Jesus or Joshua?

Another topic of curiosity has arisen that I thought would bear some explanation. In some of my posts, you may have noticed that I will occasionally refer to Jesus as Joshua, and unless you are familiar with the reason behind it, you probably thought it was a typo.

It's not.

I intentionally wrote Joshua instead of or alongside of Jesus.

The purpose of this post is to explain why I did so, and part of the explanation stems from the Sacred Name movement. If you aren't familiar with that movement, it's a movement (not relegated to any denomination) that pushes the belief that there is only one correct name for God. Not only that, but there is one correct language to pronounce that name in, and not stopping there, that there is only one correct way to pronounce that name in that language. 

What if you don't do all of these things?

Well then, God won't hear you or be able to understand you. 

Shockingly, their particular group of people is the only one who knows of this true pronunciation (and therefore the only group of people God will listen to). Unsurprisingly, no two groups of these people who hold this belief pronounce it the same way, and they regularly fight with each other about it.

So, where does Joshua fit into this mix, and why bother with it?

Well, there are about 20 different ways of pronouncing God's name that people have come up with, and again, each one is the correct one according to those who use it. I personally prefer Yahowah, but I don't think there's any extra holiness attached to it; that's just the pronunciation that seems to be the most correct. Again, there is no way to know, and God will hear my prayer if I pray to my Father or God just as much as He hears my prayer if I address it to Yahowah. 

Joshua is an interesting thing that has arisen out of my study, because the name Jesus is, quite frankly, a very poor transliteration. 

While the gospels were written in Greek, the men in them had Hebrew names because they were Hebrews, and that is the sort of name one would give to their Hebrew children. So, most of the names in the New Testament are Greek transliterations of Hebrew names, which means that when they get translated into English, they are transliterated to the closest sound rather than the closest meaning, and they have been transliterated twice at that point. Once into Greek, and then a second time into English. 

The Greek name for Jesus is Iesous, which we actually find quite a bit in the Old Testament, at least the Septuagint form of it, because again, it's a transliteration of a Greek name. I'll share a place that uses it below. 

Joshua 1:1 καὶ ἐγένετο μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν Μωυσῆ εἶπεν κύριος τῷ Ἰησοῖ υἱῷ Ναυη τῷ ὑπουργῷ Μωυσῆ λέγων

The verse above is the Greek translation, and what do we find?

Ἰησοῦς or Iesous!

This is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name יְהוֹשׁוּעַ or Y'hoshua, which English speakers will more readily recognize as the transliterated Joshua! 

Okay, so Jesus's name, if transliterated directly to English instead of to Greek, would be Joshua!

What's the point of this, however, since Jesus is transliterated from the Greek? 

Both names have the same meaning since they come from the same root, but the difference is in the sound. Jesus retains none of the sound of God's name, while Joshua retains the sound of YAH, albeit with a hard "J." 

It's not a huge deal, but Joshua points directly back to the "Yah" sound and the meaning of the name itself, which is "Yahowah is salvation."

Joshua connects it back to that name linguistically and phonetically, still keeping it in English, while Jesus does not. 

So, the point of all this is not that it's wrong to say Jesus.

Not at all.

The point is merely to offer an explanation why I prefer to use Joshua rather than Jesus and why you will see it that way in some of my posts. So now if you see Joshua used that way in my posts, you will know why! It's purely personal prefrence, but with a good reason behind it.

I hope that was helpful! Happy studying!