John-Luke Muresan Part-time Children and Youth Minister of Arthur Pentecostal

So, in the Hebrew the name Joshua is pronounced "יְהוֹשֻׁעַ" or "Yehoshua" and is alternately pronounced "יֵשׁוּעַ" or "Yeshua", this can be considered an Aramaic variation of the original name.

Now, in Greek we find that Jesus' name is "Ἰησοῦς" or "Y-ei-soos" and taking into account the different phonetics due to transliteration and looking in the Septuagint we find that the name Joshua is transliterated as "ιησοι" in Joshua 1:1 which is a different form (genitive I believe) of "Ἰησοῦς" (which is nominative). In other words, it's the same name.

Now, the reason that we still call Him "Jesus" is because it's the English transliteration of "Ἰησοῦς", His Greek name. In Spain they don't call Him "Jesus" they call him "Jesús" which is pronounced "Hey-soos" and the certainly don't call Him "Ἰησοῦς".

The reason we choose to transliterate Jesus versus Joshua is because the Holy Spirit saw it fit to give us the New Testament in Greek and the Old Testament in Hebrew, when Paul preached the sermon on Mars Hill and when Peter presented the Gospel to Cornelius' house (Acts 17:22-31; Acts 20:23-33) they definitely called Him Ἰησοῦς instead of Yeshua. We have no real evidence to suppose that the New Testament (as a whole) was written in Hebrew and then translated to Greek. So we simply follow in the Holy Spirit's tradition and the tradition of the Church and call Him Jesus Christ instead of Yeshua Meshiach. Much love, God bless.

November 03 2013 • 1 response • Vote Up • Share • Report

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