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Loaded Terms - Jesus

      The word "Jesus" was probably never heard by the person we refer to by that name. It is a transliteration from Hebrew into Greek into Latin into German into English. The Greek word in our New Testament is iesous, which is a transliteration of the common Hebrew name, Yeshua, which is a shortened form of the name Yehoshua (Joshua), which means "the LORD saves".

      Greek didn't have any letter for the 'sh' sound, so they used a sigma. The "us" at the end of the name in Greek is an almost universal ending for Greek masculine names. It has no relation to the name for Zeus, as some are claiming, since that would be spelled with a zeta or a delta. Another fallacy is the idea that Jesus' name in Hebrew was "Yahshua". The proponents of this fanciful idea want to include God's holy name (Yah) within Jesus' name, but there is no evidence whatsoever that this was the case. In fact, if it were, the Greek transliteration would be entirely different.

      We see evidence that Jesus lived in a Hebrew-speaking society in Matthew 1:21 where the angel tells Joseph to "call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins". The word "Jesus" does not have any such significance in either Hebrew or Greek. But the name "Yeshua" is a definite play on words with the Hebrew yeshuah which means "salvation".