Dositheus

Dositheus is the Latinized form of the Greek Dositheos, joining dosis, gift, and theos, god — a name that literally announces itself as a gift of God, close kin to the Hebrew Mattathias and the Latin Deodatus. It appears throughout Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian records: a Samaritan teacher, a second-century grammarian, several bishops of minor sees. Four syllables, doh-SIH-thee-us, more at home in a lectionary than in a kindergarten. The name carries the scholarly hush of late antiquity, parchment and lamp oil. It is an offering of a name, plain in its theology and quietly ornate in its Greek.