Yahshua, Yehoshua, Y'shua, Yeshua, Iesous, Iesus Or Jesus The Sacred
Name or True Name There has been much controversy about what the True Name or Sacred Name of the Messiah is, with all sorts of speculation and conjecture being taught as fact. Below are some statements that I have heard over the years:
Many in the Hebrew roots and sacred name circles have continually and fervently expressed the sentiment outlined in the above statements. Some of the popular sacred name bibles have even reinforced the Jesus/zeus fallacy by supplying supposed scholarship to demonstrate this in the explanatory notes section of their translations. It has been stated by some that the Name Jesus is a false Hellenic (Greek) name that was conspiratorially created by the early church, in an attempt to give glory to zeus and the Greek goddess Iaso while intentionally censoring the "true name" of Messiah which they say is YAHshua. Some have said, that since the Name of Jesus shares the same letter sigma (V) or "s" from the end of the Greek god zeus' name, that at the very least, it constitutes a pagan connection with the Name of Jesus. This would be the same as saying that all Greek masculine nouns, that have the added sigma as a case ending are somehow related to zeus. If this were factual, which it is not, it would make for an incredibly long list of supposedly pagan names. One excellent example would be John 1:1 where Theos (God) and logos (word), which are both masculine nouns end with a final sigma. We should also note that when the name Iesous is rendered in the genitive form of Iesou there is no final sigma, so in this case according to the theory, would the pagan connection then be eliminated? The same elimination of the final sigma also happens with the name zeus in Acts 14:12. Amazingly, I have seen it claimed by some that Jesus is the name that actually represents the person of the anti-messiah, and is an indicator of the far greater evils being promoted by traditional Christianity. Iesou (Ihsou) and zeu (zeu) are not related, and have two completely different spellings. The first letter from zeus (zeta) is vocalized with a 'dz' sound, and the dipthongs eu (zeu) and ou (Iesou) have a totally different vocalization. The final sigma (V) or "s" added on at the end of Iesous occurs in the standard transliteration of the proper masculine noun from Hebrew to Greek. Greek nouns and names almost always have case endings, so the sigma (V) or "s" is added at the end of the word to distinguish that the name is the masculine form, and also makes it declinable. There is absolutely no relation between these words, and the most basic scholarship can easily prove this. If we take the same logic used in the the Jesus/zeus fallacy, and apply it to a Hebraic context, then people could never name their children Nathan or Jonathan, because those names have the same ending as satan. Of course we all know that those are scriptural Hebrew names (Nathan and Yehownathan). Because of the many errant allegations that have been used to create fear, and other so called scholarship, many have been falsely led to believe that "YAHshua" is the original Hebrew name for the Messiah. In order for YAHshua to be an actual name in Hebrew, it would need to be spelled in Hebrew as Yod-Hey-Shin-Vav-Ayin. Unfortunately for it's supporters, this name can not be found anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures. What you will find in the Hebrew Scriptures is Yehoshua (#3091) which is written in the Hebrew as Yod-Hey-Vav-Shin-Ayin or Yod-Hey-Vav-Shin-Vav-Ayin, or the shortened form Yeshua (#3442-#3443) which is written in the Hebrew as Yod-Shin-Vav-Ayin. The main obstacles in trying to render His name as YAHshua instead of Yeshua, is created by the fact that there is no Hebrew letter "hey" in Yeshua, and also by the Masoretic vowel pointings or nikud. The tsere that is under the Yod in "Yeshua" in the Hebrew scriptures demonstrates the vocalization of the first syllable as "yay," and not "YAH." This is also true of the Greek vowel eta, which is pronounced "Yay", and is found in the transliterated Greek rendering of Yeshua which is Iesous. Many use Y'shua thinking that it is a shortened version of YAHshua, when in fact, Yshua would represent a truncated version of the long form Yehoshua with the theophoric element "Yeho" removed. This shortening occurred with many names that possessed the theophoric element of the Name of the Almighty during the second temple period. Another example would be
Yehowseph shortened to Yoseph. Biblical names such as
Yehonatan (Jonathan), Yehoyaqim (Jehoiakim), Yehoshafat (Jehoshaphat),
Yehoram (Jehoram), and Yehoshua (Joshua), all have the shva
under the yod signifying the "Yeh" vocalization, but the
later shortened version of Yehoshua (Yeshua) does not. Let's now take a look at how the name
Iesous, which is rendered in the English Bibles as Jesus (#2424)
came about from the Hebrew Yeshua (#3442), the short form of
Yehoshua (#3091):
The final sigma (V) or "s" on the end
is part of the standard transliteration from other languages to
Greek. Greek nouns and names almost always have case endings, so
the sigma (V) or "s" is added at the end of the word to
distinguish that the name is the masculine form, and also makes
it declinable. I find the prohibition against saying the name of Jesus a little absurd, considering that the people who have imposed this prohibition, are calling the Messiah by a name that is not found anywhere in the Hebrew scriptures. Most of their reasoning, is that Jesus is an English rendering from a Greek name, and since all things Greek are pagan, this name should not be spoken, and that no self respecting Jew would have ever uttered a Greek name, and surely would not have written any scripture in Greek. Many of these same people
have used selected passages from the Septuagint (LXX) in
their new translations, while referring to Jesus (Iesous)
and Christ (Christos) as pagan names. These very same names
and titles were chosen by the Jewish translators of the
Greek Septuagint when transliterating the Names Yehoshua/Yeshua
to Iesous over two hundred times, and the title Mashiyach
from the Hebrew to their chosen Greek equivalent of Christos
all thirty nine times that it appears in the text. These are
the same Greek names that are rendered in the English
versions of the New Testament as Jesus and Christ.
