The Messiah's Hebrew Name:
"Yeshua" Or "Yahshua"?
| Written 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 subject, 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, written uvwhy or uwvwhy (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,” it would have to be spelled uwvhy, 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. 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
In Neh. 8:17, Joshua’s name is 100% identical to the name which today’s Messianic
Jews use for the Messiah, Yeshua (uwvy). 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
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 Yehovah, 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 YahoshuaYahshua 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
comes envy, strife, railings, evil 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.”
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 understanding 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. |
