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Ask The Pastor
Tuesday, September 24, 2002
> Question:
> if the original text of the bible is in hebrew why
do christians today
> ignor or dismiss the orginal names used for Christ like Yoshua and for
> God like Yahweh, recorded in the orginal scripture?
Good question.
Most of the the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with portions in
Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek. If we spoke Greek
as our native tongue, we would say everything in Greek. The same
goes for Hebrew. If we spoke Hebrew as our native tongue, we would
say everything in Hebrew. The reason we say Christ is because Christ
is the English rendering of the Greek word Christos.
As for the Hebrew background on the name of Jesus, here is how the
Lord's name came to us as Jesus. The name for 'Jesus' in Hebrew is Yeshua. Yeshua translates over into Greek as Iesous. Greek
doesn't
have a true 'Y' sound. The closest you have is an ee-aa sound. The
Lord's name in Greek was pronounced Ee-aa-sous. And since the
New Testament was written in Greek, we translate Iesous over into
English as Jesus.
Here is how it works:
Yeh sh ua (Hebrew)
Ie s ous (Greek)
Ie so us (Latin)
Je s us (English)
In early English, the 'J' and 'Y' were pronounced the same. Had we
continued to pronounce the name of Jesus as it was originally
pronounced in early English, we would be very close to Yeshua. (The letter 'J' did not exist in any language before the 14th century.)
So as not to complicate the picture, during the time of Jesus, Greek
was the language lingua of the Roman Empire, even in the land of
Israel. Many of the Hebrew peoples spoke both Aramaic and Greek.
This is why the New Testament was originally written in Greek. Had it
been written in Hebrew very few people would have understood it.
But that's the way languages go. However, a point needs to be made.
Whether you say Jesus, Yeshua, or Iesous, if you are speaking of
God's Son who died for our sins 2000 years ago, this is the same
person. You are simply using His name in your native tongue.
The Lord bless you,
Buddy
Bro. Buddy Martin - Ask
the Pastor
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Lawrence "Buddy" Martin
email: Bro.Buddy@ChristianChallenge.org
Web: http://www.ChristianChallenge.org
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