Joshua the Christ

Names are funny things. When translated through different languages over very long periods of time they can take very different forms.

The great Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, as translated through Greek, ended up as Ozymandias.

This is not all that uncommon; my name “Stephen” in Spanish is “Esteban,” its origin is Greek: Στεφανος (Stephanos). Also, my name can be spelled multiple ways: Stephen, Steven, Stefan, etc. and each version can yield a slightly different pronunciation and none are, strictly speaking, wrong.

Jesus of Nazareth had a fairly common name for his day. In Hebrew his name is spelled as Yeshua. Later languages, for example, would add a hard J for the Y, as was the norm in that language. This is a very natural occurrence. I have had more than one conversation in English with a native Spanish speaker who in calling me by my name would call me “Eh-Steven”. This is purely a result of how the Spanish language forms the words in your mouth. It is very easy to see “Stephen” becoming “Eh-Steven” to “Esteban.” It’s subtle and it’s natural.

Yeshua was a common name, and appears all over the Bible. Often we do not recognize is because of the languages that that Bible went through. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and when the name “Yeshua” is translated from the Hebrew into English it can be translated as “Joshua” and even “Isaiah.” (Play with the pronunciations, with sounds becoming softer or harder in the speaker’s mouths, and both names make complete sense.)

Yeshua, as translated through the Greek, which was the language of the New Testament, become Iēsous, which when translated to English becomes “Jesus.” The name Jesus is a translation of a translation.

This does not make it wrong; it merely opens up an interesting facet of the complexity of language evolution.

Jesus was his name, but Joshua was also his name, and so was Isaiah, because they are all the same name.

Happy Slightly Belated Easter! (Or Ēostre… but that is a whole different blog post…)