Many have argued that if
He came in His Fathers Name, then His Father's Name should
somehow be represented in His name. They assert that if the
Fathers Name is "Yahweh", then Yah must be the poetic
shortened form, or a family name. Because of this, it is
their belief that the Son must have a form of YAH
incorporated somewhere in His Name. When we review this
claim, we immediately find a few glaring problems with this
reasoning, because King David and others also came in the
Name of "YHVH" in the Hebrew scriptures, but they did not
have YAH (Yod Hey) as a part their names.
Barjona = "son of Jonah"
We also see this same type
of identification in Matthew 23:35 where we read "Zechariah
the son of Berechiah"
Other names in the Hebrew scriptures (OT):
Using the many examples
cited above in both the Aramaic and Hebrew languages as a
guideline, we can put forth the assertion that possibly to
the unbelievers, the Messiah was known as "Yeshua bar Yoseph"
(his adopted father), or to those who understood who He
truly was as "Yeshua bar Elah" in the Aramaic, or "Yeshua
ben Elohiym" in Hebrew. These would both end up in the
English as "Yeshua (Jesus) Son of God". In the Greek we find
"Iesous Huios Theou" which is rendered in English as "Jesus
Son of God." It should once again be noted that there is no
YAHshua to be found anywhere in the Hebrew scriptures. For the sake of argument, let's take a look a this controversy from a different perspective and consider the following: The Greek language in the Koine or "common" dialect, was established as the common tongue by Alexander during his short lived reign beginning around 332 BCE. He instituted this in hopes of uniting all of the areas he presided over with one language. Alexander died unexpectedly in 323 BCE, and after his death, disputes between his generals led to the division of his empire, which was now became under the control of three of his generals. During the period between 319 to 302 BCE, the control of Jerusalem changed on seven occasions. The time period from 332 to 63 BCE is termed by historians and archaeologists as the Hellenistic period. When the Romans conquered these areas in 63 BCE, they retained the Greek language and much of the Greek culture and customs established by Alexander which continued to be spread throughout the growing Roman Empire. At this time Israel was indirectly under Roman rule, and later became under direct rule in 4 BCE. It has been stated by historians that around the third century BCE, Ptolomy commissioned that the Torah, or the five books of Moses be translated into the Greek language known as the Pentateuch (pentateuchos) for his library at Alexandria, which we refer to today as the Septuagint (LXX). The New Testament scriptures speaks of the Hellenist Jews in Acts 6:1 which is dated around 63 CE. The second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE which was the beginning of the dispersal of the Jews, but history tells us that the Koine Greek language was spoken in the declining Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire as late as 529 CE, which demonstrates that the Jews had exposure to Koine Greek for many generations before and after the Messiah. While the multi lingual disciples may have personally called The Messiah by His Hebrew or Aramaic name Yeshua, I doubt if they had any reservation in referring to Him as "Iesous" when talking about Him and His teachings to the Greeks, Hellenic Jews, Romans or others living in the Roman Empire who spoke Greek, which was the recognized language of commerce and literature. The name Iesous was already firmly established in the Septuagint (LXX) at that time as the Greek rendering (equivalent) of His name. Out of the twelve apostles, eleven of them were from Galilee, also known as Galilee of the Gentiles, (Matt 4:15) and the Messiah was also a Galilean (Matt 21:11). We are told in the Gospels that the Messiah spoke with a Greek woman and cast out a demon from her daughter (Mark 7:26), and that He healed the son of a Roman centurion (Matthew 8:8). How did they address Him would be my first question, since history tells us that Greek was the official language of the Roman Empire, and had been established as such centuries before the Messiah was on Earth. In the scriptures we are told of the Greeks who traveled to Jerusalem for the feasts, who wanted to speak to Messiah, and had asked the apostles if it were possible (John 12:20). We should consider what would be
the language that Andrew and Phillip addressed them in, and
while we are at it, maybe we should check the language of
origin for the names Andrew and Phillip. We are also told in
the scriptures that Matthew was a tax collector, so he would
have to be versed in the language of commerce which was
Koine Greek, and we know that Luke (Loukas) was a Greek
physician. We can safely assume that Paul addressed the
Greek Stoics about the "unknown god" in Greek (Acts 17:23)
as that was the language of the educated philosophers, and
in scripture we are also told that he addressed the Roman
centurion in Greek (Acts 21:37). This should also raise the
question as to what language the Messiah conversed with
Pilate in.
The different languages of the
inscriptions demonstrate a cross section of the different areas
where the Jews of the diaspora resided, and the multiple
languages that were spoken. This is also clearly demonstrated in
Acts 2:5-11. Archaeologists have also found Greek inscriptions
on early synagogues in Israel, and it should be noted that there
were scrolls and fragments written in Greek that were found at
Qumran. You can find these listed in the Dead Sea Scrolls
inventory. Since Koine Greek is more
tonal in its approach to accents, Greek speakers were not
practiced in vocal techniques such as pharyngeal
fricatives/velar fricatives/glottal stops/guttural sounds
and other phonemes/allophones that are utilized in semitic
languages, but are not common to the Greek language. Loanwords often do cross over into various other languages
that might be spoken in a region where multiple languages
are commonly spoken, and in the case of proper nouns, they
can and sometimes do import phonemes from one language to
another. Because His Hebrew name contained phonemes that
weren't native to Greek doesn't rule out that they couldn't
pronounce it, but it may have been easier for them to use
Iesous. And think about this ....
Hebrew: Yeshua haNotzri
Melech haYehudim
Higher Truth
Note * All Scripture quoted by Higher Truth from the Modern King James Version
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