What's In A Name? [Part 4]

What's in a Name? [Part 4]

Is the name 'Jesus' pagan?
There is a voice among those who would call themselves 'Messianic' which is growing ever louder. It is thew voice of a group I have mentioned before - the Sacred Name movement.

Among their subscribers are those who believe:

1. The name 'Jesus' is a complete fabrication, after all, the letter J didn't exist until the end of the Middle Ages and certainly not in Hebrew.
2. The original Hebrew name Yahshuah (or one of its several forms) is the only name that should be used, otherwise you are speaking to a false god. This is particularly the case if you use the English form 'Jesus'. If a person were to go to another country their name would be the same as in their own country - or would it? Peter in English is Pedro in Spanish, Pietro in Italian and so on - does the change of spelling mean it refers to a different person?
3. The name 'Jesus' means 'Hail Zeus'.
4. The name 'Jesus' in Latin means 'earth-pig'.
We have already looked at the origins of the word 'Jesus' and how it is derived legitimately from the Greek and Latin. We have also looked at the different forms, such as Yahshuah and others and how linguistically these cannot be said to be correct forms.
Today, we are going to take a brief look at the other two claims, that Jesus refers to Zeus or that the name is somehow connected with pigs (an unclean animal, according to the Scripture).

Does 'Jesus' mean 'Hail Zeus'? 

There is a common belief within the Hebrew Roots movement that the name 'Jesus' is an invention of Satan, created to obscure the true identity of the Messiah and to deceive many into accepting a false deity. As the letter J did not exist until the 1700s, then how can the name 'Jesus' have anything to do with the person of Yeshua? 'Jesus' sounds nothing like His proper name, so it must be at best an invention and at worst a cunning trick deliberately to deceive people. They claim, the name 'Jesus' is a derivative of Zeus and to use the name Jesus means you are worshipping the false god Zeus.

This idea was first made popular in a book called 'The Two Babylons' by Alexander Hislop, published in 1858. [It has clearly been around for a long time]. More recently, Lew White took up the theme in his book 'Fossilised Customs', despite the fact that Hislop's work had been exposed as false  by scholars quite soon after being published. But as the Hebrew Roots movement seems to take delight in finding 'pandemonium' (meaning 'demons everywhere', a word invented by John Milton), the idea that 'Jesus' is linked to 'Zeus' continues to gain credence, using Hislop's work as the basis for their belief.

As Candace Lucey points out:

"The theory starts with a faulty grasp of Hebrew. If Roman Catholic officials changed the Messiah's name from Yahshua (which they claim means Yah is salvation) to Iesous, a hybrid Greek/Latin word meaning 'Hail Zeus' then a secret within the name of Jesus has been decoded. He was the Greek god of thunder all along. Or at least, Jesus' name was changed to make it [Christianity] more acceptable to pagan culture."

The following comes from the wwyd.org website:

"Basically, to keep it simple, 'Jesus' is a very poor translation from Latin, that was also poorly translated from the Greek, which in no way resembles His Hebrew name...Moreover, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the name Jesus is a combination of two mythical deities, IEU and SUS (Zeus a Greek god). In Gnostic and Greek mythologies they are actually one and the same pagan deity. So it appears the name 'Jesus' has some documented pagan origins".

You will notice that the comments about the Encyclopedia Britannica are neither given citations nor are they actually quoted. In fact, the EB says nothing of the kind (and I have looked). In fairness, the writer of the website article does go on to say that there are some who consider that the name Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with paganism in general or Zeus in particular. But then he adds 'But I disagree with them'.

Dr Michael Brown responded to the above website:

"We know where the name Iesous came from: the Jewish Septuagint! In other words, this was not some later pagan corruption of the Saviour's name; rather, it was the natural Greek way of rendering the Hebrew/Aramaic name Yeshua at least two centuries before His birth, and it is the form of the name found in more than 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. 

Although it is claimed that the Encyclopedia Britannica says that [Jesus is a pagan name] it actually says no such thing. This is a complete fabrication, intentional or not. In short, as one Jewish believer once stated, 'Jesus is as much related to Zeus as Moses is to mice'."

A. B. Traina, in his 'Holy Name Bible' wrote: The name of the son, Yahshua, has been substituted by Jesus, Iesous, and Ea-Zeus (Healing Zeus), to which Michael Brown again responded:

"There is no connection of any kind between the Greek name Iesous (or the English name Jesus) and the name Zeus. Absolutely none! You might as well argue that Tiger Woods is the name of a tiger-infested jungle in India as try to connect the name Jesus to the pagan god Zeus...It is based on linguistic ignorance".

