Why don’t we use Yeshua instead of Jesus?
Question:
Someone asked me why Yeshua, which is believed to be the real name of Christ, is never used today because of the English translation. Jesus is believed to be a corruption of Yeshua. What is your view on this?
Answer:
We use "Jesus" because that is the English transliteration of the Greek spelling of his name. The New Testament was recorded in Greek, not Hebrew. Now, if you wanted to make an argument that we needed to pronounce the name as they did in Greek, you might have a point, but we don't speak Greek. The name "Jesus" is now an English word referring to the Greek word Ιησους.
By the way, Jesus' name is the same as Joshua's in the Old Testament. Have you ever seen people argue that we are mispronouncing Joshua? If we directly transliterate the Hebrew letters, we would get Y'hoshua' in English, which is not pronounceable in English. A pronounceable form of the Hebrew name is Yehoshua.
Yeshua is actually an English transliteration from the Aramaic form of Jesus/Joshua. In other words, you are transliterating from Hebrew to Aramaic to English to get Yeshua.
Regardless of the word origins, the word "Jesus" is currently the English translation of the Greek word Ιησους. If you want to read from an Aramaic translation of the Greek text and pronounce Jesus' name in Aramaic, be my guest. I'll be impressed, even if I won't understand a word you say.
