Shhh... Don't Call Him Jesus... Call Him...

There may be some of you who have never had anyone say that to you. So, whatever could I be referring to when someone tells you that Jesus is not His name? Well, to put it simply, Jesus's actual name when He lived and walked about Capernaum was Yeshua.

Yeshua is what His name would have been in Aramaic, as many Jews during His time didn't speak Hebrew, but Aramaic and Phoenician which are closely related Semitic languages. Some of us may be thinking well then if we translate Yeshua from Aramaic to English then it will be Jesus....right? That would actually be a no. Yeshua translated to English would be Joshua.

So why do we not call Jesus, Joshua, instead if His name in His own tongue would be that in our language of English? Well it is important to remember that Jesus lived in the first century, English was not a language then, so no one would have been speaking it. Many Jews didn't speak Hebrew or Aramaic, they spoke Greek or another language. Just like at Pentecost there was more languages spoken then just Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic. But let's stay on point, why do we not call Jesus, Joshua? Jesus is translated from Greek, not Aramaic.

The New Testament is written in Greek as it was the main language of the day. Now through the centuries we have had the Scriptures translated into many languages, Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English (plus languages today such as French and Spanish). Yet, we have another interesting detail, in Greek, Jesus’s name is not Yeshua, but it is. The Aramaic name of Yeshua in the Greek is Iesous, which then translated into Latin is Iesus.

So, why do we call Him Jesus? Well the English language is a mixed bag of languages but its roots are based from Latin. So, in the Latin Vulgate translated by the church father Jerome it reads, Iesus. In the years leading up to the Reformation in the 1500’s and after we start to have Scripture translated into what was called “vulgar” tongues. English was one of those vulgar languages like German and we have much of our English language indebted to two church fathers John Wycliffe (1384) and William Tyndale (1536); both were killed for translating Scripture into their native language and not adhering to the Catholic Church's teaching during their time.

There is a critique that I have run into when talking to people who want to adhere to Jesus’s name in Hebrew, which is not wrong, but it becomes wrong when you condemn others for not saying the preferred name they want you to call Him. Paul refers to this type of issue in Romans 14. This is typically known as the sin of the weaker brother, that being that if I am with someone who calls Jesus, Yeshua. When I am with them I will call Him Yeshua as well because I love my brother or sister in Christ and I know they do not like the English name Jesus, so in not wanting to make them stumble I say it the way they prefer. "Therefore let us not pass judgement on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother." (Romans 14:13). Yet, if the weaker brother starts trying to enforce the usage of their preferred word and then go as far to say that Jesus is a false name and if you say it you are not calling upon God but a false deity, we are to fight that vehemently.

This has to do with Christian liberty, you can call Jesus by any of His names or titles, you are still referring to the same person, but we cannot condemn others because we think Yeshua is better than Jesus or vice versa. Paul is speaking in regards to food in Romans 14 but the principle applies to more than just food, there are things that God lets us be free in and we are held by our conscience. In other words if we believe it is a sin to eat pork or drink alcohol then it is a sin for those of us who believe it to be by our conscience. Yet, nowhere does it say that drinking alcohol is a sin, it is a sin to be drunk, but not to have some wine with dinner. Paul urges his audience, "Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats." (Romans 14:20). The same principle goes for those of us who prefer to call Jesus, Yeshua, or Iesus, or any one of His titles. But, why do we call Him Jesus?

We call Him Jesus because the Latin, that being Iesus translated into English is Jesus. It’s quite simple. I have also heard of an argument as to why Jesus is a false name is because the letter J is a newer letter it is about 500 years old. So, His name could not have been Jesus. I hope you see the fault in this argument, the English language has not been around nearly as long as Greek, Hebrew, or Latin. Yet, it is derived from Latin (also Greek and Hebrew I might add, we get our word Megaphone [and many others] from Greek). Now if you recall that I mentioned earlier that it wasn’t until the years leading up to and after 1500 that Scripture started to get translated into the “vulgar” languages. Well, it is 2022 at the time of writing and it has been about five hundred years since Martin Luther tacked his 95 theses on the bulletin of his church. So, the letter J would have been developed around the time of the Bible being translated into English. Also, the letter J is derived by two interesting letters from two of our beloved languages: Hebrew and Greek. Those letters being Y and I, you may see what is happening here, but for those who do not like to look ahead. The letter J that is the start of the English name Jesus is derived from the two letters that also start Jesus’s other names in the languages of Hebrew (Yeshua) and Greek (Iesous).

