How "Yeshua" Became
"Jesus"
The first letter in the name Yeshua ("Jesus") is the yod. Yod
represents the "Y" sound in Hebrew. Many names in the Bible that
begin with yod are mispronounced by English speakers because the yod in these
names was transliterated in English Bibles with the letter "J" rather
than "Y". This came about because in early English the letter
"J" was pronounced the way we pronounce "Y" today. All
proper names in the Old Testament were transliterated into English according to
their Hebrew pronunciation, but when English pronunciation shifted to what we
know today, these transliterations were not altered. Thus, such Hebrew place
names as ye-ru-sha-LA-yim, ye-ri-HO, and yar-DEN have become known to us as
Jerusalem, Jericho, and Jordan; and Hebrew personal names such as yo-NA,
yi-SHAI, and ye-SHU-a have become known to us as Jonah, Jesse, and Jesus.
The yod is the smallest letter of the alphabet, which is why Yeshua used it in
His famous saying in Matt 5:18: "Until heaven and earth pass away not one
yod ("iota" in the Greek text) or one kots will pass from the
Torah." For emphasis, Yeshua incorporated in this saying a well-known
Hebrew expression: lo' yod ve-LO' ko-TSO shel yod, "not a yod and not a
'thorn' of a yod," i.e., not the most insignificant and unimportant thing.
When Yeshua declared that heaven and earth might sooner disappear than the
smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, or the smallest stroke of a letter, He
was simply saying that the Torah ("Law" or "Teaching") of
Moses would never cease to be.
The second sound in Yeshua's name is called tse-RE, and is pronounced almost
like the letter "e" in the word "net". Just as the
"Y" sound of the first letter is mispronounced in today's English, so
too the first vowel sound in "Jesus". Before the Hebrew name
"Yeshua" was transliterated into English, it was first transliterated
into Greek. There was no difficulty in transliterating the tse-RE sound since
the ancient Greek language had an equivalent letter which represented this
sound. And there was no real difficulty in transcribing this same first vowel
into English. The translators of the earliest versions of the English Bible
transliterated the tse-RE in Yeshua with an "e". Unfortunately, later
English speakers guessed wrongly that this "e" should be pronounced
as in "me," and thus the first syllable of the English version of
Yeshua came to be pronounced "Jee" instead of "Yeh". It is
this pronunciation which produced such euphemistic profanities as
"Gee" and "Geez".
Since Yeshua is spelled "Jeshua" and not "Jesus" in most
English versions of the Old Testament (for example in Ezra 2:2 and 2 Chronicles
31:15), one easily gets the impression that the name is never mentioned in the
Hebrew Scriptures. Yet 'Yeshua' appears there twenty-nine times, and is the
name of at least five different persons and one village in the southern part of
Yehudah ("Judah").
In contrast to the early biblical period, there were relatively few different
names in use among the Jewish population of the Land of Israel at the time of
the Second Temple. The name Yeshua was one of the most common male names in
that period, tied with Eleazer for fifth place behind Simon, Joseph, Judah, and
John. Nearly one out of ten persons known from the period was named Yeshua.
The first sound of the second syllable of Yeshua is the "sh" sound.
It is represented by the Hebrew letter shin. However Greek, like many other
languages, has no "sh" sound. Instead, the closest approximation, the
Greek sigma, was used when transcribing "Yeshua" as
"Iesus". Translators of English versions of the New Testament
transliterated the Greek transcription of a Hebrew name, instead of returning
to the original Hebrew. This was doubly unfortunate, first because the
"sh" sound exists in English, and second because in English the
"s" sound can shift to the "z" sound, which is what
happened in the case of the pronunciation of "Jesus".
The fourth sound one hears in the name Yeshua is the "u" sound, as in
the word "true". Like the first three sounds, this also has come to
be mispronounced but in this case it is not the fault of the translators. They
transcribed this sound accurately, but English is not a phonetic language and
"u" can be pronounced in more than one way. At some point the
"u" in "Jesus" came to be pronounced as in "cut,"
and so we say "Jee-zuhs."
The "a" sound, as in the word "father," is the fifth sound
in Jesus' name. It is followed by a guttural produced by contracting the lower
throat muscles and retracting the tongue root- an unfamiliar task for English
speakers. In an exception to the rule, the vowel sound "a" associated
with the last letter "ayin" (the guttural) is pronounced before it,
not after. While there is no equivalent in English or any other Indo-European
language, it is somewhat similar to the last sound in the name of the composer,
"Bach." In this position it is almost inaudible to the western ear.
Some Israelis pronounce this last sound and some don't, depending on what part
of the dispersion their families returned from. The Hebrew Language Academy,
guardian of the purity of the language, has ruled that it should be sounded,
and Israeli radio and television announcers are required to pronounce it correctly.
There was no letter to represent them, and so these fifth and sixth sounds were
dropped from the Greek transcription of "Yeshua," -the transcription
from which the English "Jesus" is derived.
So where did the final "s" of "Jesus" come from? Masculine
names in Greek ordinarily end with a consonant, usually with an "s"
sound, and less frequently with an "n" or "r" sound. In the
case of "Iesus," the Greeks added a sigma, the "s" sound,
to close the word. The same is true for the names Nicodemus, Judas, Lazarus,
and others.
English speakers make one further change from the original pronunciation of
Jesus' name. English places the accent on "Je," rather than on
"sus." For this reason, the "u" has shortened in its
English pronunciation to "uh."
In the West, a child's name is often chosen for its pleasant sound, or because
another family member had it. The Jews of the Second Temple period also named
after relatives (Luke 1:59-63). However, almost all Jewish names have a literal
meaning. Occasionally this is seen in English names too, such as Scott (a
person from Scotland), Johnson (son of John), and Baker (bread maker). But with
Hebrew names it is the rule, rather than the exception.
The name Yeshua means The LORD's Salvation, or Cry Out to the LORD for Help. It
is the short version of Yahoshua,
literally "YHWH saves (or turns) us". In comparison, prior to being
transliterated from the Hebrew Bible, the name Iesus did not exist in Greek.
Through multiple translations and changes in pronunciation, a tradition of
saying "Jesus" has obscured His name, "Yeshua." It has
shifted His perceived message and identity from Hebrew to Greek.
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