Yeshua – The Original and Proper Name For Jesus

Did you know that the name Jesus is a mistranslation? Many people think that simply Yeshua is just another name that Jesus calls himself but the truth is Jesus never was called Jesus by his parents or the people of his time.

Our Christs original given name is Yeshua and came to be Jesus due to a mistranslation from Hebrew to Greek and then Greek to English. Yeshua means “Salvation”. There is no meaning for the name Jesus.

How did it come to be is very interesting. Yeshua is a Hebrew name which has been transliterated into Greek as Iesous pronounced “ee-ay-SUS”.There is no “Y” sound in the Greek language. On Latin “i” is both “i” and “j” with the “j” being properly pronounced like the English “y.” In German Yesu is pronounced “YAY-su.”  The English spelling of Jesus is taken from Latin however we pronounce the name with a soft “j” because that is what we do with consonants. Regarding the first letter in the name Yeshua in Hebrew, Yod represents the “Y” sound. Many names in the Bible that begin with yod are mispronounced by English speakers because the yod in these names were translated in English Bibles with the letter “J” rather than “Y”. This came about because in early English the letter “J” was pronounced the way we pronounce “Y” today. All proper names in the Old Testament were transliterated into English according to their Hebrew pronunciation via the Latin, but when English pronunciation shifted to what we know today, these transliterations were not altered.

The first sound of the second syllable of Yeshua is the “sh” sound. It is represented by the Hebrew letter shin. However Greek, like many other languages, has no “sh” sound. Instead, the closest approximation, the Greek sigma, was used when transcribing “Yeshua” as “Iesus”. Translators of English versions of the New Testament transliterated the Greek transcription of a Hebrew name, instead of returning to the original Hebrew. This was doubly unfortunate, first because the “sh” sound exists in English, and second because in English the “s” sound can shift to the “z” sound, which is what happened in the case of the pronunciation of “Jesus”.

So where did the final “s” of “Jesus” come from? Masculine names in Greek ordinarily end with a consonant, usually with an “s” sound, and less frequently with an “n” or “r” sound. In the case of “Iesus,” the Greeks added a sigma, the “s” sound, to close the word. The same is true for the names Nicodemus, Judas, Lazarus, and others.

English speakers make another change from the original pronunciation of Jesus’ name. English places the accent on “Je,” rather than on “sus.” For this reason, the “u” has been shortened in its English pronunciation to “uh.”

Maybe you doubt because this is the first time you are hearing this and it does not resonate with you so here are some other facts:

• The name Yeshua appears 29 times in the Tanach.
• All together, at least 50 Yeshuas from his time plus about 9 in the Tanach have been revealed from Biblical text and other literary sources.
• Since Yeshua is spelled “Jeshua” and not “Jesus” in most English versions of the Old Testament (for example in Ezra 2:2 and 2 Chronicles 31:15), one easily gets the impression that the name is never mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet ‘Yeshua’ appears there twenty-nine times, and is the name of at least five different persons and one village in the southern part of Yehudah (“Judah”).
• In contrast to the early biblical period, there were relatively few different names in use among the Jewish population of the Land of Israel at the time of the Second Temple. The name Yeshua was one of the most common male names in that period, tied with Eleazer for fifth place behind Simon, Joseph, Judah, and John. Nearly one out of ten persons known from the period was named Yeshua.

The name Jesus or Jesus Christ is often used in everything from idle conversation, to bumper stickers and jewelry, to enforcing false teachings, to justifying wars and political agendas, and is even used as a profanity. The name Yeshua however, has remained pure and holy, known and used only by those who would uphold His name and teachings in the highest regard and thus reserving His holy name for use only in spiritual matters and the most humbled and sincere of prayer and obeisances.

Credit for this information and for further reading about Yeshua, the actual name of Christ, at the following sites:

http://www.thenazareneway.com/yeshua_jesus_real_name.htm

http://jesusisajew.org/YESHUA.php

http://www.hearnow.org/wy.html