quote:

---

Originally posted by seekerbentruth:
posted by Follower Sar Shalom:

Welcome to the forum. I have to agree that there may be no "etymological" proof that "Jesus" came from "zeus". However, the actual phonetical meanings in Hebrew, Greek and Latin for "eay-soos", "hey-soos" and "ea-zeus" may be shocking to many. See:

http://www.remnantofyhwh.com/666Website.pdf
http://www.remnantofyhwh.com/Jesus.htm

Even if there is no proof that "Jesus" came from "zeus", shouldn't we be using the most correct name we know, after we learn better? I'm not saying this in condemnation against those who lack understanding, but only supporting that I believe that we should use the correct name after we learn the truth of what his name really is. If English speaking people want to use an "English" sounding name, why don't they use "Joshua"? In fact, originally in English, the "J" was pronounced as a "Y". Also, I believe that the word for savior in Greek is "soter", is this correct? If "jesus" doesn't mean "savior" in Greek (or hebrew), then what does "jesus" or "eay-soos"/"eay-zeus" really mean then? Someone once said that as long as we meant well "in our heart", we could call him anything we want. The particular word someone suggested was "ha-satan". Obviously, this would not be an appropriate title or name for the Heavenly Father or Only Begotten Son no matter how "good" of intentions or ignorance someone had.

SbT:

Thanks for putting up the links for those articles. We can not take the meaning of a word from one language and apply it to another word from a different language that is similar sounding, as the meaning of a word is strictly defined within the confines of it's own language.Transliteration from one language to another is governed by rules. Using the method that the author of the articles used for definition, the possibilities for all words would be infinite. Iaso in Greek is spelled Iota, Alpha, Sigma, Omega. The Greek word Iesous, from which Jesus is derived is spelled Iota, Eta, Sigma, Omicron, Upsilon, Sigma. They are two completely different words with two different meanings. Below is a scholarly etymological explanation that was posted on Messianic Apologetic:

Yeshua (short form) or Yehoshua (long form)--Hebrew Joshua--comes across into Greek as Iesous. Greek has no consonant y, so it uses initial i (cf. Ioudaios for Yhudim), which comes out sounding like a y when it's pronounced together with a following vowel anyway. Greek also has no letter equivalent to Hebrew shin (/sh/), so the standard transliteration is sigma (/s/). The final a in the Hebrew forms is a glide-element that shows up in other Semitic languages but isn't really part of the word per se. The final vowel should be u, but because of the gutteral consonant 'ayin that comes at the end of the name, an a-vowel is added. So the final u-sound is paralleled by Greek ou (Greek upsilon would have a different sound--like French long-u or German u-umlaut). The s on the end is part of a standard conversion from other languages to Greek. Since Greek nouns almost always have case endings, including names, the s is added to give the name the right feel. We get the same rendering for Joshua in the Greek OT, so I don't see any reason that it would mean something different in the NT.

Trevor Peterson

CUA/Semitics

SbT:

As it is recorded historically, Jewish scribes translated the books of the Torah from Hebrew to Greek known as the septuagint. Would they have chosen the name of a pagan god for one of the mightiest warriors of their history who was the right hand man of Moses?

P.S.

I am not endorsing the septuagint.

---

SbT,

Do have any explanation why the name Joshua comes through into the greek text in the later writings ("N.T.") as "Iota, Eta, Sigma, Omicron, Upsilon" and the name of haMashiach (The Messiah) comes through as "Iota, Eta, Sigma, Omicron, Upsilon, Sigma"?

I have started a new thread to discuss primtive roots:

http://www.eliyah.com/forum2/Forum10/HTML/001642.html

I do not want to further clutter this thread, so we can pick up our discussion there. Thanks!

I hope you do not mind, but I have taken a stab at your question for SbT. The Greek actually uses the forms Iesou and Iesous for Joshua son of Nun. These same forms are used of Messiah in Greek. Below are the varying Greek forms, their grammatical use, and a verse with an example of that form:

Joshua the successor of Moses
Iesou - genitive, Acts 7:45
Iesous - nominative, Heb 4:8

Joshua, the son of Eliezer
Iesous - genitive, Luke 3:29

"Justus"
Iesous - nominative, Col 4:11

Messiah
Iesous - nominative, Matt 1:16
Iesou - genitive, Matt 1:1
Iesou - dative, Matt 8:34
Iesou - vocative, Mark 1:24
Iesoun - accusative, Matt 1:21

All of these are derived from the single noun Iesous, which (as Trevor noted and has been stated on this forum many times) is a Greek transliteration of Yêšûa‘ (Yeshua`).

So my answer would be, in the Greek, their names are not different less the fact most of the oldest Greek mss. use a form of "nomina sacra" for Messiah's name. "Nomina Sacra" would be a form of suspension, where some of the letters kept (usually the first couple or the first and last) and the rest dropped and a superscript line drawn over the remaining letters. Iesous is often IES with a line over it. In its most primitive form, "Nomina Sacra" only applies to Iesous, Kurios, Theos, and probably Xristos and was later expanded to include words like "David" "Father" "Heaven" and so forth. The use of "nomina sacra" is found applied to the name of Joshua in a few mid 2nd century CE Lxx documents.

Shalom - Joshua

Ps- I need to qualify my comments: I am yet as an infant with Greek grammar and by no means do I have a lot of experience with it. My Greek grammatical comments are mainly drawn from BDAG and a few other lexicons. Those who know Greek have been very agreeable to the grammatical notes about, but I still wanted to qualify my statements Greek is very much still Greek to me!