And I will write upon Him My new Name, Revelation 3:12. Man has already given Him a new or different name. “Precious name, oh how sweet,” sing many voices as people gather each week to praise and worship the Savior and Redeemer of Israel. But the name they sing praises to is not a Hebrew name. In fact, it is not the Messiah’s name at all, and never was. The name “Jesus” is a combination of the Greek “Iesous” and the Latin version employing the letter J. This name, commonly used in Christianity, did not exist until about 500 years ago. The French philosopher, historian, and religious scholar, Ernest Renan, stated in his book, The Life of Jesus, that the Savior never was called “Jesus” in His lifetime. In searching for inspiration and materials on the Savior, Renan based his conclusions on his archaeological trips to the Holy Land. Renan is not the only one disclaiming the popular name of the Messiah. Proof most likely exists in your own home or can easily be found in your local library. References about that also show that the Creator’s name cannot be Jehovah. The “J” Did Not Exist The most obvious reason that “Jesus” and “Jehovah” are incorrect is found in their common letter,J. Most comprehensive dictionaries and encyclopedias demonstrate that the letter J is of recent derivation. The Encyclopedia Americana contains the following: The form of J was unknown in any alphabet until the 14th century. Either symbol (I, J) used initially generally had the consonantal sound of Y as in year. Gradually, the two symbols (I, J) were differentiated, the J usually acquiring consonantal force and thus regarded as a consonant, and I becoming a vowel. It was not until 1630 that the differentiation became general in England. The letter J developed from the letter I and was used to avoid confusion. Chambers’ Encyclopedia says that, in medieval handwriting, the smallI was liable to be confused with one of the strokes of a preceding or following u. Therefore an oblique stroke and later a dot was often made over the i. Alternately, the Iwas prolonged below the line. The J is still used in the German language in which it retains its I sound. In the names of the months of January, June, and July, the German keeps the “ee” sound much like our Y. For example, July is pronounced “Yulee.” Note the substantiating comments of theEncyclopedia Americana regarding the letter J: It is one of the few permanent additions to those alphabets, made in medieval or modern times. More exactly, it was not an addition, but a differentiation from an existing letter, I, which in Latin, besides being a vowel as in index, had also the consonantal value of “Y” (as in “maior,” pronounced “mayor”). At a later stage, the symbol “J” was used for distinctive purposes, particularly when the “I” had to be written initially (or in conjunction with another “I”). Either symbol used initially generally had the consonantal sound of “Y” (As in year), so that the Latin pronunciation of either Ianuarius or Januarius was as though the spelling was “Yanuarius.” While in some words of Hebrew and other origin (such as Hallelujah or Junker), “J” has the phonetic value of “Y.” Because the letter j derived from the I, and had the same sound, it was classed as a vowel. The letter I comes from the Greek “iota.” which is the Hebrew “yod.” Both have a vowel sound. There is no j sound in the Anglo-Saxon, let alone Hebrew, and no Roman form to work from. The J was first pronounced as the I, until the printing press was introduced. Gradually the letter J acquired its own sound through French influence. Webster’s Universal Unabridged Dictionary (1936) discloses that the I and J both had the same sound: As a character it was formerly used interchangeably with “I,” both letters having originally the same sound; and after the “J” sound came to be common in English, it was often written where this sound must have been pronounced. The separation of these two letters is of comparatively recent date, being brought about through the influence of the Dutch printers. The New Book of Knowledge demonstrates that the Iwas derived from the Hebrew “yod.” The yod is the very same Hebrew letter that begins Yahweh’s name. It also begins Yahshua’s name. The sound of the yod is “ee” or “eh.” The original and correct pronunciation of the Savior’s name became blurred as the letter J began, through the printing press, to have more widespread use. The printing press soon replaced the laborious copying by scribes the longhand-written editions of the Bible. The initial copies of the King James Version did not use the letter J for the Savior’s name. No evidence has come to light that shows the letter I ever had the consonantal sound of the letter J. This is clearly shown in the New Funk and Wagnall Encyclopedia: Not until the middle of the 17th century did this usage become universal in English books; in the King James Bible of 1611 for example, the words Jesus and judge are invariably Iesus and iudge. This is corroborated by the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary concerning the letter J, which states, The Jj types are not used in the Bible of 1611… Speech Followed Writing We also learn from this same source that there came to be a modification of the articulation of the letter J: Some time before the 6th century, this y-sound had, by compression in articulation, and consequent development of an initial ‘stop,’ became a consonantal diphthong, passing through a sound (dy), akin to that of our di, de, in odious, hideous, to that represented in our phonetic symbolization (dz). At the same time, the original guttural sound of G, when followed by a front vowel, had changed to that of a palatal g (gy), and then, by an advance of the point of closure, had passed through that of (dy), to the same sound (dz); so that I consonant and the so-called g ‘soft’ came to have, in the Romantic languages, the same identical value. The Encyclopedia Britannica shows that the sound of the letter J was the same as the letter I: The original consonantal sound represented by the letter was the semi-vowel or spirant “I” (the sound of y in yacht). This passed into dy and later into the sound dz which the letter represents today. Clearly the name of