Cicely Walker

His name is not "Yeshua." No Christian is in the historic record calling Him "Yeshua" - not a single time. The practice did not start until a Hebraist named Franz Delitzsch in 1877. It was not popularized until the Judaizing Hebrew Roots / Messianic cult developed in the 1960s, thanks to Nostra Aetate. It's a 20th-century trend, not a historic reality. His name is Ἰησοῦς. That's what He is referred to in the inspired Word of God more than 90 times. That's what the angel named Him in the gospel of Matthew, an author who used the original Aramaic when quoting someone speaking Aramaic (like Jesus). Yet the angel named Him ησοῦς; despite that name being above ALL names and the most IMPORTANT name in the history of mankind, Matthew did not use Aramaic or Hebrew because Jesus' name is Greek, as the angel divinely named Him. Jesus' brothers had Greek names. Jesus' disciples' names were Greek. Most babies in 1st-century Galilee had Greek names, a verifiable fact. They lived in Greek culture. They spoke Aramaic, but also Greek - including Christ, according to conversations he held in the gospels. It was the language of business, diplomacy, government, and commerce. And Jesus came to be a global Gentile Messiah. Greek is what was appropriate for the one who *referred to Himself* as the "Son of Man" 70 times and not "the King of the Jews," even once. Jesus' Bible was Greek. When He taught from the synagogue in the gospel of Luke, it was Greek. Every single time Jesus quotes the Bible, it's the LXX, the Greek Septuagint, and NOT the Hebrew Bible. Precisely zero people spoke conversant Hebrew in the first century, with the language dying except for its liturgical vocabulary centuries before. "But Jesus means Yeshua in Hebrew." First, I'll point out it's irrelevant what it was in Hebrew when nobody spoke Hebrew. Secondly, I'll point out that's a dumb myth. In fact, six Hebrew names transliterate to "Jesus" in Greek. But that doesn't mean it works in reverse. There is no reason to say His name was "Yeshua," any more than one of those other five Hebrew names. The first people to suggest this were medieval Rabbis, mid-insult. They might as well have picked one of those names at random. We don't let godless pagans like Rabbis dictate the name of the Son of God. The Bible does that. That's because there's no way to tell which of those names it would be, if it were indeed a Hebrew name. ZERO accounts in antiquity call Him Yeshua or any other Hebrew name. Every account of our Lord written in antiquity used Greek. Every. Single. One. The Bible expressly forbids Jewish myths (Titus 1:14). This is one. And Christians referring to Him as "Yeshua" are proving they've not done the work to separate myth from historical fact. Hebrew is not some magical heavenly tongue that carries mystical powers. God saw fit to destroy it, along with their Temple and genealogy records, and records the New Testament in the vastly superior language of Greek, which far better articulates meanings precisely. And thank God, He chose to preserve the Old Testament in Greek, too. God literally replaced the Hebrew with something better, and it's been dead since, never to be resurrected. The reason "Yeshua" is pushed upon evangelicals is to draw emotional sympathy to Israel. It's Judaizing by it's very nature. The problem is, they dont' speak Hebrew in Israel. They speak a 20th-century-invented pig-latin garbage tongue, a committee language, fundamentally European in syntax, with a tiny liturgical Hebrew vocabulary, supplemented by Aramaic and Arabic, along with European vocabulary including Russian and other Eastern European tongues, like Yiddish. Enough with the Hebrew crap.