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Is the name of Jesus a mis-transliteration?

 Submitted: 11/30/2010
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Question: I was speaking to someone about the name of Jesus and she said that was not the real name. The real name is Yeshua. That the name Jesus wasn't even his name. An article I found read 'The Mis-Transliteration of a Greek Mis-Transliteration.' It stated Jesus is a mistranlation. How did the name Jesus come about? Yeshua is the original Aramaic proper name for Jesus the Nazarene, who lived from about 6 B.C.E. to 27 C.E. (A.D.) The word 'Jesus' is actually a mis-transliteration of a Greek mis-transliteration. The Emperor Constatine even mistook Jesus for Apollo, the son of the Greek god Zeus. In Hebrew Yeshua means Salvation while the name Jesus has no intrinsic meaning in English whatsoever.
Answer: What you have been told and what you have read is NOT correct. It is true that when Jesus walked the earth, His parents and friends probably called Him Yeshua, which is His Hebrew name. It was God Himself who chose to have the New Testament written in Greek; therefore, the Greek texts call Him Iesous (pronouce Yeh-soos), which is the correct transliteration of the Hebrew name Yeshua. When the Greek texts were translated into English, the English transliteration for Iesous became Jesus. There is no problem with any of this. God recognizes all languages. The Spanish pronounce His name Hay-soos. The French call Him Je-soo with a soft J sound. When I was in Jordan they called Him Yesha. All of these are okay. The real issue is not how we spell or pronounce His name, it is whether or not we know the One who bears the name.


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