The "English" Name: Jesus

[Guest]

Thanks Steve. You have added more to my understanding of this topic.

[Guest]

I asked Nick Norelli, a buddy of mine, about some of Lew White's claims. Here is what he had to say:

Yeah, every once in a while someone will repeat some nonsense like that. I don’t really know where such strange claims come from. “Jesus” is just an transliteration of “Ιησους” which was used in the LXX to translate יֵשׁוּעַ or יְהוֹשֻׁעַ — Below you’ll see it in Hebrew → Aramaic → Greek → Old English → Modern English.

• יֵשׁוּעַ → יְהוֹשֻׁעַ → Ἰησοῦς → Iesus → Jesus

The “J” is a relatively new letter and replaced the “I” but there’s no truth to the claim that “Jesus” has pagan origins. The name “Zeus” appears in the Bible in Acts 14:12-13:

• ἐκάλουν τε τὸν Βαρναβᾶν Δία, τὸν δὲ Παῦλον Ἑρμῆν, ἐπειδὴ αὐτὸς ἦν ὁ ἡγούμενος τοῦ λόγου. ὅ τε ἱερεὺς τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ ὄντος πρὸ τῆς πόλεως ταύρους καὶ στέμματα ἐπὶ τοὺς πυλῶνας ἐνέγκας σὺν τοῖς ὄχλοις ἤθελεν θύειν.

The bolded words are Ζεύς in the accusative case (Δία) and in the genetive case (τοῦ Διὸς). I’m no expert but I don’t even see a morphological resemblance with Ἰησοῦς (acc. Ἰησοῦν; gen. Ἰησοῦ) and Ζεύς (acc. Δία; gen. Διὸς), do you?

This Lew White seems to be a “sacred name” proponent as far as I can tell. He’s correct that YESHU is an accronym for Yimach (not yemach) Sh’mo Ve-zichro which means “may his name and memory be blotted out.” We see this used in various rabbinic writings such as the Talmud (b. Sanhedrin 43a) and Toledot Yeshu.

But he is incorrect that Yeshua comes from that. Yeshua (ישׁוע) appears in the Hebrew Bible in the following texts: Ezra 2:2, 6, 36; 3:2, 9; 10:18; Nehemiah 7:7, 11, 39; 8:17; 9:4-5; 12:8. He’s also incorrect with regard to “Jesus” coming through Latin. It’s a transliteration of the Greek without need for the Latin.

And lastly, you’ll notice that Hebrew names don’t begin with “Yah” — that’s an invention of the “sacred name” group. Here is something that my friend Nachman, who is a native Israeli and life-long Hebrew speaker, as well as a yeshiva and seminary educated teacher said to me concerning this issue a couple of years back:

The big mistake of those who don’t know the rules of Biblical Hebrew is to think that this language has the same structure and grammatical rules as English, that is why this guy’s reasoning leads him to assume that since the term “Yah” — which is a short form of the Tetragrammaton — can be combined with verbs and form names, it can be arbitrarily manipulated and make names such as the hybrid form “Yahshua”. “Yahshua” as a name is a grammatical impossibility in Hebrew.

It is important to know why the Masoretes placed the nikud (Hebrew vowels) to the name “Joshua” to make it sound Yehoshua and not “Yahshua:” They did it because it is a rule of Biblical Hebrew that whenever the short form of the Tetragrammaton (”Yah” ) is used in combination with a verb to make a personal name, “Yeho” is the applied as a prefix; “Yah” is never to be used as a prefix. This is the case in all Hebrew names that have the short form of the Tertragrammaton at the beginning of the word, for example:

• Yehoshua = Joshua
  Yehoachaz = Jehoahaz (2 Kings 10:35)
  Yehoyachin = Jehoiachin (2 Kings 24:6)
  Yehoyakim = Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23:34)
  Yehoshafat = Jehoshaphat (2 Chr. 17:3)
  Yehochanan, which is a short form of Yochanan = John (Neh. 12:42)
  Yehoram = Jehoram (1 Kings 22:51)
  Yehoyada = Jehoiadah (2 Sam. 8:18 )
  Yehotzadak = Jehozadak (1 Chr. 6:14 [this verse in the Hebrew text corresponds to 1 Chr. 5:40]

Now, whenever the form ‘Yah’ occurs in a name, it is written ONLY AT THE END OF THE NAME, for example:

• Ma’aseYah = Maaseiah (Neh. 12:42)
  MichaYah = Micaiah (Neh. 12:42)
  Z’charYah = Zechariah (Neh. 12:42)
  MalkiYah = Malchiah (Neh:12″42)
  AzarYah = Azariah (Neh. 12:33)
  Sh’maYah = Shemaiah (Neh. 12:34)
  MatanYah = Mattaniah (Neh. 12:35)
  SherevYah = Sherebiah (Neh.12:24)
  ChashavYah = Hashabiah (Neh. 12:24)
  BakbukYah = Bakbukiah (Neh. 12:25)
  OvadYah = Obadiah (Obadiah 1:1)
  AchazYah = Ahaziah (1 Kings 22:50)
  S’raYah = Seraiah (2 Sam. 8:17)

*Also in expressions such as HaleluYah = “Give praise to the Lord!”

‘Yah’ also appears in combination with ‘hu,’ making the form ‘Yahu’, as in

• YeshaYahu = Isaiah (Salvation of the Lord)
  YirmiYahu = Jeremiah (The Lord casts)
  EliYahu = Elijah, and (My God is the Lord)
  YoshiYahu = Josiah (The Lord rescues me)
  Chizkiyahu = Hezekiah (My strength is the Lord)

The terms “Yahshua”, “Yahushua”, “Yahawashua,” and other bizarre forms are real only in the minds of ignorant and uninformed people who are into quasi-cults such as the ‘Sacred Name Movement.’