View Message

Couldn't it be that Silas was a short form of the Latin Silvanus in first century Greek, and that it was used by Jews of the time as a Greek equivalent of Saul? There is a man mentioned in Acts and Romans in the New Testament called Jason. Jason was obviously a Greek name, but I remember reading somewhere that it was used by Jews during the Roman empire as an equivalent to Joshua.

---

There are plenty of examples of contact between two cultures speaking different languages where certain names in one language are accepted as the "equivalent" of names in the other language even though there is no etymological connection. Cornelius, for example, was formerly used in Ireland as the "equivalent" of Conchobhar.

---

Anyway, things do get complicated and hard to interpret when different languages are in frequent contact with each other. :)