Did Jesus have a Hebrew name? Really?

[JaumeJ]

Having travelled in a number of countries, it seems most people in any given country believe all prophecies are about their country, Yahweh is in heaven waving their flag, and He speaks only their language..

Not only do most people of the nations believe Yahweh waves their flag, but He really is their nationality. People really are too brainwashed in most instances to accept the history of the Word in Spirit and Truth, preferring to think the Maker of all that is, is at their level, waiting to place His throne in their country. People can be a bummer at times..

Only when one considers the world should speak English only.

No I would not ignore anyone who forces others to use nothing but His English name.

 

[dcontroversal]

So I'm guessing while you folks split hairs over what language was spoke or when, or if Jesus had a Hebrew name or whatever you find time to debate if a donkey somewhere ever speaks again it will speak in a language that somebody understands!

I agree and will say that I thought of a few as found in your two posts above and is why I used (etc.) but figured I could make the point with just a few of the names given.....He is also...The true and living way...I AM the way, the truth and the life!

 

[eternally-gratefull]

Only that you have a very short memory on what you have written.

Yeah, Show me, Don't just make accusations. Show me and the room where I said what you claimed

How could one sleep well when he thinks evil of others always.

What this has to do with my comment I guess only you can understand.

I call it non responsive because that is what it was. It has nothing to do with what I said. Just further proof you have a vendetta against me. Thats fine, Keep it up. People will see it. Your not bothering me at all. I quite enjoy it

 

[eternally-gratefull]

Only when one considers the world should speak English only.

lol again non responsive.

What does this have a thing to do with what I said? I asked about people who DO ONLY HAVE ENGLISH Bibles. So how do we interpret this to the world?

Dude you have major issues.

No I would not ignore anyone who forces others to use nothing but His English name.[/QUOTE]

 

[eternally-gratefull]

lol again non responsive.

What does this have a thing to do with what I said? I asked about people who DO ONLY HAVE ENGLISH Bibles. So how do we interpret this to the world?

Dude you have major issues.

No I would not ignore anyone who forces others to use nothing but His English name.

well that would not be me. I would not force a chinese person to only Call God by his english name, Or any other language.

It is obvious you do not read anything I say. Keep up with your silly attacks and childish games of KNOWINGLY misrepresenting what I say (I Know your not that unlearned you can not understand exactly what I am saying) and we will have to see what the administrators think of your actions.

 

[eternally-gratefull]

Having travelled in a number of countries, it seems most people in any given country believe all prophecies are about their country, Yahweh is in heaven waving their flag, and He speaks only their language..

Not only do most people of the nations believe Yahweh waves their flag, but He really is their nationality. People really are too brainwashed in most instances to accept the history of the Word in Spirit and Truth, preferring to think the Maker of all that is, is at their level, waiting to place His throne in their country. People can be a bummer at times..

so for this reason. The whole world should Call God only by his hebrew name, and not by his name in their own language??

Wow. Thats like saying since we broke the law, and were taken by the babylonians, we need to add all these other laws to make it harder to break the real ones..

in other words, two wrongs make a right.

 

[Nick01]

Did Jesus have a Hebrew name? If so, which one? Some call him Yeshua, some call Him Yashua and some call Him Yahoshua and a whole list of other names. They insist He had a Hebrew name yet the scripture only list his name in Greek as "ee-ay-soos".

There is not a shred of evidence that Jesus had a Hebrew name. Yet people insist He not only had a Hebrew name but we should call Him bu it. Is that Just snobbery?


At the time of Christ, Israel was fully Hellenized for hundreds of years. The common Israelite did not know how to speak Hebrew. Aramaic and Greek was the language in vogue. That is why the Septuagint so the common man could read and understand the OT.

Personalty, I have seen miracles happen when pray was invoked in Jesus name. So I don't Jesus cares if I call Him Jesus. Yet some want to call Him by a name they can not prove He had.

This is a minor argument in the scheme of things, but I would like to say that Jesus' name in his native language was probably some variant of Yeshua. That name (used to indicate the same name in Hebrew that we translate in English as Joshua, which you can see in the LXX) was one of, if not the most, common male name in first century Judea (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham, refers to a specific study on this topic, I can give a more complete citation when I get home tonight if you like). While people likely could speak Greek, they also spoke Aramaic, as well as Hebrew in the synagogue and possibly also at home (this is all basically beyond argument, given that the Gospels, in particular Matthew, like to transliterate and then translate Hebraisms or Aramaicisms into Greek).

