From Yeshua ben Yosef to Jesus The Christ
Most New Testament (better rendered, new covenant) translations, by naming and renaming of places, people and movements, have changed identity and position to pass distinctly as Christian, and not as another Jewish faction.

The dissociation of the New Covenant as a Jewish book begins with the mutation of Semitic names into Greek names. The messianic (christian) belief itself is not a new concept. Avraham (Abraham) himself was a messianic. He believed in a messiah bringing salvation; he simply looked forward while we look back. In the New Covenant, members of the messianic movement are referred to using largely Greek or seemingly Greek names. The Greek name most often is but a vague reference to the original Hebrew name in sound and association. James is the New Covenant name for Yeshua’s half-brother, who was later head of the church in Jerusalem. English James scarcely echoes Greek Iakobos and Hebrew Ya’akov. So James, wearing a new British costume, is removed from his Semitic connotation. From Ya’akov to James is quite a journey. Such a gap in translation may be shocking –accomplished by translation traditions of removing Christian from Jew –in a book that is entirely Jewish. Though, it should be a pleasure to return and redeem the names once we understand how far we have been led from the Hebrew name.

The “New Testament” is a mistranslation of the Greek title New Covenant based on Jerome’s intermediate Latin mistranslation, which he rendered as Novum Testamentum. The title New Covenant itself derives from Luke 22.20, Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:25 and Hebrews 8.8-13.21. The idea of a new covenant, we must remember, comes from Paul who takes it directly from Jeremiah 31:31: “I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel.” Paul, a Greek-speaking Jew from Tarsos, who knew the Hebrew texts, used diatheke to convey its meaning in Hebrew, berit , which is covenant, and also a cut or circumcision, as we see when Paul speaks of a “new circumcision of the heart” (Rom. 2.25-29).

The Greeks of the New Covenant texts were largely Greek-speaking Jews. The texts themselves were meant to persuade them that Jesus was not only a Jewish prophet, but was their messiah, hence the name Christian for their sect, Christian meaning “messianic”. The probable Aramaic script or oral witness accounts containing the Hebrew biblical names found themselves Hellenized, given to Greek translation or transliteration, from late Hebrew or Aramaic. So, we see, Yeshua or, more fully, Yehoshua the Messiah, Yehoshua and Ha-Mashiach, rendered into Greek as Iesous 0 Hristos. Iesous is a transliteration of Yeshua and Hristos (meaning the “anointed”), being a translation of mashiach. Greek Iesous 0 Hristos is in turn translated into English as Jesus [the] Christ. Similarly, Yochanan becomes Ioannes in Greek, Johannes in Latin, and John in English.

However we are not Greek-speaking Jews and gentiles. We speak English. Why not biblical Yochanan in English rather than Greek John? Why adopt an English transcription of a Hellenized Greek transcription of Hebrew names from the Hebrew Scriptures?

If I have failed to demonstrate the purposeful inconsistency, consider that the Tanakh (Old Testament) is done with minimal change. (Abraham may be written Avraham since the b and v in Hebrew, as in Spanish and other languages, are interchangeable) Why not transcribe biblical names from the New Covenant directly into English without an intermediary Greek transcription? Hellenizing Yeshua the Messiah, into Jesus Christ is comparable to Hellenizing Yahweh (YHWH) into Zeus. If this were acceptable, we would read the story of creation as, “In the beginning Zeus created the heavens and the earth,” The Tanakh (Old Testament) would be in harmony with the presently Hellenized New Covenant. This is, of course, ridiculous and unacceptable. Interestingly the same translators allow the Greek translation of Sheol in Hebrew to carryover into English as Hades. Hades, the pagan underworld in Greek religion and mythology, elucidates the idea of a horned, grotesque, figure in charge of a subterranean catacomb of conflagration and never-ending anguish.

Yeshua’s name is the cornerstone (pun intended) to the Hellenization and Christianization of the Jewish messiah, who died for all. In life He was known by his Jewish name and titles. The life, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Yeshua were the fulfillment of Jewish prophetic Scripture. Yeshua was/is the messiah, the Lord’s anointed one.

The gospels preserve the life and death of the messiah in Greek scriptures with a Greek name. This is not at all irrational for Greek-reading Jews and gentiles. It makes full sense to translate Hebrew names into Greek for Greek readers? However, the non-Greek reader should not need to be a linguistic scholar to understand Yeshua’s Jewish ethnicity. It should be apparent, why and how the title of Yeshua the Messiah becomes in Greek, Iesous ho Hristos. The name Jesus Christ is completely void of Hebrew significance or linguistic distinctiveness. It has allowed Yeshua to pass as someone other than a Jew. Upon crucifixion, the Roman soldiers mocked Yeshua with the title “the king of the Jews.” The soldiers slipped into the truth, of that title. Yeshua was certainly the spiritual king of the Jews.

