Jerusalem versus Jerosolym in the Bible

The Catholic blog Canterbury Tales has an interesting post about the geographic implications of the spelling of "Jerusalem" and "Jerosolym" in the Greek New Testament and the Latin Vulgate translations of the Bible.

The cases of Jerusalem and Jerosolym can be confusing to some.  For instance, Saint Paul mentioned meeting Saint Peter in "Jerosolym" (Gal 1:17) but refers to "that Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother" (Gal 4:26).

After reading more cases of these spellings it becomes clear that "Jerosolym" solely refers to the capital of Israel while "Jerusalem" denotes heaven such as with St. John's books.


Saint John uses only Jerosolym in his Gospel (13 times), and he uses only Jerusalem in the Apocalypse (3 times). In his Apocalypse, Jerusalem always refers to the Holy City, which is Heaven.

The reasoning for this spelling difference is based off a play on words.


The y spelling (Jerosolym) derives from the Greek Hierosolym, which includes the Greek root for sacred cultic words. Hiereus is priest. Hieron is temple. The Greek writers made a Greek play-on-words to denote Jerusalem as a Hierosolym (a “temple” city). 

Near East Versus Middle East

When one thinks of the "Middle East" the most common issues and places that come to mind probably are Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian violence, and terrorists running wild. Those who study Middle East affairs are thought of as experts on issues like Hezbollah, Islamic militancy, and inter-religious relations. However, some of these experts, like Bernard Lewis, will make statements saying they study Near East affairs. To make matters more confusing Lewis published a book entitled "The Middle East" and the terms Middle East and Near East are tossed around and mixed like a salad.

So is there a difference between Middle East and Near East? The answer is "nes" or "yo" or "kind of" depending on the year of usage.

The term "Middle East" was officially coined by Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1902 though use of the words has been found from writings from 1900 by British General Thomas Gordon and the term probably existed earlier. The Middle East was used to describe Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) to British India (western limit being where Pakistan is). The Near East was the Ottoman realms in Europe (modern Albania, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus with Asia Minor, Syria, Israel, and Jordan).

The various easts (Near, Middle, Far) were made from a European point-of-view (being The West) to divide the various foreign, culturally odd realms from Europe itself. This type of thinking is what led the Greeks to differentiate Europe from the rest of Eurasia.

The Balkan Wars and World War I changed the dynamic of Orientalism (thinking about the easts). Eastern Europe and Ataturk's Turkey were no longer viewed as "foreign" but instead were thought of becoming European. The rump remnants of the Near East were grouped in with the rest of the Middle East. Today those those two terms have been mixed together with no real difference in the use of the term.

Mexico versus Mexico versus Mexico

A Venn Diagram

How it looks geographically

Mexico the country, Mexico the state, and Mexico City. When you hear "Mexico" elsewhere in the world most of the time people mean the country. When you hear "Mexico" within the country of Mexico then people probably are referring to the city. The city is surronded by the state but is in its own federal district

When I checked into the hotel in Mexico City I was asked, "Is this your first time in Mexico?" I responded with a "yes" because of my time spent in the Yucatan Peninsula exploring the abandoned Mayan city of Tulum. But this was my first time in Mexico City. However, the hotel desk clerk did not mean Mexico the country but rather Mexico City, also referred to as DF (pronounced 'day f-A') meaning federal district. Her response of "Oh, then you really don't need a map of downtown" confirmed what she meant.

One must know that there are really three things that can be called México. There is the country which official name is the United Mexican States (Estados Unidos Mexicanos), there is the state of Mexico (Estado de México, often refered to as Endomex), and then there is Mexico City (Ciudad de México) which is the land mass of the Federal District (Districto Federal).

Within the United Mexican States, if a person is not talking about international events such as soccer, then they are probably referring to the city. Historically this is because the country obtained the name from the city because before independence the region was called New Spain. Now the the city is without a doubt Mexico's primate city which dominates the commanding heights of the country (there can be an agreement that the north with its economic ties to the United States and the south being undeveloped are culturally free of Mexico City but there can be no doubt Mexico cannot function without Mexico City). Having officially about 18% of Mexico's population (but more likely over 20% because of the amount of Mexicans living legally and illegally in the United States) makes the city the demographic mammoth of the country.

When people inside Mexico want to refer to the country they use the terms La República (the republic) or La Patria (the fatherland).

It can be said that having Mexico City be such a primate city is unhealthy for the country. Mexico City eats up many of the resources that leaves much of the rest of the country impoverished. A friend stated that the relationship between the city and the country is New York City's to New York state only to a much greater and obscene extreme. This trend was heightened by Presidents Benito Juarez and Porfirio Díaz and the Institutional Revolutionary Party by their centralizing the politics and culture of the country on and in Mexico City.


For previous versus posts read England versus Great Britain versus the United Kingdom, Netherlands versus the Netherlands, nation versus state versus nation-state, and Hawaii versus Hawai'i