Israel (which didn't exist as such at the time) was NOT fully hellenized, precisely because Aramaic was used. Aramaic is very closely related to Hebrew (somewhat like the relation between Spanish and Portugese) but linguistically has no relation to Greek. In all likelihood, Aramaic was the primary spoken lingua franca amongst Jews and Arabs, while Greek was used in writing and in business or governmental purposes.

Of course, all this is unrelated to the question of what you can call Jesus. Given I am convinced that Jesus, like many of his disciples and contemporaries, would have had either an Aramaic or Hebrew name, and given that the one we read in the Bible is the Greek version of that name, I am happy to say we can use whatever version of his name we like. If it was good enough for the Bible writers, its good enough for me

 

[JaumeJ]

It is not paramount, but I agree with most of what your study demonstrates. As for what Yeshua's disciples called him, it stands to reason, since they were dealing with the Gospel and the Tanakh they would have never used any name for Him other than the Hebrew, lest the hypocrites would have another point to fault. The only Aramaic in the Tanakh is found in the first half of the Book of Daniel and the entire Book of Ezra, and this is credited as being due to their having been written in the Babylonian captivity. Daniel is said to have written the Hebrew half, the latter, when he had moved back to Israel. Thanks for your very astute contribution. Yahweh bless you always.

This is a minor argument in the scheme of things, but I would like to say that Jesus' name in his native language was probably some variant of Yeshua. That name (used to indicate the same name in Hebrew that we translate in English as Joshua, which you can see in the LXX) was one of, if not the most, common male name in first century Judea (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham, refers to a specific study on this topic, I can give a more complete citation when I get home tonight if you like). While people likely could speak Greek, they also spoke Aramaic, as well as Hebrew in the synagogue and possibly also at home (this is all basically beyond argument, given that the Gospels, in particular Matthew, like to transliterate and then translate Hebraisms or Aramaicisms into Greek).

Israel (which didn't exist as such at the time) was NOT fully hellenized, precisely because Aramaic was used. Aramaic is very closely related to Hebrew (somewhat like the relation between Spanish and Portugese) but linguistically has no relation to Greek. In all likelihood, Aramaic was the primary spoken lingua franca amongst Jews and Arabs, while Greek was used in writing and in business or governmental purposes.

Of course, all this is unrelated to the question of what you can call Jesus. Given I am convinced that Jesus, like many of his disciples and contemporaries, would have had either an Aramaic or Hebrew name, and given that the one we read in the Bible is the Greek version of that name, I am happy to say we can use whatever version of his name we like. If it was good enough for the Bible writers, its good enough for me

 

[Nick01]

It is not paramount, but I agree with most of what your study demonstrates. As for what Yeshua's disciples called him, it stands to reason, since they were dealing with the Gospel and the Tanakh they would have never used any name for Him other than the Hebrew, lest the hypocrites would have another point to fault.

Thank you for the compliment, but I do want to address this part of your post. What his immediate disciples called him isn't that big a deal, if only because the NT itself, which are either written by direct disciples or based on the eyewitness testimony of direct disciples, are happy to use the Greek equivalent for his name.

Let me reiterate this in case any other posters on this thread miss this - REGARDLESS of what his disciples referred to him as during his life on earth, the textual evidence (such as that of Paul, the gospels, and other patristic documents from the first and second centuries) makes it very clear that people were comfortable referring to him by the Greek Iēsous within a generation, even if, amongst the Jewish community, people referred to him verbally or otherwise by the common Jewish version, Yeshua.

Therefore, while it seems most likely that they used a Hebrew name to refer to him when speaking, it doesn't stand to reason that they did this for any theological reason, or to 'prevent the hypocrites from finding fault'. The only sensible reason for why they would favour one name or the other in everyday conversation can only be because that was the name (and the language) they most familiarly used in that conversation. Let me say it again, any other reason we attach to the use of this name or that is almost certainly one that is imported from a much later time period, and certainly not a reason that would have been used at the time in question.

 

[JaumeJ]

Observing varied theologies, we see how unbending is tradition in all. If this is so with theologies today, how much more so it would be with the various theologies of what we call Judaism today would adhere to their own traditions at the time of Yeshua. Frankly, in the presence of the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, part of fulfilling the requisites of being the true Messiah would be to use the name. Actually, as hs been indicated, the name in the Tanakh was always written, trnasliterated here, as Yehoshua, but by the time Jesus was born the Hebrew language, aside from Aramaic, had evolved the name to Yeshua, which may be translated completely as Salvation, just as the angel instructed or commanded Mary to name the Chilc, Salvation, for He shall save His people. It seems not unreasonable but impractical for anyone within the workings of the faith of Abraham at the time of Yeshua to have called Him anything other than what it translates from the Hebrew, Salvation, or, Yeshua. One need not have knowledge of Hebrew to appreciate the importance of what He was called then. Today, with revereence, any of the names or accents using the names are valid, as long as they are used in reverence.

