His name wasn’t “Jesus.”
Not exactly.
The name “Jesus” is a Latin-English transliteration coming from the Greek name pronounced as “eeaysoos,” which was in turn a transliteration of the Hebrew name “Yeshua.”
The name “Yeshua” was extremely common in the days of Christ – perhaps why he was often identified as the son of Joseph of Nazareth, differentiating him from all the other Yeshuas running around.
But there’s a layer deeper.
Yeshua was also a late Hebrew shorthand of the centuries-old name “Yehoshua,” which equates to the name Joshua today.
What’s fascinating about this commonality is that, while Yehoshua means “God delivers,” the name Yeshua simply means “deliverance” or “deliverer.” In other words, it’s as if to say that Yeshua is the very substance of God’s salvation personified.
There are several rich parallels here.
For instance, in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, Moses spoke of a Promised Land to come, but it was Joshua who brought God’s people into the new city of milk and honey.
Likewise, John the Baptizer prophesied of one greater than he who was coming after him, yet died before seeing the completion of his ministry (similar to Moses).
It was Yeshua who followed him – who established a new kingdom for the people of God unlike any kingdom of man. He was the divine Prophet of prophets and King of kings who not only delivered his children from oppression, sin, and death, but who delivered them into a domain of justice, life, and shalom.
Yeshua is our mighty deliverer because he is the embodiment of complete deliverance.
He is our 2nd Joshua who is leading us out of lands of darkness into open spaces inundated with light.
Final thought…
I transitioned to primarily calling Jesus by his name “Yeshua” over a decade ago. I did so for a couple of reasons:
On a practical level, there’s something that always stood out to me at the thought that Christ would have never been phonetically called “Jesus” in his incarnation, and for me, that seemed important. Just as, when I pass, I hope people would remember me by the name “Barrett,” it feels meaningful to speak the same sounds that our Savior would have responded to when he walked the Earth.
Additionally, in my own journey with Christ, there was a point where I had gotten too familiar with a version of Jesus that was culturally very white (see the book, The Color of Christ), American, and individualistic. Eventually, I was ready to (re)discover the person of Yeshua on his own turf and in his own culture. He needed to, in ways, become unfamiliar to me again to open up greater intimacy in our relationship. It still to this day can feel awkward or unnatural at points when I say the name Yeshua (and it definitely lacks the same level of nostalgia), but it has also opened up a world of curiosity and wonder as I continue getting to know the person who is my Savior.
This is, of course, not a statement at all against using the name “Jesus” (which is a name I absolutely still delight in and use regularly as well), but perhaps both a testimony of (and invitation into) the beauty that exists in calling out the powerful name of our Savior: Yeshua.