The name ‘Jesus’ (‘Jeez-us’ in English, ‘Haysoos’ in
Spanish) is the Anglicization of the Latinization (‘Iesus’) of the Hellenization
(‘Iesous’) of the Aramaic form (western ‘Yeshu’ or eastern ‘Isho’) of the later
form (‘Yeshua’) of the Hebrew name ‘Yehoshua’.
‘Jason’, or ‘Iason’, by the way, is another, more rare,
Hellenization of ‘Yehoshua’, for which another Anglicization is ‘Joshua’.
We know that the protagonist of the gospels was not a White
American, much as the American Christian Right would like to believe, so we can
be sure the name of the actual person was not and never was ‘Jeez-us’. Not being Latino, he would not have born ‘Haysoos’
as a name either.
‘Iesus’ would only have been a possibility if he were living
in the west of the Empire, and since he was not, that is out too.
In many ways, Galilee was more Hellenized and cosmopolitan
than Judea, though probably not as much as Samaria, and Greek was probably
spoken as much as Aramaic. Therefore the
Hellenized version of his name may have actually been the one used on a day-to-day
basis; several of the Twelve, for instance, have purely Greek names (Andrew,
Philip, Peter).
Messianic Jews, many evangelical Christians, and the
increasing number of Jews who consider him to be a prophet favor the later form
‘Yeshua’. This was the same used in
later years in Palestine, though in the final two centuries of the Temple era,
the older ‘Yehoshua’ began making a comeback, particularly in Galilee.
The Talmud, in sections which are decidedly
non-complimentary, uses the West Aramaic form ‘Yeshu’. This would be fine were West Aramaic the form
spoken in first century Galilee, but, alas, it was not; their dialect was close
to the East Aramaic of Babylon.
Muslims, by the way, use the form ‘Issa’, and yes, they hold
him as a prophet.
The Assyrians, Christians of Middle Eastern churches which
used Aramaic or Syriac as their liturgical, and
sometimes spoken, language use the name ‘Isho’.
Marcion of Sinope’s gospel the Evangelikon, as well as his Apostolikon
containing ten Pauline epistles, referred to its protagonist as ‘Isu Chrestos’,
or perhaps ‘Iso Xrestos’. Besides the witness
of Tertullian of Carthage, writing in Latin, we do have a fair number of
inscriptions with the name carved into them.
Since we have these, and since Marcion and his sect, which
lasted at least into the fourth century, are less likely to have been tampered
with by interpolators, redactors, and pious fraudsters, my bet would be that
their version is closer to the actual name.
Given that Marcion, being wealthy and educated, would certainly have
been familiar with ‘Iesous’ as the Greek equivalent of ‘Yeshua’, the most like
original name was ‘Isho’.
That would render the forms Isho Teeb, rather than ‘Iso (or
Iesous) Chrestos’, and Isho Meshiha, rather than ‘Iso (or Iesous) Christos’.
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