JESUS/YAHSHUA: WHICH? What is our Saviours name? Should we call Him Jesus? Almost all Bible translations today use the name Jesus, with only a hint that it was derived from another name. If the name Jesus is the most commonly rendered version of the Christs given name, isnt it okay to use it? Is it? If ones main concern is to follow tradition, then it truly does not matter what name is used. Tradition falls within the realm of human whim and preference, not within the realm of the truth. But if ones main concern is following the truth, then the name by which we address our Saviour is of the utmost importance. In the Old Testament alone the name of God, which is Yahweh, appears over 7,000 times. In the New Testament, the name of our Saviour appears over 950 times. Throughout the Bible there are countless references to the importance of the name of God - to its holiness, to its saving power, to its fearfulness and praiseworthiness. Is it coincidence that in the Old Testament Yahwehs name is replaced by the title Lord and becomes almost completely obscured, while in the New Testament the true name of the Son of God is also replaced and obscured - by a name which could not have existed until the 1500s? Lets find the truth of the matter. An important point missed by many is that our Saviour was a Jew, born into a Jewish, Hebrew-speaking family, and He would most surely have been given an Hebrew name. The name Jesus not only did not exist at the time of Yahshuas birth, it is also in no way a Jewish name. Rather, it is a kind of deformed, Hellenized, paganized version of the original name. Perhaps one of the most important facts overlooked is that Yahshua (along with John the Baptist) was named by an angel. Look at Matthew 1:20-21: ...the angel of the Lord appeared unto him...saying, Joseph...thou shalt call His name Yahshua... Apparently His name was of such importance that is could not be left to human judgment. Again, in Matt. 1:21 it says, ...thou shalt call His name Jesus.... Most reference Bibles will note that Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew (or Jewish) name Joshua or something similar. Although this is as far as most will go in making that connection, the connection is made nonetheless. Now see Acts 7:45: Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles... Also, in Hebrews 4:8 we see For if Jesus had given them a rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. These are not references to the Messiah, but to the high priest Joshua in the Old Testament: clear proof that the name Jesus was substituted for the name Joshua in the New Testament by Bible translators. There are two facts which render the name Joshua as unacceptable to us as the name Jesus: 1. The letter J is not found in either Hebrew or Greek, and 2. The letter J never existed at all until after the invention of the printing press in the 1400s. A simple study of the alphabet will prove this as well as the original pronunciation of the letter J - a y sound. The name Joshua is non-existent in Hebrew because of the use of the letter J. The letter Y should be substituted wherever a J is found in Hebrew words: Yerushalayim, Yaacov, Yochanan and Yhudah instead of Jerusalem, Jacob, John and Judah. In Hebrew, the name given to the Christ was a shortened form of (Ya)hoshua (see Num. 13:16), which means I AM Saviour or I AM Salvation. The shortened form is Yahshua, which translators later transformed into Joshua. While the letter Y is not part of the Greek alphabet, the letter I is. It is pronounced identically to our long e, so if the name were written Iashua or even Iasua, the pronunciation would still be the much the same as the original. If the translators of the Bible had followed the procedure used everywhere else in literature when dealing with names, they would have transliterated the name Yahshua into one of the above forms in order to retain as much of the original pronunciation as possible. Instead they substituted vowels and consonants and added the Greek gender suffix, effectively altering the name. The ultimate result of this was that the true name of the Messiah was almost completely obscured in the New Testament, as was the name of the Creator in the Old Testament. Many people will argue that the names Jesus, Iesous, and other alternative names are as acceptable as the name Yahshua because they are the equivalents of that name in other languages. This is a false argument: regardless of what names may be equivalent to the name Yahshua, they are not the name given to Him at birth. If a woman named Mary were to visit Israel, the people there would call her Mary, not Miriam, even though that name is the Hebrew equivalent of Mary. She would not be called Marie if she visited Spain. She would be called Mary the world round simply because that is her name. If our names do not change simply because we move from one country to another, why should the very important name of our Saviour change from one language to another? The simple fact is that a persons given name does not change from language to language, nor is it translated. Anyone who has listened to any broadcast in a foreign language, listened to someone speak in a foreign language, or read a newspaper written in a foreign language knows that the given names of people, places and things are carried over intact, in order to preserve the identification of whatever is spoken of. This is also the case where the name of our God is concerned, though many will deny it. If we accept that the name given to our Saviour at birth was Yahshua, which literally means I Am Saviour/Salvation, then we rediscover an important truth in Scripture and find perfect agreement between the meaning of the name and Matthew 1:21 ...and thou shalt call His name Yah-Saviour/Salvation: for He shall save His people from their sins. How much more meaningful the true name is, compared to the meaningless hash which is presented to us in the name Jesus! It must be understood that the Son of God was never called Jesus in His lifetime: He never heard Himself called by that name in all of His time on this earth. What His family named Him and what everyone called Him was Yahshua: a Jewish name filled with significance. If our goal is to know the truth and to cleave to it, then we must seek the name our Saviour was called by for the 33 1/2 years of His existence on earth and for hundreds of years after in prayer, and then use it. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. TOP OF PAGE
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 08:47:27 +0000
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