The Greek gospels cleansing Yeshua of His Jewish stain can be witnessed when Andrew and Peter first address Yeshua (John 1.38): “Rabbi-which translated means ‘teacher’-where are you staying?” This aside, breaching the account, seems to be a later scribal interpolation to explain away rabbi as teacher and to blur Yeshua’s characteristics as a rabbi and Jew. There can be seen an attempt to influence the reader’s thinking; that rabbi means an independent teacher or scholar and not a Jewish interpreter of the Bible. Rabbi from Hebrew, meaning “my master,” “great one,” or “teacher of the law.” Moreover, the aside in John 1.38 needing to be “translated” into Greek implies an earlier version of the text in Hebrew or Aramaic.

In John 1.38, Yeshua is exonerated of his Jewish identity, and the revelation of “rabbi” has been explained away. The Romans achieved a similar trompe l’oeil (French term meaning “to trick or fool the eye) in their Romanization of Greek deities. A pantheon of Latin gods were “ordained” in Rome by making Greek Zeus into Roman Jupiter, Aphrodite into Venus, Artemis into Diana, and Athena into Minerva. Such purposeful borrowings and denials cannot, sweepingly, be categorized as linguistic idiosyncrasies or translation casualties. Phonetically the name Yeshua rather than Jesus, or Ya’akov rather than James or Jacob, presents no challenge in English annunciation.

It is central to observe linguistically how Ya’akov journeyed to England, being granted involuntary asylum as James. Ya’akov-in Hebrew -is customarily transcribed into English as Jacob. The biblical figure Ya’akov, son of Yitzhak (Isaac), appears in the genealogies of Matthew and Luke transliterated in Greek as Iakob. Oddly Ya’akov, when applied to Yeshua’s half-brother, receives a Hellenized treatment. Iakob for Jacob is the Tanakh (OT) translation, but when we reach the New Covenant, Yeshua’s half-brother it is given the Greek nominative ending, Iakobos in Greek. Old and New Covenant figures carry the same Hebrew name. Jacob when applied to the Old Testament patriarch remains Jewish in the Greek, conversely the half-brother of Yeshua mutates into Greek form in a Greek epithet. These Greek names when transcribed into English; Iakob becomes Jacob, and Iakobos takes an evolutionary leap, that would make Darwin roll rollover in Sheol, as James. Who says evolution is a false theory? “James” appears as a fresh New Covenant fellow, whom by the graciousness of the translators doesn’t have that pesky worry of being identified as a Jacob or a Ya’akov from the Tanakh.

Past translators have been guilty of deceiving the Christian readers. By using non-Jewish names for biblical figures, and worse, by using different Greek and English names for the same Hebrew name to distinguish between people in the Old and New Covenants, translators are putting a linguistic screen between the two books. This has success in creating the impression that Christianity did not spring from the messianic tradition in Judaism.

The presently accepted Greek names for Christ and John or the strangely Anglicized names from the Greek such as James and Jude are false names to accept. Summarily, the Greek scriptures are translations or transliterations from the Hebrew, and as such, common sense dictates English should follow suit. English translators, without being told to do so, should work directly from Hebrew rather than translate a translation (Greek).

Designer Labels
The term “Jewish Christians” is seriously misleading. “Christian Jews” however, is connotatively correct in its emphasis. . “Jewish Christian” suggests that followers of rabbi Yeshua had been Jews and now apostates, renouncing Judaism; rehabilitated to Christianity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Post-Golgotha (Calgary, Lat.)“Christians” certainly found no fault in remaining Jews when they addressed Yeshua as rabbi. This happens all through the gospels. Yeshua was not a rabbi of a newly manifested religion, He was rabbi of the religion that knew, nay, was given, the promise of a redemptive messiah, Judaism. The followers of the messiah, messianic Jews, were Jews.

The Greek Hristos for Christ, meaning “the messiah” and “the anointed one” from Hebrew mashiach, would never have been understood among the Jewish peasants looking to Yeshua. Unfortunately today, “Christian” has for almost everyone lost its original meaning of “messianic” (one believing in Messiah). As a result, Christians rarely understand, and oddly at times refute, that “Christian” is not only the name of a religious denomination; primarily it is the title of Jewish faith in the messiah. To speak now of “messianics” and “messianic Jews” reconciles the spirit and significance of Christianity (messianism).

