, such as oh, ah, bah, hurrah, the addition of h (so usual in modern German) is one of the expedients which we have for indicating a long vowel in foreign or dialect words.The silence of h in certain positions contributed to the currency of such spelling as the obsolete preheminence, proheme, abhominable.
I suggest that the duplication of h in some spelling served as an expedient to indicate that the h is not silent but rather should be pronounced.In Finnish the h in juhla is pronounced as /x /.
In the manuscript jiuleis (figure 4) is not marked with a stroke over it.7As mentioned above, the nomina sacra are not marked in the Ambrosian manuscripts.That, of course, does not prove that the word is an abbreviation, but the lack of the stroke over it does not rule out that it is such.

Conclusions
Solving the etymology puzzle of the Gothic jiuleis and its cognates has kept scholars busy for a long time.Allowing the possibility that the source of the Gothic word jiuleis and its cognate is neither Germanic nor Indo-The Source of the Gothic Month Name jiuleis and its Cognates The key for my proposal is the early Christian custom of using nomina sacra.Considering the list of such sacred names: Christ, Lord, Savior, David, Israel, Man, or Jerusalem, a term such as the 'Redeemer ' fits in well.