The letter 'J'

[lemonbeam]

If the letter J was not been invented until quite recently in historical terms, that sound, that letter, was not in the Hebrew alphabet or the Greek alphabet, then how is there any way that the Messiah’s name was Jesus?

 

[VociMike]

Why do you claim that the sound (and there is more than one) signified (in English, I assume) by the letter ‘J’ is a recent invention? I find that impossible to believe.

 

[FickleFreckled]

Jesus’ name was Yeshua. Jesus is the English version of that.

 

[LilyM]

Jesus’ name was Yeshua. Jesus is the English version of that.

The name ‘Joshua’ is also derived from the same Hebrew name. Means ‘God saves’ - highly appropriate

I think the SOUND signified by the letter ‘j’ has always existed, although different letters were used to signify it in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, as the LETTER J certainly didn’t exist.

Point being the Greek, Latin and Hebrew texts don’t USE those alternative letters that would signify a hard ‘j’ sound. The letters they use represent the sound represented currently in English by the letter Y (as in ‘yes’)- and Jesus’ name in Hebrew (Yeshua), Greek (Iesous) and Latin (Iesus) never would’ve been pronounced with the hard ‘j’ sound.

 

[Maranatha]

This is what Wikipedia says:

Modern English “Jesus” ˈdʒi.zəs] derives from Early Middle English Iesu (attested from the 12th century). The name participated in the Great Vowel Shift in late Middle English (15th century). The letter J was first distinguished from ‘I’ by the Frenchman Pierre Ramus in the 16th, but did not become common in Modern English until the 17th century, so that early 17th century works such as the first edition of the King James Version of the Bible (1611) continued to print the name with an I.

So I guess we can blame the French.

 

[FickleFreckled]

Wow! That’s a lot of interesting information!

I really like the sound of “Yeshua.” It sounds very gentle to me.

 

[survive]

The letter J is pronounced “Y” in German and “H” in Spanish, [soft] “J” (for lack of any phonetic alphabet keys) in French, and is how many "d"s sound next to a fairly close “Y”. It’s the voiced version of “Ch”, which is to “T” what “J” is to “D”. It’s a continuum and it flows all the time.

 

[Chicago_Bears]

Jesus probably would have been known as “Yeshua bar Yosef.” A fairly common name in first-century Israel.

 

[JMJ_coder]

What happened is that many started making exaggerated and fancy looking ‘I’ letters for use in special circumstances. And of course, people being much more pious back then, Iesus naturally was given this fancy ‘I’. In time, this fancy I began to develop it’s own sound and in more time, it became it’s own letter.