It may not be overly spectacular in how we got His name as Jesus in English, but we can be quite certain that we are saying the correct name. Where might this misguided idea of only referring to Jesus in a particular language come from. In honesty it comes from people who may be thinking that we need to recover the lost pure language of Hebrew. In other words it is coming from a desire to have a pureness to what we say or how we pronounce something. Yet, I personally think that this is a distraction and it only brings confusion. We have hundreds of thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament and of the Bible in general; some think this is bad. Yet it is actually a good thing, yet those who see differently may say that there are variants to what was written. The thing is though, they are right, but most variants are the differences in whenever a writer mentioned Jesus’s name or title. When we have a manuscript that says ‘Jesus Christ’ then another that says in the same spot ‘Christ Jesus’ it is a variant; yet not a bad thing. So most of textual variations are like the example I provided, now there are some bigger ones but they do not affect the Word of God as a whole, we still get the same message and teaching.

We are quite certain that we know what was written was what was really written and said as for when it comes to works of antiquity that being historical it is a good thing to have copies upon copies. The Bible is the most documented work of antiquity, we have far more copies of the Bible than Homer. For history we are lucky to have two independent sources saying the same thing, we have much more than two when it comes to the Bible.

Another thing that drives this is not understanding translations, there are some who say that only the Hebrew is inspired the rest are interpretations. This is straight up false, although there are many today that say the same thing about the 1611 King James translation of the Bible as the only thing that is inspired and they reject the original languages too. The same thing happens to the Textus Receptus (Latin for 'received text') the translation of the New Testament in Greek that Erasmus of Rotterdam did from the Latin Vulgate that as I mentioned earlier Jerome produced. There is this fault to limit God in how He has preserved His word.

It may be harsh but it is the truth, those who think otherwise do not truly understand textual criticism and the transmission of Scripture. I am no expert myself in textual criticism but I do trust the Word of God because I trust God when He said that His Word will never pass away. This idea that we do not know His name is quite far-fetched, for if it was only the Hebrew that was inspired and the rest was only interpretation and that you had to say the Father and the Son’s names in the inspired language then there would be a lot of Christians throughout history whose faith would have been in vain, all because they said or mispronounced a name.

We are not saved by saying a name correctly or in what translation we read from; we are saved by the Son who came into this world in flesh and lived a sinless life and fulfilled the Law and the Prophets and then died the death we all deserve and then rose on the third day. We are saved by having faith in Christ, we believe in Him. It is by the grace of the sovereign God that we are saved by faith. If we think that if we need to say Yeshua instead of Jesus, even when your native tongue is English so that God will hear you so that you do not cast His name into ruin you have made a work-based salvation. There is nothing we could ever do to obtain salvation, it is not based by merit it is by grace. Repentance and salvation are gifts from God, we only receive them.

If we run into those who think these particular things about language and which days to adhere to or even what to eat, they do not truly understand what Christ has accomplished and done for us. Yet, "Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind." (Romans 14:5b). We are not saved by works or the works of the law, the Law was never meant to save but to reveal to us our need for a savior. "For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them." (Galatians 3:10). This is why Christ crucified is so important to understanding our salvation and what Christ has accomplished for us. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"--so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith." (Galatians 3:13-14). We should all be like the Psalmist in Psalm 119 and love the law as it is good as it teaches us the character of God and of His holiness and also teaches us who we are and what we need. And we can do those things by having faith in Christ and desiring to obey His commandments.

Helpful Resources for Further Study: (I have found these to be quite helpful with these principles of dealing with different views that are not reasons to break fellowship over, unless they do what I have described above; which in reality is a conversation we should still have with them).

The King James Only Controversy By Dr. James R. White (For textual criticism and transmission of Scripture and translations; it is a book).

https://youtu.be/05aK7itUvho (King James and New Testament Reliability, long form video).

https://youtu.be/BqcwcxoxoUo (Canonization and Transmission of Scripture, long form video).

https://youtu.be/Eh3k_A9ugOo (A Shorter video of James White explaining reliable translations).

https://youtu.be/VQU7Gkrk0ew (What Mike Winger thinks about how to respond to King James only).