“…Yes, what’s the name by which He’s known, and by what names has He called His son?”
Proverbs 30:4
Introduction
All Christians are familiar with the Son of God, being central to our entire faith. Most Christians know him by the name of “Jesus”.
A great number of Christians in fact believe that this is a unique name in the Bible, which only the Son of God has. However, it will surprise such people to learn that the New Testament is not the only place this name appears, and nor is the name “Jesus” the original spelling nor pronunciation.
On the other hand, there are Christians who are well aware of this fact, but would claim that the modern term “Jesus” is a “pagan name” which has corrupted the Bible.
In this article, we will be looking closer at the name of God’s son in scripture and its major variants throughout history and language.
Examining the Name
The first time the Son’s name appears in the New Testament is in the Gospels, when Mary and Joseph were commanded by an angel to name him “Jesus”.
- “And she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins”. – Matthew 1:21
The Greek term for “Jesus” as seen in the manuscripts, is “Iēsous” (Ἰησοῦς).
However, when we look to the history of this name in all of scripture, we find it appears also in the Greek copies of the Old Testament:
- “After the death of Moses, the Lord (YHWH) spoke to Moses’ servant Iēsous (the son of Naweh) and said; ‘My servant Moses is now dead; so I want you and all of these people to get up and cross the Jordan [River] into the land that I’m giving to them'”. – Joshua 1:1-2
This Greek phrase Iēsous we see here, is used as a transliteration of “Joshua” in the Tanakh, yet in the New Testament it’s translated as “Jesus” in our English Bibles. Why is there this differentiation? The answer lies in both the history and evolution of translation, language and Christian tradition.
History of the Evolution of the Name
The Original Hebrew & Aramaic Names (4000-900 B.C.E)
The original Hebrew name used in both of these instances is “Yehoshua” (יְהוֹשׁוּעַ). Later this Hebrew name was shortened to Yeshua (ישוע), and was also commonly used in Aramaic. Later this was again further shortened to “Yeshu” (יֵשׁוּ) and was the pronunciation thought by some to be most commonly used by the 1st Century A.D. This name means “YHWH saves” or “Yah saves”.
“2424 Iēsoús – Jesus, the transliteration of the Hebrew term, 3091 /Lṓt (“Yehoshua”/Jehoshua, contracted to “Joshua”) which means “Yahweh saves” (or “Yahweh is salvation”)”. – HELPS Word-Studies
The Greek Transliteration (500s-100s B.C.E)
When many Hebrews started to begin to speak Greek between the 500s-100s B.C.E, they began to make Greek copies of the Old Testament.
The Hebrew and Aramaic language were both very different in vocalisation and in written form to Greek. These languages even didn’t contain the same amount of words or letters, and so not all things could be perfectly translated across, and therefore a transliteration was required to best get across the ‘meaning’ of the names, rather than attempting to imitate a direct pronunciation in the Greek language.
From that time, “Yehoshua” or “Yeshua” became “Iēsous” (Ἰησοῦς) in the Greek Old Testament scrolls, and many other names also were transliterated into other forms.
Though the Jews still spoke Hebrew and Aramaic by the 1st Century in Yeshua’s time, Greek was one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, and with the conversion of so many Gentiles in the Greek speaking world, the name of the Son of God became more widely recognised in its Greek form, rather than its native Hebrew and Aramaic form. Even more so with so many letters being written to Gentiles regarding the Gospel from people like Peter, Luke and Paul.
But where does the name “Jesus” come into all this? The answer lies in yet another evolution of language.
The Roman Latin Transliteration (200s-300s A.D)
Eventually, the Christian message also spread throughout the Roman world, their language being Latin. By the 3rd Century A.D, many Latin copies of the Gospels and letters of the Apostles began to be made. With this came again, the transliteration of the name of the Son. This time to “Iesus”.
We now begin to see the roots of the later more recognisable form Christians use today.
With Christianity made legal by Constantine in the 4th Century, and the official religion of Rome, via Roman Catholicism, the name “Iesus” became the most commonly used form of the name for many centuries after.
During this time, both “Joshua” and “Jesus” in the Old and New Testaments were usually spelled the same way, as they had always been. There was no differentiation between them.