the Savior was changed from Yahshua to Joshua first in writing or printing of His name, and then in pronunciation, as the letter J took on another sound and became a consonant. Evidence that the Y in His name took on the J sound is found in Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8. Along with the changing pronunciation, there came the change in the alphabet to accommodate this alteration. Webster’s New International Dictionary explains: J is a comparatively late variant from the Latin I which is used indifferently as a vowel or consonant, its consonantal value being that of the English Y in yet. The form J was developed from it during the middle ages, and it was long used in certain positions in the word merely without regard to the sound as a consonant or vowel. But the lengthened form was often initial, and the initial was usually consonantal, so the j gradually became differentiated from I in function as well as form. It was not, however, until the 17th century, that the distinction of j as a consonant and I as a vowel was fully established and the capital J introduced. In English, the regular and practically uniform sound of j as in “jet” (dzh), the same as g in “gen,” dated from the 11th century, that being the sound represented by I when consonantal in words then introduced from Old French. J Sound the Same as I Sound From a study of the origin of letters that make up the word “Jesus” in our English Bibles, we can readily see that the name of the Savior underwent considerable change as it was brought from one language to another. In his book, Triumph of the Alphabet, author A. C. Moorhouse explains how the Y and I (hence the J also) were all related in sound. Furthermore, he cites how one language will borrow from another to bring the same sound across. Note his comment on page 128: The Semitic alphabet had no vowels, but it was essential for intelligibility that the Greek alphabet should have them. This was done by using Semitic letters which represented sounds unknown to the Greek. Semitic yod stood for the semivowel y, and it is easy to use it in Greek for the related vowel i. The spoken language develops from the written. Even today, missionaries are challenged to reduce a tribal language in some remote area to writing. It is difficult to bring across into English every vocalization in a foreign tongue using our alphabet. The New Book of Knowledge corroborates the findings of Moorhouse: The early history of the letter “J” is the same as the history of the letter “I.” “I” is a descendant of the ancient Phoenician and Hebrew letter yod and the Greek letter iota. The Phoenicians gave the yod a semi-consonant sound pronounced like the Y in yellow. While the lower case J of modern type was derived directly from the medieval manuscripts, the capital J is virtually a printer’s invention. The sound J as we know it in English today was derived when the Y sound eventually passed into a “dy” sound and later to the Jsound as in juggle. The name of the Redeemer of Israel, Who has the only name through which we can be saved (Acts 4:12), has been given a Latinized hybrid name that never existed in the Hebrew and did not exist in English unto 500 years ago. Research shows that His name was and is Yahshua, meaning “salvation of Yahweh.” We are to call on the name of our Savior as given in Scripture. History and secular scholarship give abundant proof that His name has been changed by man. It is not Jesus. Hubert M. Skinner, in his book, >Story of the Letters and Figures, sums up the damage done to the Savior’s name: In some way, various modern peoples who received the J from the Romans have lost the original sound, and have substituted something very different. We retain the former sound in our word “hallelujah,” but we generally give the letter the disagreeable soft sound of G. Yod is the initial of the name Jesus. It is unfortunate that a name so dear and so sacred is pronounced in a manner so different from that of the original word. The latter sounded very much as if it were Ya shoo-ah, and was agreeable to the ear. Our sounds of J and hard S are the most disagreeable in our language, and they are both found in our pronunciation of this short name, although they did not exist in its original. Yahshua plainly said in John 5:43 that He came in His Father’s Name. His Father’s name is Yahweh. The Son’s name, YAHshua, means YAHweh is salvation. He is the Salvation or Savior Yahweh sent. “Jehovah” Is Wrong from the Start The name Jehovah for the Creator is an equally perverted form of its original, as the name “Jesus” is to its original. Secular, as well as religious, scholars all know that “Jehovah” could not be the pronunciation of the Hebrew tetragrammaton hwhy (YHWH) used for the name of the Creator in the oldest available manuscripts. The Encyclopedia Britannica, volume 12, states: The pronunciation ‘Jehovah’ is an error resulting among Christians from combining the consonants YHWH with the vowels of ‘adonay.’ Here is how the hybrid “Jehovah” came to be used, explained in The Bible, An American Translation, Smith-Goodspeed Version: Jehovah (properly Yahweh), a name of the God of Israel, now widely regarded as a mispronunciation of the Hebrew YHWH. The form ‘Jehovah’ appears to have been introduced as late as the 16th century by Christian theologians. Many other highly regarded religious references attest that “Jehovah” is incorrect. Included are McClintock’s, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, New Standard Bible Dictionary, and Davis Dictionary of the Bible. The Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves admit that “Yahweh” is a truer name than is “Jehovah.” On pages 16 and 20 of their book, Let Your Name be Sanctified,> are the following excerpts: Yahweh … is admittedly superior to Jehovah. ‘The wrong spelling Jehovah occurs since about 1100, and then it offers its arguments in favor of Yahweh as ‘the correct and original pronunciation.” To call Yahweh and Yahshua by any other name and say, “They know who I mean,” is simply rebellion against both the Father and the Son. HalleluYah!
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 02:40:48 +0000
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