 

[Nick01]

I will, however, again point out that Yeshua was one of the most common names among males in first century Judea, up there with Yohann. While, of course, the name is significant in what it means, it is not significant, I feel, because Messiah would have to be called that (there is no evidence of this anywhere in Scripture before the angel actually gives him that name), and not significant because it was a unique name, because it wasn't. I doubt anyone at the time would have attached any Messianic significance to the particular name Yeshua for those reasons - far more important was what Messiah was supposed to do then any spiritualised understanding of names and what Messiah would be called.

Plainly, this also has no impact on whether or not anyone at the time would have called Jesus Yeshua or Iesous. The reasoning, again, would have been one on the convenience of language, not on the actual name itself. It should also go without saying that Iesous and Yeshua mean precisely the same thing, because Iesous was no more and no less than a transliteration into Greek semantics and phonetics of a Hebrew word.

 

[Osiyo]

Yeshua (ישוע, with vowel pointing יֵשׁוּעַ – yēšūă‘ in Hebrew) was a common alternative form of the name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ ("Yehoshuah" – Joshua) in later books of the Hebrew Bible and among Jews of the Second Temple period. The name corresponds to the Greek spelling Iesous, from which comes the English spelling Jesus.

The Hebrew spelling Yeshua (ישוע) appears in some later books of the Hebrew Bible. Once for Joshua the son of Nun, and 28 times for Joshua the High Priest and (KJV "Jeshua") and other priests called Jeshua – although these same priests are also given the spelling Joshua in 11 further instances in the books of Haggai and Zechariah. It differs from the usual Hebrew Bible spelling of Joshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ y'hoshuaʿ), found 218 times in the Hebrew Bible, in the absence of the consonant he ה and placement of the semivowel vav ו after, not before, the consonant shin ש. It also differs from the Hebrew spelling Yeshu (ישו) which is found in Ben Yehuda's dictionary and used in most secular contexts in modern Hebrew to refer to Jesus of Nazareth, though the Hebrew spelling Yeshua (ישוע) is generally used in translations of the New Testament into Hebrew and used by Hebrew speaking Christians in Israel. The name Yeshua is also used in Israeli Hebrew historical texts to refer to other Joshuas recorded in Greek texts such as Jesus ben Ananias and Jesus ben Sira.

In English, the name Yeshua is extensively used by followers of Messianic Judaism, whereas East Syrian Christian denominations use the name Isho in order to preserve the Aramaic or Syriac name of Jesus.

 

[JaumeJ]

As I am reading through the Word in Hebrew, I keep in mind the thin line between the scholastic and the popular opinion. I consider what I contribute as pertaining to Hebrew and the Word is scholastic, but popular opinion is unavoidable. It has never come to my attention that Yeshua, ישוע, was a very common name at the time of our Lord's first coming (advent.) Reason coupled with the custom of naming children for people within the family tends to be against this vein of thinking, but it does not exclude the possiblity.

I confess, my reason is always tempered by faith in Yeshua, Jesus. I see much revisionism in scholastic works "about" the Tanakh and HaBrit HaHadasha, thus I cannot escape believing if I see reason in historical declarations which support faith and the Word, then I will always go with that reason. I believe everyone does this to some degree.

 

[danschance]

In English, the name Yeshua is extensively used by followers of Messianic Judaism, whereas East Syrian Christian denominations use the name Isho in order to preserve the Aramaic or Syriac name of Jesus.

"Messianic Judaism" sounds a bit bizarre to me as Judaism and Christianity are not compatible religions. Judaism requires a blood sacrifice but in Christianity Jesus was the final blood sacrifice once and for all time.Jews do not have baptism or communion either but that is required in Christianity. So it seems odd to label a Christian movement, as Judaism.

 

[Linda70]

"Messianic Judaism" sounds a bit bizarre to me as Judaism and Christianity are not compatible religions. Judaism requires a blood sacrifice but in Christianity Jesus was the final blood sacrifice once and for all time.Jews do not have baptism or communion either but that is required in Christianity. So it seems odd to label a Christian movement, as Judaism.

There is no temple for sacrifices...so Jews resort to "good works". Chassidic and Orthodox Jews practice "Mikvah"...which is a form of "purification" or "spiritual cleansing". It is their "type" of water baptism. This was the type of baptism which John the Baptist used...a baptism of repentance. IMO, Messianic Judaism is simply another "sect" of Judaism with Jesus (Yeshua) added.