However, some Latin writers would translate directly from Hebrew rather than from Greek, and this romanised form of the old Hebrew name resulted in “Yəhōšūa”, the romanisation of “יְהוֹשׁוּעַ”, and this was the early beginnings of the differentiation between the names “Joshua” and “Jesus”, as Catholic traditionalism preferred to maintain the Son’s name as “Iesus”, even if this was inconsistent. However, this was not a popular practice at the time, and typically both names were commonly referred to as “Iesus”
The Anglicised Transliterations (1100s A.D)
By the Middle Ages, language began to shift again, and Germanic languages, including Old English began to become more widely used, whilst older languages such as Greek and Latin went out of use, and were mainly preserved for the highly educated scholars and priests of the Catholic Church.
During this time, the phrase “Jesus” began to surface and gain popular use. In this time of course, the name was pronounced as “Yesus”, as Js used to be pronounced with a “Y” sound in Old English, this of course potentially pointing back to the acknowledgement that the original Hebrew name also was pronounced with a Y sound.
By the 15th-16th Century, the first great vowel shift came to the English language, Js began to be pronounced with the sound we know today, and the phrase “Jesus” as we know it today, was born.
During this time, also came the transliterations of “Jeshua” and “Joshua”, as English translators began to directly translate Hebrew names and writings into English language. However, due to traditionalism, Christians sought to retain a distinction between the “Jesus” of the New Testament, and “Joshua” of the Old Testament, and from that time on the two names became to be seen as separate in the common tongue.
Overview of the Evolution of the Son’s Name
יְהוֹשׁוּעַ (Yehoshua) (4000s-2000s B.C.E – Hebrew)
ישוע (Yeshua) (900s B.C.E – Hebrew & Aramaic)
יֵשׁוּ (Yeshu) (500s-300s B.CE – Hebrew & Aramaic)
Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous) (500s-300s B.C.E – Greek)
Iesus (200s-300s A.D – Latin, from Greek)
Yəhōšūa (300s A.D – Latin, from Hebrew)
Jesus (1100s A.D – English, from Latin)
Jeshua/Joshua (1100s A.D – English, from Hebrew)
Yahshua or Yeshua?
You may encounter some individual Christians or groups, predominantly amongst ‘Hebrew Roots’ believers and others, claiming that the “proper” name of the Son is “YAHshua”.
People who use “Yahshua”
In my own experience, this practice can be confidently identified with non-Jewish people who tend to have a zealous passion for the Torah, Law Keeping, or perhaps some kind of ethinic Israelite identification. For the same reason, such individuals have a passion for the Divine Name of God, YHWH.
As a result, many want to place emphasis on the “Yah” sound or meaning of Yeshua’s name, or the meaning of his name, and often are dogmatic about prouncing it as “Yahshua”, even stating that not to do so is to disrespect both the Son’s and the Father’s names.
“Yahshua” isn’t accurate Hebrew
However, as passionate as some people can be for such a form, from a grammatic perspective, “YAH-shua” has no justification in the natural Hebrew whatsoever, and typically stems from a very poor and fundamentalist level of Hebrew language and grammar.
Though the Son’s name does mean “Yah saves”, the manner in which it is spelled out does not from a linguistic level result in “Yah-shua”, but rather such a form is actually impossible according to the rules of Hebrew, and neither does it appear in any ancient manuscripts.
The reason for “Yeshua” or Yehoshua” with a “Ye” sound and spelling over “Yah”, is because the full Divine Name often becomes “contracted” when merged with other words in order to form a readable word in the native language, hence several names in the Bible which contain God’s name are formed into “Yeho”, “Yehu” or “Yahu” variants, depending on where the name is placed in the word.
For example, “Matthew” in Hebrew is “Mattiyahu“, meaning “Gift of YHWH”, whilst “Yehoshaphat” means “YHWH has judged”, and “Halleluyah” means “Praise Yah”.
But writing “YAHshua” in either English or Hebrew in such a manner, would in fact just be gibberish to native Hebrew speakers, both ancient and modern, because their language just doesn’t work that way, rather there are very specific rules that are followed which detirmine what contraction of the Divine Name can be used to form a sensical name or word in the Hebrew tongue.
Inconsistent Framework
This entire practice of the insistence of “YAHshua” overall, is also a very inconsistent one, since people only ever focus on God’s name, and the Son’s name. But never do they obsess with saying “YAH” forms of the other Biblical names which contain a component of the Divine Name.
Nobody is out there writing or saying “MattiYAH”, or “YAHphat”, and neither do they ever apply the “YAHshua” varient to Joshua of the Old Testament despite it being the exact same name, which speaks also toward the ignorance and contradictory nature concerning this fundamentalist religiosity on the matter.
