Yeshua

For the article on the Hebrew phrase "yemach shemo vezichro", meaning "May his name and memory be obliterated" and its different applications, see the Yeshu article. For the article on the person, teaching, and acts of Jesus Christ, see the Jesus article. For information on the various adherents to the religious teachings of Jesus see the articles on Christianity and Messianic Judaism.

Yeshua, spelled Template:Hebrew in Hebrew, is believed by some scholars and religious groups to be the Hebrew or Aramaic name for Jesus. It is extensively used by Messianic Jews, and Hebrew Christians, as well as others; who wish to use what some believe to be the original Hebraic pronunciation of Jesus' name. This pronounciation and spelling, as with many religious and scholarly issues, is not without its detractors.

Etymology

File:Yeshua Stam.jpg

Greek Iesous can stand for both Classical Biblical Hebrew Yehoshua (top two) and Late Biblical Hebrew Yeshua (bottom)

Main article: Names and titles of Jesus

Among the Jews of the Second Temple Period, the Late Biblical Hebrew name Template:Hebrew Yeshua was common: the Hebrew Bible mentions ten individuals with this name. This name is a feature of the later Hebrew dialect spoken at this time, and evident in biblical books like Ezra and Nehemiah and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and not undisputedly attested in texts from other periods.

This name Yeshua (= Jeshua) is a later form of the famous Classical Biblical Hebrew name Template:Hebrew Yehoshua (= Joshua), which can also be spelled Template:Hebrew. The Late Biblical Hebrew spellings for earlier names often contracted the theophoric element Yeho-. Thus the name Template:Hebrew Yehoshua contracted to Template:Hebrew Yeshua, and similarly Template:Hebrew Yehokhanan contracted to Template:Hebrew Yokhanan.

The original name Yehoshua was a compound of Yeho-shua: Yeho- Template:Hebrew is a shortened form of Template:Hebrew Yahu, a theophoric element standing for the personal name of God Yhwh, and Template:Hebrew shua is a noun meaning "a cry for help", "a saving cry", that is, a shout given when in need of rescue. Together the name literally means, "'God' is a saving-cry", that is, shout to God when in need of help. By extention, the name figuratively means, God is salvation, since God never ignores a cry for help. Philo of Alexandria attests this figurative meaning Koine Greek in 1st-century, in an explanation of the namechange of the biblical Joshua Ben Nun (from הוֹשֵעַ Hoshea "He saved" to יְהוֹשֻׁעַ Yehoshua): "And Iesous", standing for Hebrew Yehoshua means, "salvation of the Lord" (Template:Polytonic) (On the Change of Names 21.121). Similarly in 2nd century BCE, Yeshua Ben Sira eulogizes "Iesous the son of Naue", standing for Hebrew Yehoshua Ben Nun, "who according to his name became great for salvation of his chosen ones" (Template:Polytonic), where "his" is understood as referring to God's "chosen ones" (Ben Sira 46:1-2).

The noun Template:Hebrew shua derives from the Hebrew three-letter root Template:Hebrew sh-w-`. This root possibly derives indirectly, via a denominating from Template:Hebrew, from an early form of a root relating to the root Template:Hebrew y-sh-`, whose verb form Template:Hebrew hoshia means "he saved".

Although they may be related indirectly, the later name Template:Hebrew Yeshua does not derive directly from root Template:Hebrew and thus is not identical to the noun form Template:Hebrew yshua ("salvation") or to any verb form such as Template:Hebrew yoshia ("he will save").

Nevertheless, the letters of the traditional spelling of the name Yehoshua Template:Hebrew could be reread midrashically with different vowels and a silent letter He, as if a third person imperfect Hifil verb form of the root Template:Hebrew, so that it could be interpreted improperly as if meaning "he will save", yoshia Template:Hebrew (properly Template:Hebrewַ). Possibly this rereading is behind the Gospel's account where the angel instructs Joseph (1:21 Matthew 1:21): "You are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins". However if so, the actual name of the Historical Jesus was spelled like the traditional Hebrew name Template:Hebrew Yehoshua (= Joshua), and not spelled like the Late Biblical Hebrew name Template:Hebrew Yeshua (= Jeshua).

