What about the original Hebrew name of our Saviour?
First of all we read the instructions of the Angel who spoke to Joseph, who was engaged to
Miriam (Mary) His mother. In Matthew 1:21 and Luke 1:31
we read, "And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS:
for he shall save his
people from their sins." The predicate of this sentence is self explanatory, it actually expresses the
exact meaning of the name Jesus, which would of course have been Yahshua - before the Greek transliteration
changed it to Iesous pronounced ee-ay-sooce - (Strongs G2424). His Name carries the exact meaning of
His role of being the Son of Yahweh hence the beginning of the Name, Yah and shua mean 'saves' or
saving His people from their sins.
What did His mother will obviously have called Him by this name, as she was a Hebrew, a woman of the Tribe of
Levi. She certainly would not have called Him
by a Greek name, Iesous, pronounced ee-ay-sooce. Also, she wouldn't have called Him by
the English equivalent or transliteration of Iesous which is Jesus, simply because there was no 'J' letter in
Greek or English up until the 17th. Century. The original 1611 King James Version of the Bible does
not use the name Jesus, the name Jesus came into existence approximately 19 years after the 1611
translation. No, Mary (Miriam Heb.) would have called Him by the Name
the Angelic visitor gave to her, Yah-shua. This word is a combination of Yah, an abbreviation for Yahweh, the name of
Israel's God (Exodus 3:14); and the verb yasha, meaning "rescue," "deliver," or "save."
The name Iesous, or Jesus in English is of Hebraic origin, (H3091) and is spelled, according to Strongs Concordance
Yah-ho-shoo-ah, pronounced, shortened, Yahshua. Many spell this name Ye-ho-shoo-ah, with
an 'e' but this
does not make sense when He came in His Father's Name, which is of course, from the YHWH Tetragrammaton, Yahweh,
spelled with an 'a'.
There is evidence that Rabbi's have changed the pronunciation of Yah to Yeh in order to prevent misuse of the holy
Name of Yahweh, especially when the Gentiles began to pronounce the Name, and this has continued in our day,
so that it is considered wrong to pronounce the correct Name, Yah. So, even today many who use the original
Names for the heavenly Father and our Saviour, use the names 'Ye-ho-vah' and 'Ye-shoo-ah.'
Our Bibles therefore, do not contain the names Yahweh or Yahshua, but substituted names, the LORD and
Jesus. Every time the word LORD is written, the original word is YHWH. However, there is one scripture where
we are able to read the name correctly, and that is Psalm 68:4 "Psa 68:4 Sing unto God, sing praises to
his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, (yâhh yaw
Contracted for H3068, and meaning the same; Yah, the sacred name: - Yah, the Lord, most vehement.
Cp. names in "Yah.") and rejoice before Him. Why was this verse missed? We are happy that here is
evidence...
Interestingly, there
is no evidence that the name Yeshua was used before the Babylonian Exile.
We read in Acts how the Rabbi's forbade the disciples from using the correct Name of Yahshua.
Act 4:18 "And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus" (which
would be Yahshua as it had not yet been Hellenised (translated into Greek).
Yahshua's Name would have the Father's Name in it, because of Yahshua's own words in In John 5:43.
Yahshua Himself states "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name,
him ye will receive."
Also, Yahweh Himself declares that He Himself is the only Saviour. In Isaiah 43:11 we read, "I, even I, am the LORD
(the holy Name, YHWH Yahweh) and beside me there is no Saviour." Why
would the Son have a name that did not point to the truth of this fact. The Name of our Saviour matters, as
Salvation is connected to it as we see in Acts 4:12 "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there
is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."
"But we speak English" you may be thinking, "why use a Hebrew name?" Well, what would you have me call you
if I were a person from a foreign country, or if you were on holiday where English was not spoken? You would
tell them your name, surely, in English. Names are universal. The Name of our Saviour in Hebrew is Y'shua.
This of course is open to interpretation, Yahoshua is such an interpretation. In Hebrew Joshua is identical
to the name Yahshua. No-one ever calls Joshua, Yehoshua. In any concordance, Yeshua cannot translate Joshua,
and neither can Yehoshua. "Jo" at the beginning of the word Joshua comes from the Hebrew "Yah."
Discovered cunieform tablets written in Akkadian i.e. the earliest
attested Semitic language, show, from scholarly consensus, that before the Babylonian
exile, the word Yah was to be found as a prefix in Jewish names. After the exile, Yah was changed to
Ye and Yeh in names, and also Ye is also to be found in the Masoretic (modern block Hebrew, with the
artificial vowel pointers, written in 10th-11th Centuries) manuscripts.
Professor Steven E. Fassberg, Ph.D and Professor Emanuel Tov Ph.D, both from the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, state that the Yeh pronunciation is a mistake, that the Hebrew consonantal text is YHWH and
no one really
knows how that was pronounced in Old Testament times. Mosoretes added vowel signs to the consonantal text,
thus the misguided and misleading pronunciation of this most holy Name. They also came up with the "nonsensical
word Jehovah (Yehovah)" so commonly used in our day.