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USMA06
Guest
Isn’t it true that the real name of Jesus is Yahshua? Isn’t it also true is that the letter J was never used in Hebrew? Please answer. Thank you.
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B
Bithynian
Guest
In Hebrew and Aramaic it would’ve been יֵשׁוּעַ Yeshua.
By letter J, I assume you mean the the <d͡ʒ> sound (sometimes known as the voiced palato-alveolar sibilant affricate). Classical Hebrew (and I think Aramaic as well) has this sound, but it’s not orthographically marked. That is to say, they could (and most probably did) use <d͡ʒ>, but it was not written explicitly.
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Chistian-ity
Guest
I’m pretty sure it’s much ado about nothing. :woman_shrugging:t6:
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JSRG
Guest
Yahshua isn’t an actual name anyone had. It seems to have come about as a portmonteau of YHWH and Yeshua that seems to be of relatively recent origin.
The actual, original, Hebrew name of Jesus is… unknown. No, really. The New Testament, written in Greek, uses Iesous. The problem is that Iesous is the Greek version of several different Hebrew names–it can be used for Yeshua or Yehoshua (Joshua). Indeed, when Joshua is mentioned in the New Testament, “Iesous” is used. So we actually don’t know for sure what Jesus’s name was. Yeshua is often assumed, but it could have been something else, like Yehoshua.
As for Hebrew, it’s true the letter J was never used in Hebrew. No English letter was used in Hebrew–it had its own alphabet. Maybe you mean that there was no symbol that made the modern J sound, which (I believe) is true.
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Titivillus
Guest
Huh.
How did so many J-words come to be associated then? Judaism, Judea, Jerusalem, et cetera?
(Not to make light of what is actually a legit question, but it’s like Chewbacca in Star Wars – How is that his name? He can’t even pronounce it!?)
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OurLadyofSorrows
Guest
Yeshua means salvation. Yes there is J in Hebrew, it kind of functions within Y as in the letter Yod and can be pronounced in a couple of different ways.
At the beginning of a word yod is almost always pronounced/used as a J, as in Jerusalem, Jacob, Joshua, Johnathan.
The Yod looks like an apostrophe
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JSRG
Guest
Well, here is my understanding–I could be wrong. J originally was just a variant writing of I and they were seen as the same letter. I/J could be pronounced either as the modern “i” (e.g. “idea”) or the modern “y” (e.g. “yes”). Then people had the bright idea of using the two variants to differentiate it: Use J where you would use the “y” sound, and I where you would use the “i” sound. Thus, Iesus (taken from Latin) became Jesus, pronounced Yesus.JSRG:
Huh.
How did so many J-words come to be associated then? Judaism, Judea, Jerusalem, et cetera?
(Not to make light of what is actually a legit question, but it’s like Chewbacca in Star Wars – How is that his name? He can’t even pronounce it!?)
But then, the English pronunciation of J itself shifted–I’m not quite sure why–into its modern version, giving us a different pronunciation of Jesus even while its spelling remained the same (though for some reason, a few words like hallelujah retain the original pronunciation). Because the pronunciation of the word itself shifted, we end up with a pronunciation of a lot of words rather different than the words originally had.
Spanish actually did the same thing with a shift in the pronunciation of J, although in a different direction. Spanish now pronounces “j” in the way we pronounce “h” (e.g. “hungry”), and thus Jesus is pronounced hay-soos in Spanish.
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USMA06
Guest
I feel that it is not " much ado about nothing" because it seems it is repeated over and over “ask in my NAME” Hollow be thy NAME" You are saved by my NAME. So what IS his name? We need to know…as least I do.
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OurLadyofSorrows
Guest
hallowed, not hollow
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BartholomewB
Guest
In Hebrew, they’re two forms of the same name. Yehoshua is the full form of the name, while Yeshua is the customary short form.
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Bithynian
Guest
יֵשׁוּעַ Yeshua, Ἰησοῦς Iesous, Jesus, 耶稣 Yesu, etc. All refer to the Son of God. The Christian community (West and East) has never required that Jesus’ Hebrew or Aramaic name be the only name permissible in prayer.
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Zaccheus
Guest
What’s His name in Chinese? Or in Russian? Or in Croatian?
We don’t need to get the original pronunciation right. We just need to know who and what He is and then address our worship and petitions to Him.
He will know when we call upon Him and He is not going to reject a prayer because the one praying said ‘Jesu’ or ‘Hesus’ instead of whatever He was called during His life in Israel.
(Incidentally “Hesus” is how I understand it’s pronounced in Spanish.)
We don’t need to get the original pronunciation right. We just need to know who and what He is and then address our worship and petitions to Him.
He will know when we call upon Him and He is not going to reject a prayer because the one praying said ‘Jesu’ or ‘Hesus’ instead of whatever He was called during His life in Israel.
(Incidentally “Hesus” is how I understand it’s pronounced in Spanish.)
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BartholomewB
Guest
In Hebrew, these names all begin with the syllable Ye-. Judaism and Judea both derive from the tribe of Judah, in Hebrew Yehudah. Jerusalem in Hebrew is Yerushalayim. Our English forms of all the Old Testament names are not transliterated directly from the Hebrew forms. In the Septuagint, the Hebrew names were given Greek forms, which in turn were later given Latin forms, and it was from these Latin forms, found in the Vulgate, that our English forms are taken.
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BartholomewB
Guest
Adding to what I wrote earlier:
Here at CAF, we sometimes see questions about different English forms of an OT name, in Catholic and Protestant use, for instance Sophonias/Zephaniah or Abdias/Obadiah. The Catholic forms followed the chain of adaptations from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, while the earliest Protestant translators of the Bible opted, in some cases, to go back to the original Hebrew names.
This was not done consistently, however. For example, no English Bible that I have ever seen restores the Hebrew h in Aharon (Greek Aaron) or omits the Greek n on the end of Solomon (Hebrew Shlomoh).
Here at CAF, we sometimes see questions about different English forms of an OT name, in Catholic and Protestant use, for instance Sophonias/Zephaniah or Abdias/Obadiah. The Catholic forms followed the chain of adaptations from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, while the earliest Protestant translators of the Bible opted, in some cases, to go back to the original Hebrew names.
This was not done consistently, however. For example, no English Bible that I have ever seen restores the Hebrew h in Aharon (Greek Aaron) or omits the Greek n on the end of Solomon (Hebrew Shlomoh).
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Tis_Bearself
Patron
If you’re that concerned about the name of Jesus, despite the Church and the Divine Praises using it, you can always call him Christ or Emmanuel or Son of God.
Jesus is not concerned with “magic words”, he is concerned with our intention to pray to the Father in the name of the Son.
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