My Name Was Not Jesus

Words to Know

Aramaic — the everyday language I spoke. Related to Hebrew, but not the same.

Anointed — having oil poured on your head in a ceremony. It is how you made someone a king.

Messiah — Hebrew for anointed. Christ is the same word in Greek. They mean the same thing.

Start with something small.

My name was Yeshua.

It was a common name, and lots of men had it. It is the same name your Bible gives to Joshua, the man who led my people into their land.

Same name. Your Bible just spells his name the old way and mine the new way.

How it changed.

Greek speakers wrote my name down. Greek has no sh sound, so the sh came out as an s. And Greek puts an -s on the end of a man’s name, the way English puts an -s on the end of a plural. So Yeshua came out Iēsous.

That spelling is older than I am. About two hundred and fifty years before I was born, Jewish scholars in Egypt translated our scriptures into Greek, and they spelled Joshua’s name Iēsous. My name was already sitting in a Greek book before anybody said it over my cradle. ¹

Then Latin speakers wrote it down. Around the year 400, a scholar named Jerome translated the whole Bible into Latin, and it reads Iesus.

Then English added the letter J. For most of its history the alphabet did not have one — the letter I did both jobs. An Italian writer named Gian Giorgio Trissino argued in 1524 that the two jobs should be split between two letters. The King James Bible of 1611 still printed my name Iesus. The spelling with a J became normal in English during the sixteen hundreds. ²

So: Yeshua, then Iēsous, then Iesus, then Jesus. Three languages and one new letter, and the last change is only about four hundred years old.

I am not upset. Names travel. That is what names do.

But notice what it shows you. Every single thing you have of mine came to you through other languages first. I spoke Aramaic. The books about me are in Greek.

How do you know I spoke Aramaic?

Because a few of my actual words stuck, and the men who wrote them down had to stop and translate them for their readers. You can see the seams.

Talitha koum — little girl, get up (Mark 5:41). Ephphatha — be opened (Mark 7:34). Abba — father (Mark 14:36). And from the cross, Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani (Mark 15:34).

Four scraps. That is very nearly everything that survives in the language I spoke.

Now the second word, and this one matters much more.

Christ is not my name.

It is not my last name. My family was not the Christ family.

Christ is a job. It is a Greek word that means anointed. Anointed means somebody poured oil on your head.

And you know who got oil poured on his head in my country?

A king.

Not a picture — an actual ceremony, with a horn of oil, performed by a prophet or a priest. Your Bible has it three times in a row at the start of the monarchy. The prophet Samuel pours oil on a man named Saul and tells him the Lord has anointed him ruler (1 Samuel 10:1). Samuel does it again, to a shepherd boy named David (1 Samuel 16:13). Zadok the priest does it to Solomon at the spring, and the people shout long live King Solomon (1 Kings 1:39).

Oil on the head. Then you are the king. That is what the word is for.

So what does “Jesus Christ” mean?

It means Yeshua the King.

That is a title, not a name. It is a job description.

And here is the part to hold on to. When the Romans killed me, they nailed a sign over my head saying what my crime was.

The sign said King of the Jews (Mark 15:26).

The title your church says the most is the crime I was executed for.

Why a title is useful.

A man from a village has a face. He has an accent. He has a job and a mother and opinions about money.

A title has none of that.

You cannot put a poor man from Nazareth on a flag. You can put a title on one.

Remember that. It comes back in Unit Three.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Mark 15:26

You will find: the sign the Romans put over my head. It names a crime, not a religion.

Try this too: read any letter of Paul and count how many times you meet the word Christ. Then count how many times you meet a man from Nazareth doing something.

The Short Version

• My name was Yeshua. Jesus is that name after two translations and one new letter.
• Christ is not a name. It is the Greek word for anointed, which means king.
• Jesus Christ means Yeshua the King.
• Rome executed me for claiming to be a king. That is on the sign.

Think About It

1. Try praying tonight using Yeshua instead of Jesus. Does anything feel different?
2. Why is it easier to build an empire around a title than around a person?