YESHUA

YESHUA : The Name

Jesus the Christ in Hebrew is Yeshua ha Meshiach.
Yeshua was the only name that He was ever called
while He was in the flesh on this earth. His apostles
called Him Yeshua.
His mother called Him Yeshua.
It was indeed his proper name, given to him by his
mother and Yosef, and only in Hebrew does this
name have any meaning. In Hebrew Yeshua means
both "Salvation," and the concatenated form of
Yahoshua, is "Lord who is Salvation."
Yeshua is a Hebrew name which has been
transliterated into Greek as Iesous (IhsouV:
pronounced "ee-ay-SUS"). The English "Jesus"
comes from the Latin transliteration of the Greek
name into the Latin Iesus. Now Greek has no "y"
sound, but the Latin "i" is both an "i" and a "j" (i.e.,
it can have a consonantal force in front of other
vowels), the latter of which is properly pronounced
like the English "y" (which explains the German
Jesu, "YAY-su")That is why we spell Jesus as we
do, taking it straight from Latin, but we pronounce
the name with a soft "j" sound because that is what
we do in English with the consonantal "j".

The first letter in the name Yeshua ("Jesus") is the
yod. Yod represents the "Y" sound in Hebrew.
Many names in the Bible that begin with yod are
mispronounced by English speakers because the
yod in these names was transliterated in English
Bibles with the letter "J" rather than "Y". This came
about because in early English the letter "J" was
pronounced the way we pronounce "Y" today. All
proper names in the Old Testament were
transliterated into English according to their
Hebrew pronunciation via the Latin, but when
English pronunciation shifted to what we know
today, these transliterations were not altered. Thus,
such Hebrew place names as ye-ru-sha-LA-yim,
ye-ri-HO, and yar-DEN have become known to us
as Jerusalem, Jericho, and Jordan; and Hebrew
personal names such as yo-NA, yi-SHAI, and
ye-SHU-a have become known to us as Jonah,
Jesse, and Jesus. To further complicate matters,
there was no letter "J" in the old English alphabet
and the letter "I" was often used in its place. Often
in early texts of the time, Jesus or Jerusalem would
be spelled Iesus or Ierusalem.

The second sound in Yeshua's name is called
tse-RE, and is pronounced almost like the letter "e"
in the word "net". Just as the "Y" sound of the first
letter is mispronounced in today's English, so too
the first vowel sound in "Jesus". Before the Hebrew
name "Yeshua" was transliterated into English, it
was first transliterated into Greek. There was no
difficulty in transliterating the tse-RE sound since
the ancient Greek language had an equivalent
letter which represented this sound. And there was
no real difficulty in transcribing this same first vowel
into English. The translators of the earliest versions
of the English Bible transliterated the tse-RE in
Yeshua with an "e". Unfortunately, later English
speakers guessed wrongly that this "e" should be
pronounced as in "me," and thus the first syllable of
the English version of Yeshua came to be
pronounced "Jee" instead of "Yeh". It is this
pronunciation which produced such euphemistic
profanities as "Gee" and "Geez".

Since Yeshua is spelled "Jeshua" and not "Jesus"
in most English versions of the Old Testament (for
example in Ezra 2:2 and 2 Chronicles 31:15), one
easily gets the impression that the name is never
mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet 'Yeshua'
appears there twenty-nine times, and is the name of
at least five different persons and one village in the
southern part of Yehudah ("Judah").

In contrast to the early biblical period, there were
relatively few different names in use among the
Jewish population of the Land of Israel at the time
of the Second Temple. The name Yeshua was one
of the most common male names in that period,
tied with Eleazer for fifth place behind Simon,
Joseph, Judah, and John. Nearly one out of ten
persons known from the period was named Yeshua.

The first sound of the second syllable of Yeshua is
the "sh" sound. It is represented by the Hebrew
letter shin. However Greek, like many other
languages, has no "sh" sound. Instead, the closest
approximation, the Greek sigma, was used when
transcribing "Yeshua" as "Iesus". Translators of
English versions of the New Testament
transliterated the Greek transcription of a Hebrew
name, instead of returning to the original Hebrew.
This was doubly unfortunate, first because the "sh"
sound exists in English, and second because in
English the "s" sound can shift to the "z" sound,
which is what happened in the case of the
pronunciation of "Jesus".

The fourth sound one hears in the name Yeshua is
the "u" sound, as in the word "true". Like the first
three sounds, this also has come to be
mispronounced but in this case it is not the fault of
the translators. They transcribed this sound
accurately, but English is not a phonetic language
and "u" can be pronounced in more than one way.
At some point the "u" in "Jesus" came to be
pronounced as in "cut," and so we say "Jee-zuhs."

The "a" sound, as in the word "father," is the fifth
sound in Jesus' name. It is followed by a guttural
produced by contracting the lower throat muscles
and retracting the tongue root- an unfamiliar task for
English speakers. In an exception to the rule, the
vowel sound "a" associated with the last letter
"ayin" (the guttural) is pronounced before it, not
after. While there is no equivalent in English or any
other Indo-European language, it is somewhat
similar to the last sound in the name of the
composer, "Bach." In this position it is almost
inaudible to the western ear. Some Israelis
pronounce this last sound and some don't,
depending on what part of the dispersion their
families returned from. The Hebrew Language
Academy, guardian of the purity of the language,
has ruled that it should be sounded, and Israeli
radio and television announcers are required to
pronounce it correctly. There was no letter to
represent them, and so these fifth and sixth sounds
were dropped from the Greek transcription of
"Yeshua," -the transcription from which the English
"Jesus" is derived.

So where did the final "s" of "Jesus" come from?
Masculine names in Greek ordinarily end with a
consonant, usually with an "s" sound, and less
frequently with an "n" or "r" sound. In the case of
"Iesus," the Greeks added a sigma, the "s" sound,
to close the word. The same is true for the names
Nicodemus, Judas, Lazarus, and others.

English speakers make one final change from the
original pronunciation of Jesus' name. English
places the accent on "Je," rather than on "sus." For
this reason, the "u" has been shortened in its
English pronunciation to "uh."

I give this information in love. It is readily available with a little research, and
thanks to the internet, it is now very easy to get. I feel the Lord leading me to
proclaim His Name.
It is out of my love for God that I felt the need to find His true name.
2 Timothy 2:15
Do all you can to present yourself to God as someone worthy of his approval,
as a worker with no need to be ashamed, because he deals straightforwardly
with the Word of the Truth.

God Bless you All !
Bro. Jesse & Diana