Goodness, I’m not even sure where to start! First of all, this is supposed to be the trinity, but it is not. The “trinity” is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (although, for the sake of the argument, let’s reverse the order of the first two so that the Father can be at the apex). What this fellow has attempted to write instead is, “Jesus, Father, Holy Spirit”. Okay, that’s fine… I suppose.
Jesus is not spelt ישוא, but ישוע. The word ישוא looks like a stative verb formed from the adjective שוא, which is defined by Jastrow as “vanity, inanity, falsehood”. This word might mean, “He is insane”, which I think is hilarious, but would probably not be seen as so funny by the individual who chose to wear it for the rest of his life. Unfortunately for that individual, that’s not where the problems with his tattoo end – although he may be relieved to know that the worst of it is over. Or the best part of it, if you share my view on these things.
The second problem, and the most obvious, is that you can’t just pick and choose which letters to vocalise and which to leave blank or you end up with a tattoo that, like this one, looks ridiculous. He has marked both shins (ש) and all three waws (ו), although the third one looks a bit crowded as he’s actually duplicated the dot for the second shin, rather than just let one dot suffice for both, as certainly would have looked neater. He has also, for no apparant reason, written the qamats underneath the aleph (א) of the word for “father” but not under the quph (ק) for “holy”. And why has he not put in the vowels under the yodh (י) or the mistaken aleph (א) in “Jesus”? Or under the khet (ח) in “spirit”, or the definite article (ה) in “holy”? It’s anybody’s guess.
Man, I wish for his sake that it ended there, but his tattoo is just terrible. In trying to write “[the] Holy Spirit” he has translated the English back directly into Hebrew and created a Christianised Hebrew term. Perhaps that doesn’t count as an error from his perspective, but “holy spirit” in Hebrew (as in, the spirit of prophecy) is רוח הקודש, with the waw (ו) before the daled (ד). He, on the other hand, has written רוח הקדוש, with the daled before the waw. In truth, what he wrote means “[the] Holy Spirit” whereas my alternative would literally mean “[the] Spirit of Holiness”. I suppose that it all hinges on whether he is using Hebrew because it looks cool (my suspicion) or whether he is actually trying to recreate what the followers of Jesus himself would have actually used.
I feel sorry for him. Getting a tattoo done in a foreign language without first checking with somebody who reads that language is really stupid. Oh well.
