How did Jesus pronounce his own name? Evidence from 1st Century Inscriptions

every language today has their own way of saying the name jesus but how was it pronounced in the first century or how did jesus and his followers pronounce his name [Music] i remember many years ago encountering all sorts of websites that said we shouldn't use the name jesus it's a corruption of zeus or we shouldn't use the name jesus and we should go back to the original hebrew of the name and they all had different pronunciations of what that might be many years later it turns out that my field of research is actually how they pronounced hebrew in the roman period first second third century based on how it's reflected in greek writing so i actually have the tools to get at this question myself and so i thought i would make a video to clear up some of the misinformation out there and answer the question how would jesus have pronounced his own name and how did it come to be pronounced the way it is in english spoiler it has nothing to do with zeus now the name of jesus of nazareth is recorded for us in the greek new testament as jesus so the first question we have to answer is what is the hebrew name underlying the greek name jesus since this of course is a greek version of a hebrew name and not the hebrew name itself well if you look at the septuagint the ancient greek translation of the hebrew old testament the earliest parts of which were translated about 200 or more years before jesus of nazareth was born you will find that the name jesus appears almost 250 times in every case it corresponds with one of two names yehoshua which in english bibles is translated as joshua or yeshua which in english bibles is translated as jeshua now just a quick note for now i'm using the modern hebrew pronunciation as we go through these names but we'll talk more later about exactly how these were pronounced in the first century now for an ancient hebrew speaker these were really just two different versions of the same name yehoshua was the more original and longer form of the name and yeshua was a shorter and later form of the name indeed in the early books of the hebrew bible like the torah the stories we read about moses and joshua the name you find is yehoshua it is not actually until some of the later books of the bible ezra nehemiah chronicles where we find the shorter form yeshua so it seems that the shorter form did not actually develop until a later stage of the language probably around the time of or after the exile on the 6th century bce now after the shorter form had developed both names existed side by side and you might even think of yahushua and yeshua as something like joshua and josh but it's not entirely clear if one person would have been called by both names in different contexts it's hard to know from the evidence that we have maybe one person would have just had one of those names so then which of these two names yehoshua or yeshua or both was likely the name of jesus of nazareth well to answer this question we have to turn to some inscriptions in papyri from the time and place in which jesus was born grew up and lived the name yehoshua whether in hebrew or aramaic does not actually appear very often in inscriptions from judea-palestine there are a couple examples i could find but both date from the 3rd century ce or later so here's one you can see from i believe around the coastal area from the third fifth century ce here's another one from i think jude dumea area from the fourth to eighth century ce so it's not very common in the epigraphic record now the name yeshua on the other hand appears many times maybe around 15 and almost all of them are dated to the first century so you can see here here's some inscriptions of yeshua from jerusalem and judea in the first century also some from idumea judean desert region as well and then also in a collection of papyri letters and contracts from around the dead sea from around the early 2nd century so we're talking around here 100 110 121 30 or so we don't find the name yahushua at all but we do find the name yeshua about nine times so you can see here it is in one papyrus here it is again in another papyrus and in these contracts from around the dead sea you often find a greek version of the contract and then a short version of the contract and or some signatures of those involved written in aramaic so these give us a good chance to see the coordination of the names and in each case the name jesus or a variant jesus is in the greek version of the contract and that will correspond to yeshua in the hebrew name or the aramaic version of the contract as you can see for example here you get vesas yesu a slight variant in the declension but still the same basic shape as jesus and in the aramaic section of the contract yeshua so it seems pretty safe to say that the hebrew underlying the name jesus in the new testament is yeshua rather than yehoshua since the former was just so much more common in this period of first century second century roman period than the other and in fact i think this is probably what is going on in the septuagint as well it's not that jesus and the pentateuch is a true transcription of the name yehoshua for joshua but it is regarded as the greek equivalent of the name familiar to those speakers of hebrew and aramaic living in the hellenistic period after all many jews interacting with greek on a regular basis would have had a greek version of their name alongside the hebrew version of their name to use in greek speaking contexts now the greek version of the name is clearly based off of the form yeshua which was much more popular in the hellenistic period you know it wasn't based on yehoshua since its phonological structure corresponds as much as it could to yeshua there is an initial yota corresponding to the ya sound in eight that corresponding to the long e sound a sigma corresponding to hebrew sh and then an omicron ipsilon corresponding to the hebrew long uu vowel and then finally you just add the greek nominal inflection on to the end of the name and you have it but a name like yehoshua if it was truly transcribed into greek would look different and we know this because there was