The Origins of “Yahshua”
The origins of this form of the name are somewhat mysterious in regard to how it entered certain Christian circles. But a degree of extreme religious fundamentalism combined with layman ‘attempts’ at trying to understand Hebrew and other biblical languages, may be the reason at play here.
When someone has “just enough” knowledge to sound smart, but not enough to actually be teaching something with reliable accuracy, it tends to be a good recipie for certain groups or individuals to latch onto, as if they’ve become privy to some kind of “supressed secret” which they then must tell the world.
However, it is of very interesting note that a very, very similar form; “Yahshuah”, originated from the 1600s by practioners of the occult, who believed by saying the name in such a way, could evoke some kind of magical or divine power. This practice was known as “Pentagrammatisation“, and is very similar to the occultic and mystical practices of Kabbalah, which also believes the pronunciation of God’s name has power:
“The pentagrammaton (Greek: πενταγράμματον) or Yahshuah (Hebrew: יהשוה) is an allegorical form of the Hebrew name of Jesus, constructed from the original form of Jesus to be Yeshua, a Hebrew Bible form of Joshua. Originally found in the works of Athanasius Kircher, Johann Baptist Grossschedel (1619) and other late Renaissance esoteric sources.
The first ones to use the name of Jesus something like “Yahshuah” were Renaissance occultists. In the second half of the 16th century, when knowledge of Biblical Hebrew first began to spread among a significant number of Christians, certain esoterically minded or occultistic circles came up with the idea of deriving the Hebrew name of Jesus by adding the Hebrew letter shin ש into the middle of the Tetragrammaton divine name yod-he-waw-he יהוה to produce the form yod-he-shin-waw-he יהשוה“. – Yahshuah, Wikipedia
As such, the obsession with having to “say the name correctly”, specifically with a “Yah” sound, and thus having to “spell it out” in a certain way (even if grammatically inaccurate), may have originated from a combination of ignorance regarding Hebrew grammar, and esoteric occultic practices.
Does the name “Jesus” have Pagan Origins?
There is a minority group, though a loud minority, who have a presence on the internet and likely in other religious circles, that “Jesus” is a pagan name and shouldn’t be used.
Often a conspiracy is purported to have been promoted by Constantine and the Catholic Church, that they wanted to secretly make Christians worship the God Zeus. This is founded from the mere fact that “Jesus” sounds like “Zeus”, and so they claim the name means “Hail Zeus”.
However, as we’ve seen the history of how the name developed from well before the time of Yeshua, that theory has no place in reality at all, and is just a drastic misunderstanding of how language works.
Furthermore, Constantine didn’t worship Zeus, but he did have tendencies toward worship of Sol Invictus and Apollo, the Roman sun gods. And indeed, we can see influences of this Roman religion in Catholic art throughout the centuries (halos, sun symbols, etc).
But as for the idea that “Jesus” means “Hail Zeus”, it has no merit in either language or history.
What name do I personally prefer?
Though I see nothing wrong with the use of “Jesus”, I personally have a soft spot for being closer to our Hebrew and Jewish roots (you can call me a little bit of a “traditionalist” in that respect, but not a fundamentalist), and so I personally use the term “Yeshua”.
However, often when I speak with others, be they Christians or otherwise, I often use “Jesus” if it’s the more commonly known or accepted name in the language or community. As it is with the Divine Name, we should not elevate the language the name was spoken in above the meaning and identification of the name itself.
On this website, people will notice I use the name Yeshua in my writing. This is due to both preference, as well as my aim to better reach more people without the potential of stumbling them from listening to my words. For, though the group of people who unrelentingly insist “Jesus” is a pagan name referring to Zeus are a minority, I wish no person to be prevented from hearing the Gospel of our Lord, and if that means using the Hebrew term for his name so that all the more people are more willing to listen, then so be it.
Another reason would be to also reach out to our ethnically Jewish brethren, the people God first chose and still seeks to save (Romans 11).
Many Jews today do not even realise that the Messiah Christians follow was indeed a Law abiding Jewish man, but many modern Jews are only familiar with the very “Romanised” figure of “Jesus”, who to them represents a figure or icon of a pagan institution that persecuted their people for many years since the 4th Century and onward. So also for their sakes, I prop up the “authentic Jewishness” of our Lord and Saviour.
But what is ultimately most important, beyond spellings and pronunciations, is knowing “who” we are talking about, and what the name “means”.
Proselyte of Yah 