Dr. Daniel Botkin explains the Hebrew linguistics of the names
"Yeshua" and "Yahshua" and how
"Yahshua" is a mistransliteration
by Sacred Name advocates to fit an erroneous interpretation of John 5:43 and
how "Yeshua" is far more accurate. He also clearly establishes the
fact that the English name "Jesus" has absolutely no pagan connection
and is simply a derivation of "Yesous," the
Greek transliteration of "Yeshua."
by Dr. Daniel Botkin |
The Messiah's Hebrew name is usually transliterated as either Yeshua
or Yahshua. Under normal circumstances I would
not bother to write an article about something as trivial as the difference
between the vowel sounds "e" and "ah." There is a need to
address the sub-ject, though, because some people who
use the Yahshua form say untrue things about
those who use the Yeshua form. The opponents of the Yeshua form
claim that this pronunciation is the result of a Jewish conspiracy to hide the
Savior's true name. Those who call the Messiah Yeshua are accused of
perpetuating a Jewish conspiracy and "denying His name" or
"degrading Him" by their use of the Yeshua form. If you have
never read or heard these outlandish accusations, you probably will eventually.
From time to time I receive personal letters to this effect.
The proponents of the Yahshua
form claim that the Messiah's name was the same as Joshua's, (Strong's #3091).
The only problem is that neither of these Hebrew spellings of Joshua's name can
possibly be pronounced "Yahshua." The third
letter in Joshua's name (reading from right to left) is the letter vav (w) and a vav
cannot be silent. The letter vav must be
pronounced as either a "v" or an "o" or an "u."
(In the case of Joshua, it takes an "o" sound, giving us
"Ye-ho-SHU-a." Strong's confirms this pronunciation.)
For a name to be pronounced "Yahshua,
and no such name exists anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. You don't have to just
take my word for it, though. Dr. Danny Ben-Gigi says of the Yahshua
form that "there is no such name in Hebrew" and that "people invented
it to fit their theology."[1] Dr. Ben-Gigi is an Israeli and the former
head of Hebrew programs at Arizona State University. He is the author of the
book First Steps in Hebrew Prayers, and he designed and produced the
"Living Israeli Hebrew" language-learning course. Dr. David Bivin, a Christian, says that the Yahshua
form "is rooted in a misunderstanding."[2] Dr. Bivin is a
renowned Hebrew scholar and teacher and author of Fluent Biblical Hebrew.
I do not know of a single individual that knows Hebrew well enough
to actually read it and understand it and converse in it who uses the Yahshua form.
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Please do not misunderstand. A person does not need to know Hebrew
and Greek linguistics in order to be spiritual. However, if a person is going
to take it upon himself to instruct others about subjects of a linguistic and
Hebraic nature, he should know the Hebrew language and he should know some basics
about linguistics. This is especially true if he is going to use his
Hebrew-based linguistic teachings to accuse his brethren of being part of a
"Jewish conspiracy" to "deny the true name of the Messiah."
To people who actually know Hebrew – people like Dr. Ben-Gigi, Dr.
Bivin, and others – it is very obvious that those who
insist on the Yahshua form know very little
about the Hebrew language. The only Hebrew that most of these self-appointed
scholars know is what they can learn from a Strong's Concordance.[3] Strong's is a great study tool and a fine
place to start, but it is not a means by which a person can learn the Hebrew language.
The English form Jesus is derived from the New Testament
Greek name Ihsouß, pronounced "Yesous." According to Strong's, Yesous
(Strong's #2424) is "of Hebrew origin" and can be traced back to
Joshua's Hebrew name, Yehoshua (#3091). But how do we get the Greek Yesous from the Hebrew Yehoshua? Someone
armed with nothing more than a Strong's Concordance may have difficulty answering
that question. Someone who reads the Bible in Hebrew, though, knows that the
name Joshua sometimes appears in its shortened form, Yeshua in
Neh. 8:17 it is apparent even in English: "Jeshua
the son of Nun." (The letter J was pronounced like a Y in
Old English.) Strong does not tell the reader that the Greek Yesous is actually transliterated from this
shortened Hebrew form, Yeshua, and not directly from the longer form Yehoshua.
The process from "Yehoshua" to "Jesus" looks like this:
Hebrew Yehoshua Æ Hebrew Yeshua
Hebrew Yeshua Æ Greek Yesous
Greek Yesous Æ English Jesus.
There is no "sh" sound in
Greek, which accounts for the middle "s" sound in Yesous.
The "s" at the end of the Greek name is a grammatical necessity, to
make the word declinable. In Neh. 8:17, Joshua's name is 100% identical to the
name which today's Messianic Jews use for the Messiah, Yeshua. Strong's
confirms this pronunciation, and tells us that there were ten Israelites in the
Bible who bore this name (#3442). Therefore the shortening of Yehoshua
to Yeshua predates the Christian era by at least 500 years, and cannot
be the result of a Jewish conspiracy to hide the Savior's true name.[4] To claim that the shortened form Yeshua
is the result of a Jewish conspiracy is to ignore the facts of history and the
facts of the Hebrew Scriptures. The form Yeshua existed for several hundred
years before the Messiah was even born. Even in the pre-Christian Septuagint,
we see the Greek form IHSOUS (Yesous) in the
title of the Book of Joshua. (This is also proof that Yesous
has no connection to the pagan god Zeus.)