 

[KohenMatt]

Interesting thread, might I also add if I may. I have been thinking lately why do some people say certain things in Hebrew like Shalom something or other, why not just say it in english like everything else? Maybe it sounds holier to them? I dunno. Sorry kinda going off topic.

Probably for the same reasons Christians say, Hallelujah, Amen, Abba, etc. It can be a unique and more intimate way of communicating to, and about our God.

 

[danschance]

There is no temple for sacrifices...so Jews resort to "good works". Chassidic and Orthodox Jews practice "Mikvah"...which is a form of "purification" or "spiritual cleansing". It is their "type" of water baptism. This was the type of baptism which John the Baptist used...a baptism of repentance. IMO, Messianic Judaism is simply another "sect" of Judaism with Jesus (Yeshua) added.

Yes, I understand that the Jews can not sacrifice animals as the temple is not in Jewish control. Secondly, they do not know where the location of the Holy of Hollies nor do they have an ark of the covenant. In general Judaism is a religon that sacrifices animals.

Too bad the Jews have never considered the loss of the temple as being a sing for Christianity. Their religion demands animal sacrifices for sin and yet they can not sacrifice a single animal, so how can their sins be forgiven? There is no alternative.

 

[Linda70]

Yes, I understand that the Jews can not sacrifice animals as the temple is not in Jewish control. Secondly, they do not know where the location of the Holy of Hollies nor do they have an ark of the covenant. In general Judaism is a religon that sacrifices animals.

Like I said, they resort to "good works" since there is no temple for animal sacrifices. Judaism, as it is practiced today, is a mixture of Old Testament teaching and human tradition. Judaism is also a religion that rejects Christ. Most Orthodox Jews are still looking for Messiah/Christ and will readily accept the false Messiah/Christ (Antichrist) as a man of "peace".

Too bad the Jews have never considered the loss of the temple as being a sing for Christianity. Their religion demands animal sacrifices for sin and yet they can not sacrifice a single animal, so how can their sins be forgiven? There is no alternative.

There are two groups that I know of in Israel which are making preparations to rebuild the temple.....The Temple Mount Faithful and The Temple Institute. These two groups are making preparations to rebuild this third "tribulation" temple at the present time.

History of the Temple Mount

Animal sacrifices will be re-established and the "abomination of desolation" will take place in the middle of the 7 year tribulation period (Daniel 9:27; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4) when the Antichrist (son of perdition) sits in the that tribulation temple and proclaims himself to be God.

 

[GeorgeTo]

If you check the word in The Bible that is translated Jesus in a concordance, you will find that it means this: 'Yehovah is salvation'. See this link for confirmation of this: Greek Lexicon :: G2424 (KJV)

Although it's a Greek word, the word translated Jesus in Matthew 1.21 is of Hebrew origin, as you'll see if you go to the link I just posted. As I already said, it means 'Yehovah is salvation'. Names are important. Yehovah is salvation said this to Our Father in heaven:

'I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.' (John 17.6). If He manifested The Father's name to His disciples, it must have been important and we know that The Father's name will be glorified in all the earth since He said it would be. The name of the Son of God actually contains he name Of The Father: The Name of The Father is Yehovah and he Name of The Son is 'Yehovah is salvation'. That's no coincidence.

The second thought I had was that many say Hallelujah. Now I don't know if you know what that means, but some erroneously translate it as 'Praise The Lord', when in fact it means 'Let's praise Yah' or better still 'Let's praise Ye', since Yah or Ye is a shortened from of Yehovah: the Name Of The Father. Is Ye a Hebrew word? The answer is yes it is. It means 'will be'. 'Ho' is a Hebrew word meaning 'is' and 'vah' is a Hebrew word meaning 'was', so this tells us what The name Yehovah means.

How important is this? Well I must say I have certainly felt like saying HalleluYe more than once when I have felt blessed and I believe this is for a good reason.

 

[JaumeJ]

Although Jesus is the Salvation of Yahweh, His name from the Hebrew translates as Salvation. Of course being the Messiah, or annointed of Yah, the meaning does not change. By His name being Salvation, His name also fulfills the instructions given Mary by the Angel.

(ASV) And she shall bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name JESUS; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins.


והיא ילדת בן וקראת את־שמו ישוע כי הוא יושיע את־עמו מחטאתיהם׃

Yeshua was the evolved form of the name Joshua used in the third chapter of Zechariah.

I have found many schools of thought on the name, but the only one that fulfills what the Angel instructed Mary and what Yeshua is would be the name, ישוע, for it, in part, fulfills all the righteouness prophesied of our Salvation.