Ancient Paths - Our Saviour's True Name

The following is a short Bible study on Jesus’ true Name compiled from multiple internet articles.  Personally, I have called on the Name of Jesus for years and do not have any problem with using the Name of Jesus in prayer, teaching or in praise.  However, I have moved into a season in my walk that I now prefer to use the Hebrew Name of Yeshua because it actually means something in the Hebrew language (Salvation or YHWH saves). 

Also in the process of my studies I found that whenever you see LORD in all caps in the Old Testament it means the original Word used in Hebrew was the four letter tetragrammaton for the Name of God - YHWH (normally pronounced Yahweh).  It was changed originally by the Hebrew scribes who wrote the OT because of their reverence for the revealed Name of God - YHWH.  Instead of using YHWH they would replace it with Adonai or HaShem which simply mean Lord and the Name respectively.  This is important to understand because knowing God's revealed Name in the Old Covenant or Testament helps us (leads us) to understand God's revealed Name in the New Covenant (Testament)...which (as referenced above) is Yeshua and again means "YHWH saves".  I am also now convinced that the Hebrew Word for God, Elohim is the more accurate reference.  Elohim is a Hebrew Masculine plural form that when used in a sentence takes singular verb and pronoun forms.  When using a pronoun for Elohim you would always say "He" rather than "they" when referring to the One God of Israel.  However, when the term elohim is used in reference to pagan gods, it receives a plural verb and noun form.  This is very telling because it shows us that when used in reference to the God of Israel, it refers to only one! - and that it in no way points to a trinity of persons (multiple gods) but rather a single person with a pluralistic nature.  That is and always has been the Hebrew understanding of this word.    

Name of Yeshua (Article)

It's what his father and mother and his brothers and sisters called him and it's how his followers knew him. Probably the name was pronounced in the rough regional dialect of Galilee as 'Yeshu'... (Akenson, 2000, p. 57).

"Before 586B.C. (approx), the name Yehoshua (the proper name for Yeshua) consisted of ... two roots. The first, yeho, is the theophoric referring to God. The second, shua, means "help" and the name meant, "Whose help is YHWH/God." In 2nd temple times, it became a practice NOT to use full theophorics to prevent accidentally voicing the name of God so the theophorics were truncated and Yehoshua became Y'shua. In the Galilee, Aramaic was pronounced differently and Galileans dropped their alefs and ayins like Cockney English drop their H's. Jesus' Galilean friends would have called him Yeshu. Therefore, in Judea and formally, his name was Yeshua, yehSHOO-ah, and in the Galilee his name was pronounced Yeshu, pronounced YEHshoo. (Jack Kilmon, 2006)

THE REALITY

There never was a person named Jesus Christ!

His first name wasn’t Jesus and his last name wasn’t Christ.

The original baptism was not in the Name of Jesus, it was in the Name of Yeshua.

When Peter spoke Acts 2:38 he did not use the Name of Jesus Christ but rather he commanded:…”Repent and baptized every one of you in the Name of “Yeshua” the Messiah or Mashiach (Hebrew)

 Jesus’ real name in earlier periods was Yehoshua or in the Second Temple period Yeshua (translated from Hebrew OT into English as Joshua). When the English rendered the Latin IESVS from the Greeks who translated the Semitic name Yeshua they came up with Jesus (Yehoshua became Yeshua became Iesous became Jesus), and that name stuck. But his real name in his own language (probably Aramaic) was Yeshua, which was a very good name in the Hebrew tradition. It meant – “Yahweh (God) is savior (helper)”.

As far as his last name goes, in those days, people didn’t have last names. He would have been called Yeshua bar Yahosef bar Yaqub, Joshua, son of Joseph, son of Jacob. Yet many people think his last name was Christ! Not true. He was never called Jesus Christ! Jesus/Joshua was the Messiah, which in Hebrew (moschiach) means “the anointed one” [3]. The Greek word for the oil used to anoint someone is “khrisma”, and the person so anointed is “Khristos” in Greek, “Christus” in Latin, and “Christ” in English.

 From About.com Christian site:

 Yeshua is the Aramaic name for the Lord. It means "Yahweh [the Lord] is Salvation." The English spelling of Yeshua is “Joshua.” However, when translated from Aramaic into the Greek language, the name Yeshua becomes Iēsous. The English spelling for Iēsous is “Jesus.”

 Basically, what this means is Joshua and Jesus are the same name. One is translated from Hebrew/Aramaic (Yehoshua or Yeshua) into English (Joshua), the other from Greek (Iesous) into English (Jesus). It is also interesting to note, the names "Joshua" and "Isaiah" are essentially the same names as Yeshua in Hebrew. They mean "Savior" and "the salvation of the Lord."

 Wikipedia info on the Name of Yeshua:

 Yeshua (ישוע, with vowel pointing יֵשׁוּעַ - yēšūă‘ in Hebrew)[1] was a common alternative form of the name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ ("Yehoshuah" - Joshua) in later books of the Hebrew Bible and among Jews of the Second Temple period. The name corresponds to the Greek spelling Iesous, from which comes the English spelling Jesus.[2][3]

 The Hebrew spelling Yeshua (ישוע) appears in some later books of the Hebrew Bible . Once for Joshua the son of Nun, and 28 times for Joshua the High Priest and (KJV "Jeshua") and other priests called Jeshua - although these same priests are also given the spelling Joshua in 11 further instances in the books of Haggai and Zechariah. It differs from the usual Hebrew Bible spelling of Joshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ y'hoshuaʿ), found 218 times in the Hebrew Bible, in the absence of the consonant he ה and placement of the semivowel vav ו after, not before, the consonant shin ש. It also differs from the Hebrew spelling Yeshu (ישו) which is found in Ben Yehuda's dictionary and used in most secular contexts in modern Hebrew to refer to Jesus of Nazareth, though the Hebrew spelling Yeshua (ישוע) is generally used in translations of the New Testament into Hebrew[4] and used by Hebrew speaking Christians in Israel. The name Yeshua is also used in Israeli Hebrew historical texts to refer to other Joshuas recorded in Greek texts such as Jesus ben Ananias and Jesus ben Sira.[5]

 Go to the following link for more details regarding the above info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshua_(name)