🔼The name Jupiter: Summary
- Meaning
- (Oh) Father Zeus!
- Etymology
- From (1) the name Zeus, and (2) the noun πατηρ (pater), father.
🔼The name Jupiter in the Bible
The name Jupiter doesn't really exist in the original Greek New Testament, but the King James Version, the American Standard Version and the Darby Translation of the Bible all followed the Latin Vulgate, which used Jupiter in place of the original Ζευσ, or Zeus (Acts 14:12-13 and 19:35).
Jupiter was the Roman equivalent of Zeus and counted as the king of the gods and god of sky and thunder. He is sometimes referred to as the father god but that's only in relation to other gods. Zeus and Jupiter were never recognized as personal father of humans.
Jupiter was often depicted with a zigzag lightning bolt, which was also the emblem of Julius Caesar's formidable legion XII Fulminata, with which he destroyed the Celtic world and subsequently the Roman republic.
This legion was finally defeated at the battle of Beth-horon, which was the formal beginning of the Jewish Revolt that ultimately led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple of YHWH (and nobody in the original audience of the gospel of Luke would have missed the pun of Luke 10:18). Jupiter's eagle was Rome's standard until Christianity's cross supplanted it.
🔼Etymology of the name Jupiter
The name Jupiter appears to be a Latinized form of the vocative Greek phrase Ζευ πατερ (Zeu pater), meaning (Oh) Father Zeus!. The first part of our name thus comes from Ζευσ or Zeus:
Ζευς Διος
The name Ζευς (Zeus) and its genitive form Dios (Διος) correspond to an ancient root that expressed brightness of sky and clarity of vision. That same root gave us the words dio and deus, meaning god, divine, meaning godly, and diva, meaning deified (feminine). Some say this root even yielded the noun "day" and the verb "to do."
The second part of our name Jupiter comes from the familiar word πατηρ (pater), meaning father:
πατηρ
The familiar noun πατηρ (pater) means father, or rather: central authority figure, as it first and foremost applies to social leaders. It comes with a substantial list of compound derivations.
In names, the element πατηρ (pater) tends to be contracted into πας (pas), which is identical to the (unrelated) word meaning whole or all.
🔼Jupiter meaning
As stated above: the name Jupiter is a vocative appellative meaning (Oh) Father Zeus!.