The name 'Jesus' is a perfectly natural and legitimate transliteration of the name Yeshua from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English. The name was in use long before Yeshua/Jesus was born and was used by Hebrew translators to translate Yehoshua/Yeshua (Joshua) in the Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint. It is impossible linguistically for the name of Yeshua to be reproduced exactly in Greek. Greek does not have the '-y' sound, so the translators used two letters i and e, which together came closest to reproducing the y. In addition, in Greek, Iesous was pronounced ee-yay-soos, while Zeus was pronounced Dzoosh - clearly these two are not the same. There really is no conspiracy to 'hide' God's true name from the name of His Son, it is not an invention of Satan and no, you are not calling upon a false deity if you use the name 'Jesus'.

As J. K. McKee states:

"Almost 300 years before Messiah's birth, the Jewish translator of the Septuagint had a similar problem. They were commissioned to translate the Hebrew proper names into Greek. Unlike Hebrew to English transliteration, which is easier because English offers most of the same sounds of Hebrew; Hebrew to Greek transliteration is not as easy. And many of our proper Biblical names in English come from Greek transliterations of Hebrew words (ie. Moses, Phineas, Caiaphas).For example, Young's Analytical Concordance confirms for us that the original name of the Messiah is indeed "Yeshua," and this Hebrew name, when translated into Greek, is "Iesous.".....It is important to note that this same name is used for the title of the book of Joshua in the Septuagint, which serves as definitive proof that Iesous is not of pagan origin, but rather is indeed a Creek transliteration of Yeshua developed by the Jewish translators! For, Iesous is also the Greek translation of Yehoshua as demonstrated by the Septuagint."

"The notion that the name 'Jesus' comes from 'Hail Zeus' not only shows a lack of understanding of language as a whole, but literally has zero historical evidence to back it up." [Tim Hegg]

The name 'Christ' is also pagan?

There are some who would also claim that the name 'Christ' is also of pagan origin. However, this can be dismissed very quickly.

First of all, 'Christ' in not a name as much as a title, like we might call our sovereign 'Queen Elizabeth'. The word in Greek is Christos and is where we get 'Christ' from in English. It means 'anointed' or 'the anointed one'. In Hebrew, the word for anointed/anointed one is Mashiach, which is where we get the term 'Messiah'. Thus Messiah (Mashiach) and Christ (Christos) are the exact same word in their respective languages.

As we have seen, the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek about 200-300 years before the birth of Yeshua. In every place where the word 'anointed' appears, the Greek translators wrote 'christos'. As an example:

Habakkuk 3v13:

"ἐξῆλθες εἰς σωτηρίαν λαοῦ σου τοῦ σῶσαι τοὺς **χριστούς** σου ἔβαλες εἰς κεφαλὰς ἀνόμων θάνατον ἐξήγειρας δεσμοὺς ἕως τραχήλου διάψαλμα

You came out for the deliverance of your people, to save your anointed; you threw death on the heads of the lawless; you lifted bonds to the neck."

Once again, there is no support whatever that 'christ' is a pagan word.

Jesus means 'earth-pig'

There is a fringe minority that would claim that the name 'Jesus' means 'earth-pig'; unfortunately this notion is also gaining acceptance among the Sacred Name movement and elsewhere. If you want to read about it from their perspective, then there is an article here that sets out their reasoning: https://www.sacredname.com/Articles/Essays/Jesus-Equals-Earth-Pig.html There were other artciles available, but some of them were downright blasphemous and this from people who claim Yeshua is the Messiah of God!

The idea stems from the Latin: Je is the same as Ge and means earth; while sus means pig, therefore the English form of His name means earth-pig.

Again, this can be quickly debunked. There is no word Je in Latin and there is no word that contains those letters that connect the Je/Ge to the word 'earth' (even using any form of substitute for the J). The theory also relies on the idea that the Latin for the name 'Jesus' is actually Ge-sus, which is clearly an error - the Latin for 'Jesus' is Iesus and not Ge-sus. As we have seen before, Jesus is a transliteration of Iesus (Latin), which came from Iesous (Greek), which came from Yeshua (Hebrew)

Conclusion:

To make any connection between Zeus or pigs and Jesus is rather like saying funerals have to be happy, lighthearted affairs because the word 'funeral' contains the word 'fun'! But I will finish with a well known quotation from 'Through the Looking Glass' by Lewis Carroll, in a conversation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty:

 ‘…and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents––‘
         ‘Certainly,’ said Alice.
           ‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’           
      ‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
           ‘Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t–till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’
           ‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”, Alice objected.
           ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’
           ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things–that’s all.’