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Tuesday, December 30, 2014

What Was Jesus' Name?

Lately I have heard many people refer to Jesus by His Hebrew name, Yeshua. I wanted to do some digging about why we call Him Jesus in Christian tradition. I am not an expert by any means, but I am going to do a little digging from the New Testament.
I looked up Matthew 1:1 in the Hebrew Lexicon (see link here ). Matthew 1:1 is simply "This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:". Jesus the Messiah in this verse is "Iesous  (ee-ay-sooce) Christos" in the Greek. Hmm.... Iesous sounds a lot like Jesus! I want to look up more. In Luke 1:31 we read of the angel Gabriel announcing the name Mary should call her son. The name that is written in the Greek is Iesous. Interesting!
Now I want to know, what does Paul and James call Our Lord in the New Testament?
Romans 1 starts out with "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. . ." Christ Jesus in this verse is "iēsou christou" translated, iēsou: "the Anointed One, Messiah, Christ". And christou is translated "Jesus or Joshua, the name of the Messiah, also three other Israelites". (See here ). Now I want to look at what James the brother of Jesus called Him. Surely if anyone knew His true name it would be his own brother right? James 1:1 is written: "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings." In this verse,  "Lord Jesus Christ" is "kuriou iēsou christou". Kuriou is translated: "Lord or master."
I am convinced by just this little bit of study that Jesus is a valid and true name for our Lord based on the Greek writings in the New Testament.

"Acension" by Chelsea Carbonell
This is mostly for my benefit as I have read some confusing things posted by people on Facebook and also implied in other ways about His wonderful Name. Its true, God has given Himself many names in scripture and it is obvious to me just by a few minutes of research that "Jesus" is a translation of the Greek word Iesous used prolifically in the New Testament. Even if we don't have His name exactly the way He says it in heaven, He still hears us and answers when we call on Him!



 
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