Why Do We Call Him Jesus If His Name Was Yeshua?

[Obscurity]

I'm sorry if a thread on this subject already exists.

 

How did his name go from Yeshua to Jesus? Why would people call the one they worship by a translated name instead of his real name?

[Shyone]

I'm sorry if a thread on this subject already exists.

 

How did his name go from Yeshua to Jesus? Why would people call the one they worship by a translated name instead of his real name?

None of the gospel writers had ever met him, and had only heard about him from people that knew some sayings. I'm guessing that the audience felt more comfortable with a name that sounded Greek. Just as we change a lot of names and words to fit our language, the same thing happened then.

 

The Spanish, for example, changed all of the Latin words ending in "us" to "o". They also give masculine endings to many words that are obviously masculine.

 

Benignus in latin became benigno in Spanish. Perhaps Yeshua sounded "wrong" to them for similar grammatic and cultural reasons.

 

We took IESUS and replaced the "I" with "J" making "Jesus."

 

And so it goes.

[TedGresham]

...because corporations would loose a fortune with all those WWJD products!

 

WWYD. Doesn't work.

 

[mwc]

I'm sorry if a thread on this subject already exists.

 

How did his name go from Yeshua to Jesus? Why would people call the one they worship by a translated name instead of his real name?

Do you have an example of this?

 

mwc

[Vigile]

In Russia 'hamburger' is 'gamburger'.

[Midnight-mindwanderings]

Some people still do call him yeshua and they are very annoying.

[qadeshet]

Joshua and Jesus are both spelled Yod Heh Shin Vau Heh in Hebrew. If both were spelled the same in English, Christians might figure out that both are the same Sun god.

[OpheliaGinger]

It's all in the translation. Jesus is a Greek translation, but the J was added by the English--Iesus to Jesus.

[mwc]

It's all in the translation. Jesus is a Greek translation, but the J was added by the English--Iesus to Jesus.

The problem is that "Jesus" or "Iesus" isn't in the text. Nomina Sacra is. This: "ΙΣ" or "ΙΥ" is in the text (with a little line over it normally indicating a number rather than a word but I can't replicate that here). So you have to go from "Yeshua" to "ΙΣ" to "Iesus/Jesus."

 

These leaps comes from texts like the LXX where people were replacing the Joshua's of the OT with the nomina sacra's and so then scholar's simply replaced the name Joshua/Jesus when they spotted the same "code." But since these manuscript changes come late and this Joshua/Jesus is obviously not the same as the one from the gospels is this really the same name or did people just start stuffing the change in after the fact for some unknown reason? It's never discussed by anyone at any time though it is universally used.

 

The name that was "originally" in the gospels, to us, is a mystery. It was and is a nomina sacra. We only have guessed that it is Jesus/Joshua based on what later scribes did to these other texts (ie. the LXX) and translators are "nice" enough to insert "Jesus" everywhere a nomina sacra is present without comment. For all we know the name was really "Skippy" and had an assigned value of 18 .

 

mwc

[Shyone]

For all we know the name was really "Skippy" and had an assigned value of 18 .

 

mwc

18 = 6x3

Three is the holy trinity.

Three sixes is 666

 

Ok, I'm convinced.

[Neon Genesis]

One thing I don't understand is why do we sometimes call NT characters by their Greek or Hebrew names but other characters we call by English names? Like we call Jesus Jesus but we don't call Peter Cephas or Rocky and we call Mary by an English name.

[Shyone]

One thing I don't understand is why do we sometimes call NT characters by their Greek or Hebrew names but other characters we call by English names? Like we call Jesus Jesus but we don't call Peter Cephas or Rocky and we call Mary by an English name.

Well, Jesus is his "English" name now. Mary is Maria though.

[mwc]

One thing I don't understand is why do we sometimes call NT characters by their Greek or Hebrew names but other characters we call by English names? Like we call Jesus Jesus but we don't call Peter Cephas or Rocky and we call Mary by an English name.

Peter is the transliteration of Greek (from petros). Cephas is Aramaic (I don't see how this is the same as Peter but that's because I don't connect "rock" with a "hollow place" found in rocks, like a shallow cave, but that's just me). Simon is Greek (literally "Σίμων" which is "S-i-m-o-n" letter for letter). Mary is from the Greek Mariam (also seen as Mariamne...hopefully I've recalled the spelling correctly). James is an oddball. It's from the Greek but it's Jacob in Hebrew. I'm not sure how it comes about (not that I've spent any amount of time looking into it).

 

Anyhow, nearly every name we use is from the Greek.

 

mwc