So where did the transliteration Yahshua
come from? This form of the name can be traced back to the beginnings of the
Sacred Name movement, a movement that grew out of the Church of God, 7th Day,
in the late 1930s. I have in my files an article entitled, "A Brief
History of the Name Movement in America" by L.D. Snow, a Sacred Name
believer.[5] According to this article, "John Briggs
and Paul Penn were the FIRST to pronounce and use the name Yahshua"
(emphasis Snow's). This was in 1936 and in 1937, the article states. No information
is given about how Briggs and Penn came up with this (mis)translation.
Later Sacred Name literature appeals to the Messiah's statement in
John 5:43 as "proof" of the Yahshua
form: "I am come in My Father's name," He said. In the minds of Sacred
Name believers, this means that "Yah," a shortened form of Yahweh,
must appear in the name of the Son. However, the Messiah did not say
"My name contains My Father's name" or "My Father's name must
appear inside My name" or any such statement. He said absolutely nothing
here about His own name. The only "name" mentioned here was the
Father's name. He said, "I am come in My Father's name," which simply
means that He was coming by His Father's authority, on His Father's behalf. If
we take Yeshua's statement "I am come in My Father's name" to mean
that His own name must contain the Father's name, then we ourselves cannot do
anything "in the Father's name" unless our own personal name happens
to contain the syllable "Yah." The folly of this
interpretation is also evident if the same line of reasoning is applied to the
rest of Yeshua's statement: "…if another shall come in his own name,
him ye will receive." If the logic of Sacred Name believers is applied to
this half of the verse, it would be saying "a person's name must contain
his own name," which is meaningless. If, on the other hand, "in his
own name" means "by his own authority," then the statement makes
sense.
Why is the Yahshua form used by
no one but Sacred Name believers and people who have been influenced by Sacred
Name believers? Probably because no such name exists in the Hebrew Bible and,
to my knowledge, no such name exists in any extra-Biblical Hebrew literature.
It appears that Dr. Ben-Gigi is correct when he says that people invented the
name Yahshua to fit their theology.
I have read a lot of literature from writers who seek to expose
the "errors" of those who refer to the Messiah as Yeshua. The
only thing these writers actually expose is their lack of knowledge. I could
give several examples of statements which are absolutely ridiculous. I do not
have the space in this publication to give all the examples I have in my files,
and I do not wish to embarrass sincere people for their honest but misguided
efforts. There are some examples, though, that grossly misrepresent the facts,
and some of these examples need to be exposed.
In one popular booklet published by a well-known Sacred Name
organization, the anonymous author makes this statement: "Most reference
works agree with Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the NT statement on
page 284, which states that the name Yahoshua was
shortened after the exile to the short form Yahshua."
This statement makes it sound like Kittel uses the forms Yahoshua
and Yahshua. I went to the library and looked
at this page in Kittel's. The words Yahoshua
and Yahshua do not appear even one time on
this page. This can be verified by going to a library and looking up this page.
(It's in Volume III.) If your library does not have Kittel's, I can send a photocopy
of this page to any skeptics.
This same Sacred Name organization which misrepresents Kittel's
also misrepresented a Jewish author. In a magazine article written by this
organization's main leader, a lengthy segment is quoted from a book published
by KTAV, a Jewish publishing house. When copying this quotation for his
magazine article, this Sacred Name author freely used Yahshua,
making it appear that the Jewish author used that transliteration in his book.
I got the book from the library, though, and discovered that "Yahshua" did not appear in the book. I wrote to this
Sacred Name leader asking for an explanation. I told him that unless he had
some other explanation, I could conclude one of three things: either he
deliberately misrepresented the facts, or he did it accidentally, or the book I
got from the library was a different version from his, in which case I would
owe him an apology. My letter was sent September 1, 1997, and I am still
waiting for a reply. I will not embarrass this man by mentioning his name or
the name of his ministry. It is not my intention to embarrass anyone.
I am not writing this article to persuade people to quit saying
"Yahshua." If people want to continue using
a mistransliteration that was erroneously contrived
by early Sacred Name pioneers who didn't know Hebrew, it really doesn't matter
to me. I don't think that the substitution of an "ah" sound for an
"e" sound matters much to the Lord, either. What does matter, though,
is the spreading of false accusations against Messianic Jews and others who
called the Messiah "Yeshua."
Paul warned Timothy about
"doting about questions and strifes of
words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmising
[suspicions]" (1 Tim. 6:4). Unfortunately, this is an accurate description
of what goes on among many people in the Sacred Name movement. Personally, I
would rather fellowship with non-contentious people who call the Messiah
"Jesus" than with contentious people who insist that everyone call
Him "Yahshua."
NOTES
[1] Love Song to the Messiah newsletter,
March 1999, p. 1.
[2] "The Fallacy of Sacred Name
Bibles," Jerusalem Perspective Nov.-Dec. 1991, p. 12.
[3] These teachers very heavily rely on Strong's
Concordance, yet when Strong proves them wrong, as he does with the pronunciation
of Yehoshua, they insist that Strong's rendering is erroneous! I have a
Sacred Name publication which actually claims that Strong wrote down incorrect
pronunciations because "his under-standing of the Name was lacking."
Anyone who wants to disprove this ludicrous assertion can simply look at
Joshua's name in a Hebrew Bible and see that Strong used the very same vowel
marks that are used in the Bible.
[4] There is some debate over whether or not the
Jews' final shortening of Jesus' name to Yeshu
was a deliberate attempt to avoid acknowledging Yeshua of Nazareth as Savior.
[5] This article first appeared in a publication
called The Eliyah Messenger in May-June 1966,
and was reprinted in 1975 in World Today Analyzed, a publication of the
Assembly of Yahvah in Tahlequah, OK.
Daniel Botkin has a bimonthly magazine, Gates
of Eden. For a sample issue, send $3 to PO Box 2257, East Peoria IL
61611-0257.