What's In a Name?
What is the name of our Messiah? I attempt to take a look at the issue and come up with a healthy balance.
Wow, am I not choosing a huge topic to tackle for what is only my second post on here? It’s such a controversial topic and I am often left wondering why. So, I am going to see if I can explore the topic and perhaps bring a bit of rational thinking to the whole thing. I am not saying that I am going to bring anything to an end as I am not sure that it ever going to be possible.
The Names of the Messiah
Our wonderful Messiah has had many names over the years. I am not talking about the titles that we get in the Bible, but no, I speak of the names that people have given him.
Jesus: the traditional name that the Christian church gave our Messiah, due to the name given in the Greek (Ἰησοῦς). In translating from the Greek to English, we got Jesus.
Yeshua: In the traditional history of the Messianic/Christian faith, this is believed to be his “real” name, the name given to him by his parents, making him Yeshua Ben Yosef (Yeshua the son of Joseph).
Yehoshua: It is believed that Yeshua (above) is the shortened form of this name, Yehoshua. This was the Hebrew name of Joshua, the man that inherited the leadership over Israel after Moses passed away.
Yahshua: The people that believe that our Father’s name is Yahweh believe that our Messiah’s name is Yahshua instead of Yeshua, “interpret(ing) John 5:43 (“I have come in my Father’s name”) to mean that the Messiah literally needed the name (or part of the name) Yahweh in his own name: “Yahshua,” rather than “Yeshua.””1
How did we get Jesus?
I mentioned above that Jesus came from translating the Greek name Ἰησοῦς into English. But one question remains is how did we get Ἰησοῦς to begin with. This is actually an issue that predates the Greek New Testament. The issue was actually one the translators of the Septuagint has while translating the Tanakh (that is, the Old Testament), they came across the name Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) and needed to translate it.
Yeshua can be found throughout the Tanakh. It can be found in 1 Chronicles 24:11 and 2 Chronicles 31:15, and in Ezra and Nehemiah where it is transliterated into English as Jeshua.2
The problem was that there was no perfect translation of Yeshua into Greek. For instance, there isn’t a letter to translate the very first letter of the name, which is a yod (י), into Greek. The “Y” sound is Greek normally doesn’t occur except at the beginning of a word where it is normally represented by a comma (there are two such commas).
So, they had to compromise from the get go and used the closest way they could to represent the “Y” sound, which was the Iota (Ἰ). When used at the beginning of a Greek word with the mentioned comma, the sound of the Iota becomes softer and sounds closer to a “ya” sound.
Next up was the “e” sound. That was simple. They used an eta (η) which is the best match for it.
Then we get to the next problem. Greek doesn’t have a “sh” sound, only the sigma (σ), so another compromise was made and they used the lone sigma in place of the shin (שׁ). We now have Ἰησ so far, which is “Yes..".
Up next is the Hebrew letter, Vav (ו). This Vav however has a dot in the middle, called a Dagesh, which changed it from a “V” sound of a normal Vav to a “ou” sound. When translating this letter, they used the combination of letters, omicron upsilon (οῦ). That little swiggly line above the upsilon simply denotes the two letters are pronounced together as they are a diphthong and are meant to be mentioned together.
The final letter of Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) is the ayin (עַ). It has no sound by itself, but in this case, it does carry a vowel sound with it, the patach (the little line beneath the ayin (עַ). The patach carries an “A” sound so they would have simply used the Greek alpha (α) to finish off the translation, but Greek grammar didn’t allow some Greek words to end with a vowel (there are exceptions though) and they had to use the proper ending to finish off the name, which was a final sigma (ς).
Thus, we get Ἰησοῦς in Greek. It’s pronounced “yay-soos”. When the translators of what we name call the New Testament went to translate the Messiah’s name, they would have been quite aware of this translation and used it in Greek translations. The work had already been done for them.
But we’re not done yet. When the English translators when to translate Ἰησοῦς into English, they were able to translate it pretty much as written. Transliterated, Ἰησοῦς is Iesus and that is what they ended up using at the time. Of course, the I we have today was pronounced a little different back then, with a softer Y-like sound. Over the years, the sound of the I got harder and the J-like sound was adopted by English speakers over the years. Thus, we have Jesus.
But today, we can transliterate יֵשׁוּעַ better into English and when we do so, we get Yeshua. Though sometimes it is transliterated in some English Bible translations as Jeshua in it’s appearances in the Tanakh.
But isn’t Yeshua a shortened form of Yehoshua?
The sixth book of the Tanakh, the first book that normally follows the books of the Torah, is, in English, Joshua. In Hebrew, this name is Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ). Both this name and Yeshua mean “Yah saves.” or “Yah is salvation.” But are they both the same name?
Many people actually do believe that they are the same name, with Yeshua just being the shortened form of Yehoshua. It’s even mentioned on the Wikipedia page for Yeshua as being the case. But from everything that I have read and studied over the years, I am not convinced that they are.
I am of the understanding that both names come from the Hebrew word for salvation yeshua (יְשׁוּעָה) and because of that, they look to be more closely related. No matter what, I don’t think it really matters if one is a shortened version of the other. What we do know is that Yeshua was the name used by those who knew our Messiah and the name they would have used when talking to or referring to him.
What about Yahshua?
This is a name that we can be sure isn’t at all correct. While we know that Yah is a name for our wonderful father in heaven, we do know that Yahshua is not a word that anyone has ever used before the 20th century.
Proponents of the Sacred Name and Hebrew Roots movements popularized the use of this name when they felt that the “Yah” of “Yahwah” needed to be “restored” to the Messiah’s name. So they changed Yeshua to Yahshua.
This ends up being wrong. Even Hebrew grammar says that it is wrong. For more information, I suggest reading First Fruits of Zion’s book “Hallowed Be Your Name” (by Aaron Eby and Toby Janicki)
Since no mention or usage of this name can be found before the 20th century, we can be certain that this name isn’t correct in any way.
There are several other variations of the Messiah’s name that could be covered here, but I wanted to only cover the more common names used. If there is interest, perhaps someday I’ll do another article to cover other names.
Should we even use His name?
Now, here’s the real touchy part of this whole issue. There are some people who believe that we shouldn’t use any name of the Messiah at all, no matter what the belief as to what His name is.
What do I think of this? It actually more or less confuses me. When it comes to the Messiah, I use His name. There were many men before and after He came to this earth that shared his name, Yeshua. While when referring to him, yes, the name is and should be considered sacred, it is a common enough name that we should be able to use it as long as we don’t slander it.
In Conclusion
With this article, I have not expected to “convince” anyone on the proper way to pronounce our Messiah’s name. This article was only meant to serve as an educational tool for those who were curious or confused about the topic. Personally, I hope that everyone who reads this article will find it educational and enlightening.
I am opening up this article to comments below, so please take the time to let me know what you think of this article! Did I get anything wrong? Do you have any kind of feedback? What about other topics that you would love to see me cover? Please, let me know below in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe!