So I've been thinking about this for awhile because I've heard some people say it's really important to call our savior Yahshua because that was actually his name and also because that means God our Savior? they also say that the word Jesus doesn't translate into the same meaning and also that it's derived from Zeus?
Have any of you guys heard that?
Does anyone know why they didn't keep the original Spelling?
Not sure but interested to hear what people say...
Thanks for any input = )
No, the name 'Jesus' is not derived from 'Zeus,' rather it is a transliteration of a transliteration. I know that sounds strange, but I'll explain.
Hebrew and Greek obviously have different alphabets. The rules of grammar are different in many cases as well. The first letter of the Hebrew 'Yeshua" is 'yod.' This Hebrew letter has a 'y' sound at the beginning of a word, and an 'i' sound when used later in a word. The 'yod' has no exact counterpart in Greek, but the Greek 'iota' which looks like our 'i' and sounds like our 'e' in evil, is closest. Also, the 'sh' sound in Yeshua is the Hebrew 'shin' which has no counterpart in Greek. The closest is the Greek 'sigma' which sounds like our 's.' So far, you can begin to see how the Hebrew Yeshua becomes the Greek Iesous (pronounced Yay - soos),
Now let's deal with the 'aleph' or 'a' that appears at the end of Yeshua. Why isn't it included in Iesous? Greek is a highly inflected language, which simply means that words change form to indicate their grammatical role in a sentence. Greek nouns, for example, employ a certain letter or letters as case endings. When it comes to the Hebrew Yeshua, the 'aleph' is dropped and the Greek nominative case ending 'sigma' (s) is added. If you were to look at a Greek text of the Bible you would also see other inflections of Iesous such as Iesou, which employs a genitive case ending for example. There is no English equivalent of these inflections so English translations simply render all inflections as Jesus.
O.k., so how did the 'J' sneak in to Iesous? There's more to the story, but I'll make a long story short. Throughout the medieval period, the forms of the modern “i” and “j” in English were used interchangeably, and both forms represented the same letter. Eventually, 'i' and 'j' became distinct letters and the 'j' replaced the 'i' in Iesous so that we now have Jesus in English.
