by Harry BuererWhat was the name of the Messiah when he was here on earth? The Greek New Testament refers to him exclusively by the name, “Iesous”. This has commonly been transliterated into English by the word “Jesus”.
This is unusual for a few reasons. One is that neither Greek nor Hebrew has any letter that sounds like the English ‘j’. Why did they use that letter to transliterate so many names? It seems to have some relation to the idea that in German, the sound of ‘y’ is represented by the letter ‘j’. Since the Bible was translated into German before English, it seems that there must have been some influence.
In Greek the letter in question is an iota, the equivalent of our ‘i’. This Greek letter usually replaces the Hebrew yodh, the equivalent of our ‘y’.
We can learn a lot by observing the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was done a couple of centuries B.C.E. There are two names in the Hebrew Bible that are transliterated as “Iesous”. One is the name “Yehoshua”, which we know as Joshua, the leader of Israel after Moses. He was originally known as Hoshea, but Moses renamed him Yehoshua. (Numbers 13:16) The Greek Septuagint transliterates his previous name as “Ause”, and his later name as “Iesous”. The meaning of Yehoshua is “Yah will save”. The Greek transliteration, “Iesous”, does not have any particular meaning in Greek except as a transliteration of a Hebrew name.
The other Hebrew name that is transliterated by “Iesous” in the Septuagint is “Yeshua”, translated in most English Bibles as “Jeshua”. This is the name of several people mentioned in Ezra and Nehemiah. It appears to be a shortened form of “Yehoshua”. The short form carries the meaning of “he saves”.
Since the Jesus of the New Testament lived in a culture that was Hebrew-speaking (or possibly Aramaic), he would have gone by his Hebrew name, rather than a Greek one. This is consistent with the account in Matthew 1, where an angel tells Joseph that “you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins”. (Matthew 1:21) This only makes sense if they were speaking Hebrew and discussing the name “Yeshua” or “Yehoshua”, since they are both derived from the verb “to save”.
It seems clear that the name given to the man who was to be the Messiah was either Yeshua or Yehoshua. Unfortunately, some religious groups have started calling him “Yahshua” or “Yahusha” in order to try to include the name of God in his name. There is no evidence whatsoever for a name like this; it is entirely made up.
The Hebrews did include God’s name in people’s names; but they didn’t do it like that. They included the word “El” in names like Nathaniel. When they wanted to include the name of Yah, they would sometimes insert it at the end, in the form “-yahu”, as in “Yirmeyahu” (Jeremiah). Other times they would insert it at the beginning, in the form “Yeho-“, as in “Yehoshaphat” (Jehoshaphat) or “Yehoshua”.
It’s clear that the name of Messiah was either Yeshua or Yehoshua, probably the shorter form. It was never “Yahshua”, or anything like that. It’s a serious error to be making up names for Messiah, and we should avoid doing it at all costs.