Surely, Jesus Christ is the most famous historical figure of all time, and in all probability the most important. But beyond the Bible, we have few glimpses of The private life of the Messiah.
One of the details about which there is the most confusion is the name of the historical Jesus. Scholars believe that Jesus would have had a name in his own native language, Aramaicwhich has certain differences from our modern version.
In fact, the name ‘Jesus’ even contains letters that were not used in written language until 1,500 years after his death. Throughout the 2,000-year history of Christianity, the original name of Jesus has been obscured by layers of translation and transliteration.
The name of Jesus traveled a long linguistic path from its own Aramaic to Hebrew, then to Greek and Latin before it could receive a translation into current modern languages.
Jesus, the historical figure, and his disciples lived in a region of the Roman Empire called Judea, in modern-day Israel. However, most scholars believe that Jesus was born and raised in the city of Nazarethwhich is part of Galilee, a smaller province to the north.
Professor Dineke Houtman, an expert on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity at the Protestant Theological University of the Netherlands, explains to the Daily Mail: “We cannot know with certainty what languages Jesus spoke. However, given his family origin in Nazareth, we can assume that Their everyday language was Aramaic.
Therefore, it is reasonable to think that Jesus himself would have used a name in his native language, Aramaic. Professor Houtman says: “His name would probably have been Aramaic: Yeshua“.
“It’s likely that this is also how it was presented. Another possibility is the abbreviated form Yeshuwhich is the one used in later rabbinic literature,” adds the scholar.
According to a study published by archaeologist Rachel Hachlili, some variation of Yeshu or Yeshua was the sixth most common name at the time of Jesus’ life.
Professor Candida Moss, an expert on early Christianity at the University of Birmingham, says: “Most scholars agree that his name was Yeshua or possibly Yeshu, which was one of the most common names in first century Galilee.”
The question becomes a little more difficult when we come to the question of Jesus’ full name. Despite a common mistake, Christ is not the last name of Jesus, but a title or honorific title meaning ‘Messiah’ or ‘God’s anointed’.
During the Roman period, High-status people used a three-name structure composed of an individual name or praenomena surname called nomen and an additional nickname called cognomen.
However, since he was a poor Jew, Jesus would not have been given a full name like this. Dr. Marko Marina, a historian at the University of Zagreb, explains: “In the ancient world, most people They did not have a surname as we understand it today. Instead, they were identified by other means, such as their ancestry, place of origin, or other distinguishing characteristics.
“For example, someone might be referred to as ‘John, son of Zebedee’ or ‘Mary Magdalene’, where ‘Magdalena’ probably indicates that she was from a place called Magdala,” he explains.
Since Jesus is referred to throughout the Bible as “Jesus of Nazareth” or “Jesus the Nazarene”, he may have used this as a practical means of distinguishing himself from other people called Yeshu or Yeshua. That would make Jesus’ full name ‘Yeshu Nazaren’.
Since we know that Jesus was called ‘Yeshu’ or ‘Yeshua’, the obvious question is why we now call him ‘Jesus’. The answer has to do with the practice of transliteration. When the Gospel writers came to write the New Testament in Greek, they used this process to convert the Aramaic name Yeshua into something more familiar.
However, when those Greek translators found names like Yeshu and Yehoshuathey didn’t have all the right sounds and letters in their own language to transliterate them correctly.
Professor Moss says: “In the 1st century AD there was already a precedent for transliterating the Aramaic name Yeshua like Iesous. Thus, when Paul and the evangelists refer to Jesus – Yeshu/a – they use the already established Greek equivalent of Iesous with an ‘s’ sound at the end.”
“When the New Testament was translated into Latin there was another slight change, this time from Iesous was transcribed as Iesus“Moss adds.
Before the 16th century, written texts did not distinguish between the letters ‘i’ and ‘j’, although they were pronounced differently. The first person to make this distinction is believed to have been an Italian grammarian named Gian Giorgio Trissino in 1524.
However, after its innovation, the new ‘j’ sound began to spread and translators began to include it in biblical names. “In the 17th century, when the letter ‘j’ emerged, the ‘j’ sound took over and Iesus became Jesus“says Moss.
Meanwhile, all the other figures called Yeshua or Yehoshua that had not received so many layers of transliteration were updated to become Joshua.
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