Jesus or Yeshua? —

The Bible declares in Acts 4:12 that there’s no other name under heaven by which we can be saved other than Jesus Christ. But unbelievers as well as some believers from the Jewish roots movement claim that this is wrong because His name is not really Jesus but Yeshua (which is His name in Hebrew). Some of these critics also claim that Jesus is a pagan name given to Him in the fifth century at the Council of Nicea by the church and that even “the letter J is a modern invention”[1] that does not exist in the Hebrew or Greek. Thus, according to this teaching, those who call on the name of “Jesus” for salvation are lost.[2]   But is the name of Jesus really a pagan corruption and are we required to only call on the Hebrew name of the Lord?

How did we get the name Jesus?

Let’s begin by looking at the basics of how we got the name Jesus. Contrary to the critic’s belief, it actually started with the New Testament writers who (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) transliterated His Hebrew name Yeshua (or more properly Yehoshua) into ancient Greek as Iēsous. From here the name was eventually translated into Latin which was virtually identical except that the ‘o’ was dropped (Iesus). And then came the English translation which looked identical to the Latin but due to the influence from old French the ‘I’ now had a ‘J’ sound [Jay-Soos]. And by 1629 the ‘I’ had been replaced with the ‘J.’ Lastly, with some added influence from the Germanic languages—which render the ‘S’ between two vowels with a ‘Z’ sound—we finally arrived at the modern name Jesus. So, no. Jesus is not a pagan corruption invented at the Council of Nicea but is simply a natural translation of the Hebrew name Yeshua. And though it is true that the letter J did not exist in ancient Hebrew or Greek, it does not illegitimize this translation of Yeshua’s name in any way. If it did, then the NT Greek translation of His name would also be illegitimate since there are letters in the Greek version of His name that also do not exist in Hebrew!