The name Jesus is the most important name or word to have ever been introduced and come out of the new testament.
The new testament itself is recorded to have been written in Greek/Aramaic Language between 50 and 100AD which is approximately 1922 years ago in the first century.
The original name for the popular godlike figure Jesus in the original greek bible is Yeshua,which in English translates to Joshua.
Jesus, which is the name used by most English-speaking people today, is an English transliteration of a Germanic adaptation, of a Latin transliteration, of a Greek transliteration of an originally Hebrew name, that is simply Yeshua.usage of the name Jesus is fairly recent. Up until about 400 -500 years ago, the name Jesus was not in wide usage.
The fascinating thing about the name Jesus is how it came to be,as there was no letter J in the greek alphabet before the 15th century.
This begs the question,how did the name Jesus come to be if the letter J was only introduced between the 14th and 15th century.
It turns out that the authors of the new testament were trying to convert the sound of the Hebrew/Aramaic name ''Yeshua'' into greek letters,but since the greek alphabet did not have the sound or spelling to represent the ''sh'' sound,they had to replace the middle letters SH with the letter S and added another S at the end to make the name sound more masculine.They came up with the word IESOUS which sounded closer to the name/word Yeshua.
The letter J began as a swash, a typographical embellishment for the already existing I. With the introduction of lowercase letters to the Roman numeric system, J was commonly used to denote the conclusion of a series of ones as in “xiij” for the number 13.
It wasn’t until 1524 when Gian Giorgio Trissino, an Italian Renaissance grammarian known as the father of the letter J, made a clear distinction between the two sounds. Trissino’s contribution is important because once he distinguished the soft J sound, as in “jam”, he was able to identify the Greek “Iesus” a translation of the Hebrew “Yeshua,” as the Modern English “Jesus.”
Therefore the name JESUS is a transliteration rather than a translation.
To ease things up between the 2 words,a translation is simply an act of rendering from one language to another while a transliteration is the conversion of letters and sounds from one alphabet to another.
THEORIES SURROUNDING THE NAME CHANGE
Though the transliteration was succesful,it has been met with mixed feelings from some christians,bible scholars and researchers.
Many have often wondered what was so hard about translating the name Yeshua to its english equivilant Joshua rather than going through all the trouble that came with the names transliteration.
Well its been theorised that the name change is one of,if not the greatest identity theft in history as it was further accompanied by photographs of a blond-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned and pointed-nose European man rather than a brown-skinned middle eastern Jew identical to his place of origin or birth.
The move is also thought to have been a way to differentiate christ from the old testament Joshua.
It was also theorised that the name Iesous had a deep connection with the pagan god ZEUS,that the name simply mean hail ZEUS.This is also considered to maybe be one of the reasons why the transliteration happened as it is thought that the move was to make Jesus more acceptable to pagans.
Many may ask,is it right for Christians today to continue using the name Jesus when praying rather than Yeshua or Joshua?
Why would the christian community allow a made up name to be used over the original despite it not being lost in time?
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