Christian theologians have now accepted the New Covenant Scriptures (“books”) as Jewish texts. The quandary of names is crucial here as historically, a Christian was a Jew believed Yeshua as the messiah. This simple fact is so removed from Christianity today. The word “Christian” (messianic) tells it all.

Christians (gentiles) did not come to recognize Yeshua when the Jews failed to do so (a fabrication repeated incessantly as gospel accuracy). In contrast, initially no outsiders, no gentiles, recognized Yeshua. (Save for isolated instances like the centurion at the crucifixion).

Lost is the Jewish center of rabbi Yeshua, the gospels about Him, and the entire New Covenant Scriptures. Proselytes to Christian Judaism gave way, in the wake of a swiftly expanding and independent Christian church, to conversion to an autonomous Christianity whose “amnesia of origin” was paramount.

After 70 A.D., with the collapse of Jerusalem, the Jewish Scriptures (OC and NC) and Jewish messianism, by the second or third decades of the second century, had been rendered, into Christianity.

Blessed be The Name
The English “God” of Old English and is equivalent to the Dutch god, German Gott, Icelandic godh, and Goth guth. The epithet “god” has no added correlation with Greek or Hebrew than “hell”; also of Germanic origin. In the Greek scriptures “hell” is rendered hades, in the Hebrew it is Sheol or Gehenna (Gei Hinnom).

The Greeks chose to Hellenize the Semitic epithets for God. However, in English there exists no grounds (other than the lethargy of tradition) for the Hellenized, Romanized and Germanized words for God not acquiescing to Elohim, Adonai and Yahweh in the New Covenant. “God”, the name of a northern pagan divinity, is standard English. Elohim, Yahweh and Adonai may soon beckon to be embraced by His followers.

One’s support of having the word “God” be the key sound in the Judeo-Christian tradition does not diminish the Viking and Germanic monosyllable’s deep resonance when it evoked Thor, the Old Norse god of thunder. (Who also gave us “Thor’s Day”, our day of God’s creation in the middle of the week, which we keep as “Thursday”.)

The first name for God, we encounter as the third word in the Hebrew Genesis (reading right to left): brereshit bara elohim et ha-shamayim ve-et ha-aaretz. Following the Hebrew word order this reads: “In the beginning | created | Elohim | the skies | and the earth”. Elohim a “plural of majesty” with a singular meaning, derived from Eloah (found mainly in Job), or from El meaning “God” as in El Shaddai, “God of the Mountains”, or El Elyon, “God Most High”. In the second account of creation (Gen. 2.4), (be-yom asot adonai elohim eretz ve-shmayim), our triune God is again called Elohim but also Adonai, meaning, “lord”. Genesis has provided thusly, two words for God: Elohim and Adonai early in the text.

Yet since His secret name –or any word signifying that name –is ineffable, the true name cannot be known, written, or sounded. There is however a way to represent God with letters that do not spell or reveal His secret name. The Tetragrammaton (also Tetragram), consists of the four Hebrew consonants YHWH or YHVH (yod, he, waw or vav, he ), normally pronounced Adonai (the Semitic word for “lord”). Some choose to sound out the letters, YHWH giving Yahweh another surrogate name for the nameless one.

Considering these things, it should come as no surprise that in Hebrew writings, God had no singular epithet. He was at once, nameless, but with a secret sign that could not be uttered, and so He took on one name that meant itself, which was HaShem, which means “The Name”.

Call me Ishmael?
Having explored all of this and discovering an inner conviction, I will move progressively towards using transliterated Hebrew names when writing my posts. I will try to remember to use the current English iteration of each name, parenthetically, the first time it is used in an article. I will also be adding a link to the main menu that will list a glossary of Hebrew names/terms in case I forget. This list will be organic, meaning that it may change or grow as I continue to study and move forward. It is my opinion that using the transliterated names helps preserve the origin and context of our faith. Additionally the heading of my links will give way to “messianic believers”. This title, meaning believers in Messiah, includes any “Christian” denomination. We are all messianic by this definition just as were Avraham, Yitzchak (Isaac), Ya’akov (Jacob), Kefa (Peter), Sha’ul (Paul), etc.

Unfortunately, there are many in the “Christian” community that will ask THE questions: “Are you saying it’s for salvation?” “Aren’t you being a legalist?” Since my view of salvation is that it is never based on works, the answer to both is obviously NO! Please, I am pleading with the Christian community to stop throwing the word “legalist” around like it’s a new buzzword! And please definitely do not follow the example of Pastor Bob Coy, of Calvary Chapel (CSN Radio), and refer to a person that wants to follow the Law as a “grace-killer”! (But do pray for him.)

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