ZYGONS!

ZYGONS!

What does #biblestudy #historicallinguistics and maybe some #doctorwho aliens have in common?
No I'm not trying to create a false linkage as an excuse for tags. There is a link.
I will admit to trying to make this post a little more lighter than usual?

Last week I looked at the Take up my yoke verse in Matthew.

It occurs to me some of you raised with tractors or no knowledge of farming may have no idea what a yoke is? Yes you can look up details on Wikipedia but before you do ...

Basically a yoke is device for joining one or two or more animals to a plough or carriage. The animal can and has been cattle donkeys horses mules even elephants since the Indian Army used them for hauling large artillery!

Now the rise of protestantism and missionary activities by various religions lead to a need for dictionaries and word lists for translation from Aramaic Hebrew Greek and Latin into other languages  and since yoke is a word that appears several times in the bible ...enough times so that its not common but distinctive...

Scholars first noted that Greek Zugon and Latin Jugum had a g in the middle and seemed similar to European words like Lithunian jungas and German Joch  and then there's Old English geoc and Old Church Slavonic igo.

Then European scholars got access to Sanskrit and Persian texts and lo and behold Sanskrit had yuga and Farsi had yug.

This and other studies lead to to the sciences of philology and historical linguistics. It also lead to YOKE being a standard common textbook example even high schoolers might be aware of.

So how does this tie in with bible study and ZYGONS!

Yoke as a noun or verb is used used to describe a forced burden being imposed or lifted. The verse in matthew talks about lightening a load and some of you may recall the phrase yoke of slavery?

Zygons are oppressive conquerors.

Now I don't know if this is what happened but I'm wondering if some script writer who'd heard the word ZYGON at school or university and heard the word YOKE during a sunday sermon or bible study as a child or teenager and some subconsciousness processing merged the two?

So the next time the Zygons appear on Doctor Who consider things Hellenic or Biblical and that a study and knowledge of historical linguistics and Greek can add in understanding biblical verses or get the fans in your congregation paying more attention during sermons if you want to use this idea?

Possibly something a more more serious next week!

I'm still enduring the final symptoms of that virus I mentioned previously  as a  lingering cough.