Written by John Youngquist (JKwist)
john@fablesandtruths.org

¹¹ And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:11 KJV

Our tongue is English

Here at Fables and Truths we conduct our lessons in English. We need to be able to understand each other. As speakers of English, we call the Son of God Jesus in our lessons. Yes, we understand that in the days of His ministry he went by the name Yeshua ("God is salvation" or "Yahweh saves") by both Hebrew and Aramaic speakers, but we speak neither of these languages. Also, it is worth noting that what modern speakers of "Hebrew" speak is in fact not the Hebrew of the Bible and is a language "invented" by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in the LATE 1800's and very EARLY 1900's.

For the sake of simplicity, all Greek will be written using the Latin alphabet.

How did we get from Yeshua to Jesus?

We will break down the history of the name John as well as Jesus to show how they both became common usage today and both follow the same logic.

Written Biblical Hebrew to Greek

As said earlier, the Son of Man was called Yeshua by Aramaic and Hebrew speakers of His time. When the story of Jesus was compiled into the Gospels, they were written in Koine Greek as it was the common Greek dialect that was spoken and written widely throughout the Eastern Roman Empire and the writers wanted to spread the word as efficiently and clearly as possible. Unless they utilize the sacred abbreviation or Christogram "ΙΣ", they wrote His name as Iesous (pronounced "I-ee-soos" or "Yee-soos"), which is a Greek representation of "God is salvation" or "Yahweh saves".

The Greek alphabet did not have the "y" or "sh" sounds of Hebrew, so "Yeh" was translated as "ee" and "sh" as "s".

Ending with the final "ah" sound does not align with Greek grammatical rules for masculine nouns, which tend to end in "os". Therefore, the final "ah" was changed to "s" to create the full Greek form Iesous.

If you piece it together, Yeshua in Greek = eesus, or Iesous.

The name John in the original written Hebrew was spelled Yachanan ("God is gracious"). When translated to Greek in the New Testament, it is written as Ioannis (pronounced YOH-ahn-eez) and the reasoning behind the translation is very similar to the above regarding Yeshua to Iesous.

From Greek to Latin to English

The next step of the name evolution can still be attributed to the Romans as it comes from Latin. In the Latin translations, Jesus was spelled Iesus (YAY-soos) and John was spelled Ioannes (pronounced "Yo-ahn-iss" or "YAWN-iss").

The changes from Greek to Latin for both Iesus and Ioannes were minor and boiled down to grammar rules and changed the pronunciations slightly: Yee-soos(Greek) versus Yay-soos(Latin). The second abbreviation listed above for Ioannes("YAWN-iss") drops a syllable and gets us closer to the modern John.

In medieval and renaissance times, the letter "J" was slowly adopted to distinguish the consonant sound "y" (think yes) from the vowel sound "i" (think in). This is where we take the leap from Iesus to Jesus. This is also where we get the more familiar Johannes (which is not strict Latin but Medieval Latin and until 1978, VIA A PAPAL DECREE, the letter J was finally included in the Latin alphabet for John Paul II, his predecessor who went by Ioannes).

Even in the 1611 original King James Version Bible the name Jesus was spelled "Iesus" and John was spelled "Iohn". As the J became more common in usage, "Iesus" became "Jesus" and "Iohn" became "John" and that is where we are at today.

Where does that leave us?

The modern pronunciation of Jesus is literally a translation of "God is Salvation" or "Yahweh Saves" from Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin, to English. We believe that He would not have an issue being called Jesus by English speakers. His Father is the one that MADE us speak different languages as a result of the tower of Babel.

He knows what is in your heart whether you say Yeshua or Jesus. Don't let internet preachers tell you that you will burn for calling him Jesus or that Jesus literally means "Hail Zeus", IT DOES NOT. We are literally calling him "Yahweh Saves" in English.

Hail Zues? I think not!

The root of the name Zeus originates from the Proto-Indo-European language, the root being dyeu-, meaning "To shine" and "sky, heaven, god". Di̯ēus was used for the god of the daytime sky. The name Zeus is a continuation of Di̯ēus sharing the same etymological origin.

Some keyboard warriors claim that the name Jesus is really code for "Hail Zeus", but that couldn't be farther from the truth, as you can see from the origins of the name Zeus above and the origins of Jesus above that.

All this stems from the second syllable of Jesus (-sus) sounding SIMILAR to the name of the Greek god Zeus. The fact that Jesus and Zeus have similar letters means nothing. Satan and Santa on the other hand, you may be on to something...

So go ahead and at the top of your lungs in your native tongue "confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

I hope we were able to edify you! Please send any questions or comments to feedback@fablesandtruths.org.