Pronunciation

The traditional Tiberian Hebrew vocalizes the Late Biblical Hebrew name Template:Hebrew as Template:Hebrew Yeshua /je.ˈʃu.aʕ/. (For example: Ezra 5:2.) The yod is vocalized with the Hebrew vowel, tsere, a long e (IPA /e/) as in "neighbor" (but not diphthongized) not with a shva (IPA /ə/) (as Y'shua) or segol (IPA /ɛ/)(Yesh-shua). The final consonant is the voiced pharyngeal fricative ayin (IPA /ʕ/), sometimes transcribed by "`" (Yeshua`), a sound not found in Greek or English. The "a" represents the patach genuvah ("furtive" patach) indicating the diphthongization of the "u" vowel due to the effect of the final `ayin - in simple terms the "a" is not an additional syllable but indicates a modification of the "u" vowel which due to the `ayin was pronounced somewhat like the oo of English moor as opposed to that of food.

Yeshua as the original name for Jesus

The claim that the form Yeshua is the original name for Jesus is debatable. The English name Jesus derives from the Late Latin name Iesus, which transliterates the Koine Greek name Template:Polytonic Iēsoûs. This Greek name can stand for either the traditional Biblical Hebrew name Yehoshua (= Joshua) or its Late Biblical Hebrew variant Yeshua (= Jeshua). The New Testament may be rendering either Yehoshua or Yeshua.

In the Septuagint and other Greek-language Jewish texts, such as the writings of Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, Template:Polytonic Iēsoûs is the standard Koine Greek form to stand for either form of the Hebrew name: Yehoshua (Joshua) or Yeshua (Jeshua). All occurrences of the term in the Hebrew Bible are in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. Two of the people bearing this name are mentioned in other books where they are instead called Yehoshua (Joshua son of Nun and Joshua son of Jehozadak). The name is used for Jesus son of Sirach in Hebrew fragments of the Book of Sirach. Based on comparison of texts, scholars agree that the book was originally written in Hebrew but some concern remains over whether the fragments faithfully represent the original Hebrew text. If accurate, this would extend evidence of the usage of the name to the early second century BCE. No usage of the name is found in the Talmud except in verbatim quotations from the Hebrew Bible regarding Joshua son of Jehozadak. The name Yehoshua however is used for numerous individuals from the Hasmonean period and onwards.

Some scholars argue the name of the Historical Jesus was the Greek form Iesous itself. Greek-speaking communities existed in Israel since the Hellenistic period, and the oldest extant manuscripts of the New Testament are in Koine Greek. However, the New Testament describes Jesus as part of a Jewish milieu, reading the Hebrew Bible and debating with Pharisees over interpretations of the Jewish legal tradition. The Gospel of Mark may have him speaking Aramaic. Moreover, Eusebius reports that Jesus's student Matthew wrote a gospel "in the Hebrew language" (a term which scholars agree then referred to the contemporary dialect of Hebrew or arguably Aramaic).

An argument in favor of the Hebrew form ישוע Yeshua is that the Old Syriac Bible (c. 200 CE) and the Peshitta preserves this same spelling using the equivalent Aramaic letters ܝܫܘܥ. (The modern Syriac vocalizes the name as Isho, which can be transliterated as יִשׁוֹע, but its ancient pronunciation was similar to Hebrew יֵשׁוּעַ Yeshua .) These texts were translated from the Greek but the name is not a simple transliteration of the Greek form (it has "sh" instead of "s" and ends with the pharyngeal ‘ayin not found in Greek). It can be argued that the Aramaic speakers who used this name could have had a continuous connection to the Aramaic speaking disciples of Jesus and thus preserved the actual name used for him. Even if derived from Hebrew Yeshua, the possibility that it was simply chosen based on the correspondence between Iēsoûs and Yeshua in the Septuagint cannot be ruled out.

The Arabic name for Jesus used by Christians, Yasū‘, derives from Yeshua. However, the Qur'an and other Muslim sources instead use a traditional Islamic title عيسى `Īsā, which can be transliterated as עִישָׂא and seems to derive from the Hebrew name Template:Hebrew ‘Esav, that is, the biblical patriarch Esau. Some Islamic scholars argue that it derives from the original Syriac Aramaic name Isho‘. However, the Aramaic has the letter ‘Ayin only at the end, whereas the Arabic has its equivalent letter ‘Ayn only at the beginning. This metathesis of the Aramaic ‘Ayin is improbable linguistically. Other Islamic scholars accept that the Quranic name is a cognate of Esau, and not Yeshua.

The Chinese name for Jesus, 耶穌 (pronounced Ye Su in Mandarin and Ye So in Cantonese), also uses Yeshua as the basis for pinyin.

See also

• Yahshua
• Yahshuah

External links

• Exposing the "Yeshu'a" Name Game A counter missionary article that argues that it is far from proven that the original name of Jesus was Yeshua and moreover unlikely.
• Who is Yeshua Ha Moshiach?
• A different view of the name Yeshua The name and the history
• Etymology of the name "Jesus"