After a few posts about this topic that got floundered on a very offtopic place, I started to do some research online to find out just why we use the name Jesus for the name of the Christian messiah. It seems to be a very complicated story. If anyone knows, please post here.
The question is: how did the son of Jospeh, way back when, who was likely called Joshua when he was alive, or ‘‘Joshua ben Joseph’’, (’‘ben’’ means “son of” in Hebrew/Aramaic, ask Mel Gibson)…how did Joshua gets changed into Jesus in English or Italian or Latin or whatever was the first language to start calling him that?
Certainly his followers at the time of his life did NOT call him Jesus.
[quote=“rooftop”]There was a God who had a Son and Jesus was his name-0.
J-E-S-U-S
Everybody![/quote]
no, no, no, no, rooftop. Seriously. Why do we use this name in English? What is he called in Russian, for example? Or in Chinese? Or Japanese? Or in Greece today? On in Israeli Hebrew today?
As for God’s name, Moses asked him at the burning shrubbery, he answered “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.” Which in hebrew is Yahweh, or YHWH because they didn’t have vowels.
So God’s name is YHWY prounced Yahweh (sometimes transliterated as Jehovah), meaning “I am who I am”
Well, isn’t Jesus a Roman name based on the Greek name for Jesus, which
is similar to the word “fish” in Hebrew, as fish was a symbol of fertility and thus life?
… or did I forget my India-Jones and the holy grail story ?
[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”]As for God’s name, Moses asked him at the burning shrubbery, he answered “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I am has sent me to you.” Which in hebrew is Yahweh, or YHWH because they didn’t have vowels.
So God’s name is YHWY prounced Yahweh (sometimes transliterated as Jehovah), meaning “I am who I am”
Or something…[/quote]
someone will soon throw a big stone at you, I am sure.
Okay, okay. Jesus’s native language was Aramaic. His parents named him after the Old Testament character whom we call Joshua, and they called (in Aramaic) Yeshua. (In Hebrew the same name would be Yehoshua, and the original meaning of this name is indeed “God will save,” YaHu being part of God’s unspeakable name.)
In Greek, which was the lingua franca of the time, his name becomes Iesos. And in Latin, which Western European languages have inherited, it’s Jesus (which is pronounced almost the same way).
So oddly enough, the J-man would be more likely to turn around if called by a Chinese (Yesu) or Tibetan (Yeshu) than an English speaker!