actually a tradition of church of transcribing the hebrew bible and not just names into greek later on in the roman period and in that tradition the name yahushua ends up being written as yosuwe so now that we have determined that greek jesus ultimately corresponds to hebrew yeshua there are just a couple pronunciation questions we have to point out about the first century pronunciation of hebrew first unlike modern hebrew which does not have long and short vowels and only has a single e vowel hebrew of the first century had two e vowels one long and one short and it's probably the case that the longer one was pronounced with a slightly more tense pronunciation so something like e was the long one and that's what's represented by greek eta and then eventually the vowel signed sere in the tiberian tradition of hebrew and then the short eva is more like e and then the final ooh vowel is also pronounced long even though we don't have long vowels in modern hebrew now the last remaining question concerns what is written as in hebrew historically iron was pronounced as ah as a guttural it's not a sound we have in english now over time already starting in the ancient period these types of sounds the gutturals started to fade away as they got weaker in pronunciation sometimes vowels would be added to preserve their pronunciation better in the tiberian tradition of hebrew and in modern hebrew for example a short ah vowel is added just before the final ah to make sure it is pronounced that is why in modern hebrew we say yeshua now this weakening of gutturals was going on during the first century so we have to ask the question was jesus's name pronounced as yeshu with the final guttural strongly pronounced or as ye with weakening and not pronouncing the final guttural or as something like yeshuwa with a helping vowel to help pronounce the ah or maybe just as yeshua as kind of a hint that there was a guttural there so what was likely the case in nazareth in the galilee where jesus grew up well the weakening of the gutturals in the second temple period is generally thought to have been brought about by greek influence which means it would have impacted urban areas and the educated classes first and foremost and there's a number of scholars who've written on this kucher for one and then urimo more recently now in the dead sea scrolls which is in the south in judea there is clear evidence for the weakening of gutturals where guttural letters will be omitted or written in the wrong place the same is true of some inscriptions from judea around the same time most of our epigraphy from galilee however comes from a later date at that point there are two groups inscriptions from beit shayan show a lot of guttural weakening but other inscriptions show very little guttural weakening this is confirmed by rabbinic literature there's a number of passages relevant here and given that these were or were near greek centers especially betsy on this is consistent with the hypothesis outlined earlier that greek influence is responsible for the weakening of gutturals in other inscriptions from galilee that were not under heavy greek influence weakening of guttural's is minimal now given jesus's background then you know growing up in a rural village of who knows maybe 500 a thousand people in nazareth it is unlikely that his version of hebrew or aramaic would have been heavily influenced by greek therefore he probably pronounced the guttural ein as all it is thus most likely that when jesus his family and his disciples said his name they pronounced it as ye when he traveled to other places however for example the decapolis it is possible that those more heavily influenced by greek pronounced his name as yeshu in jerusalem where there would have been both greek and hebrew aramaic and heavy supply the guttural might have weakened but not elided entirely those residents might have pronounced it but with a helping vowel as ye indeed we actually find two pieces of epigraphic evidence that support this point in a first century inscription from jerusalem we find the name spelled as yeshua in hebrew with the final hay indicating an ah vowel and as yeshua in greek on the same inscription this almost certainly indicates something of a helping vowel to help pronounce the iron sound and from the early second century we find the name spelled as yeshua with the final aleph after the iron in a papyrus from around the dead sea and we know that hebrew aramaic and greek were all strong in that area in the first and second centuries so it is probably the case that all three pronunciations jesus and yeshua existed in the first century but when jesus his family and friends and disciples from his region pronounced his name it was probably with a strong ah as yeshu so how do we get to the form in english well let's do this quick and wrap up the video well the hebrew form goes into greek as jesus this gets picked up into latin as jesus which eventually comes into english as jesus says latin i before vowels often ends up as j in english nothing to do with zeus just normal language development not every language however got the name jesus through greek take a look at arabic which pronounces the name as yasuo keeping the final ein sound so if you speak a language other than english maybe you can explain in the comments down below how to pronounce the name jesus in your own language and maybe think of how it ended up being pronounced that way from the original hebrew yeshu going to the greek ye sus and so on or perhaps another way you

Channel: Biblical Hebrew

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Keywords: learn, Hebrew, language, alphabet, Israel, write, speak, school, teacher, tutorial, lessons, compilation, fastest, easiest, pronunciation, grammar, basics, continuous, listening, biblical hebrew, hebrew alphabet, learn hebrew, abraham, genesis, Bible, ancient hebrew, biblical studies, biblical land, jerusalem, hebrew bible, original bible, torah, how to learn biblical hebrew, biblical hebrew lessons, learn biblical hebrew, name of Jesus, Jesus in Hebrew, Yeshua, Yahushua, Yahshua, original name of Jesus

Id: na22KkydPRs

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2022