Historical Examinations of Paul, the Bible and Christian History
Jesus
This might be one of the most challenging sections of the site. Most people have a very set idea as to who Jesus was which often hinders, if not totally blocking, any additional information about the person. This mindset makes it difficult to produce specific sections of this site as many of its users will shut down their minds to anything new or that contradicts their current understanding or believes.
The Crucifixion of Jesus
Following are many general facts about the crucifixion of Jesus. For the student of the bible and Christianity many of these points of interest will come as no surprise. However, many may be of the contradicting nature of what you think is the truth.
The Race of Jesus
As the twentieth century arrived so did the research of people that existed in the Middle East at the time of Jesus. Combined with this exploration and many ethnic groups wishing to identify with this ancient figure the question of Jesus' race arose.
Jesus and the Zealots
The Zealots were a political movement in 1st-century Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Judea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy Land by force of arms, most notably during the First Jewish–Roman War (66–70). In modern times terminology a zealot would today be a terrorist or an insurrectionist.
The Name of Jesus
If we were able to travel back in time and went on a search for Jesus. You might be frustrated to find that no one would know who you were talking about and might not have even heard of the word "Jesus". The name “Jesus” is nearly universally recognizable. However, it may come as a surprise that the name millions of Christians all over the world are implored not to take in vain was not actually “Jesus” at all.
Controversial though the claim may sound, at heart it is really more of a translation issue.
What Was Jesus’ Real Name?
The Greek transliteration of Jesus’ real name, “Iēsous”, and the late Biblical Hebrew version “Yeshua”.
Of course, neither English nor Spanish were around in their modern form when the real Jesus was actually alive, or for that matter, when the New Testament was written.
Jesus and his followers were all Jewish and so they had Hebrew names — although they would likely have spoken Aramaic. The “J” sound used to pronounce Jesus’ name does not exist in Hebrew or Aramaic, which is strong evidence that Jesus was called something entirely different by his contemporaries.
Most scholars, therefore, believe that the Christian Messiah’s name was actually “Yeshua,” a fairly common Jewish name around the time Jesus was alive. Archaeologists have actually found the name carved into 71 burial caves in Israel, dating from the time the historical Jesus would have been alive. This leads to the question of why, if there were evidently so many men named “Yeshua” running around at the time, the name “Jesus” came to be unique.
How “Yeshua” Became Lost In Translation
The King James bible used the “I” spelling in place of the “J” spelling.
Since not every language shares the same sounds, people have historically adopted their names so as to be able to pronounce them in various languages. Even in modern languages, there are differences in the pronunciation of Jesus. In English, the name is pronounced with a hard “J” while in Spanish, even though the spelling is the same, the name is pronounced with what would be an “H” in English.
It is precisely this type of transliteration that has evolved “Yeshua” into the modern “Jesus.” The New Testament was originally written in Greek, which not only uses an entirely different alphabet than Hebrew but also lacks the “sh” sound found in “Yeshua.”
The New Testament authors decided to use the Greek “s” sound in place of the “sh” in Yeshua and then added a final “s” to the end of the name to make it masculine in the language. When, in turn, the Bible was translated into Latin from the original Greek, the translators rendered the name as “Iesus.”
German crucifix depicting the “King of the Jews” sign in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin
In John 19:20, the disciple writes that the Romans nailed to Jesus’ cross a sign stating “The King of the Jews” and that “it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.” This inscription has been a standard part of depictions of the crucifixion in Western Christianity for centuries as “INRI,” an abbreviation for the Latin Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, or “Jesus the Nazarene King of the Jews.”
Since Latin was the preferred language of the Catholic Church, the Latin version of “Yeshua” was the name for Christ throughout Europe. Even the 1611 publication of the King James Bible used the “Iesus” spelling.
How “Yeshua” Eventually Became “Jesus”
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the “Jesus” spelling came from, although some historians speculate that version of the name originated in Switzerland.
In Swiss, the “J” is pronounced more like an English “Y”, or the Latin “Ie” as in “Iesus”. When the Catholic Queen, “Bloody” Mary I took the Engish throne in 1553, droves of English Protestant scholars fled, and many ultimately found refuge in Geneva. It was there that a team of some of the brightest English minds of the day produced the Geneva Bible that used the “Jesus” Swiss spelling.
The Geneva Bible helped to bring about the popularization of the “Jesus” spelling.
The Geneva Bible was an enormously popular translation and was the version of the Bible quoted by Shakespeare and Milton. Eventually, it was brought over to the New World on the Mayflower. By 1769, most English translations of the Bible were using the “Jesus” spelling popularized by the Geneva Bible.
Thus, the name used by English speakers today is an English adaptation of a German transliteration of a Latin transliteration of a Greek transliteration of an originally Hebrew name.