Why Was the Savior’s Name Changed from Yahshua to Jesus? Chapter 8 of YAH IS SAVIOR: THE ROAD TO IMMORTALITY

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Chapter 8  Why was the Savior’s Name Changed from Yahshua to Jesus?

      Dr. C. J. Koster further explains why and how they changed the Savior’s name in his book, Come out of Her My People, “a factual presentation of well researched material showing exactly which elements in ancient pagan and sun worship were adopted into the Church.”  On page 60 we find the chapter entitled, “The Non-original, Substitute Name ‘Jesus,’ Traces Back to Sun-worship Too”:

     “There is not a single authoritative reference source which gives the name Jesus or Iesous as the original name of our Saviour!  All of them admit that the original form of the Name was Jehoshua or Yehoshua.  Why then, was it changed from Jehoshua or Yehoshua to Jesus?

     “Many Hebrew names of the Old Testament prophets have been “Hellenized” when these names were rewritten in the Greek New Testament.  Thus, Isaiah became Isaias, Elisha became Elissaios or Elisseus (Eliseus), and Elijah became Helias in the Greek New Testament.  The King James Version has retained some of these Hellenized  names.  Since  the  King  James  Version was published, the newer English versions have ignored these Hellenized names of the Greek New Testament, and have preferred, quite correctly, to render them as they are found in the Hebrew Old Testament, namely: Isaiah, Elisha, and Elijah.

     “Incidentally, the similarity between the Hellenized Helias (instead of Elijah) and the Greek Sun-deity Helios, gave rise to the well-known assimilation of these two by the Church.  Dr. A. B. Cook, in his book, Zeus—a Study in Ancient Religion, Vol. I, pp. 178-179, elaborates on this quoting the comments of a 5^th century Christian poet and others on this.  Imagine it, Elijah identified with Helios, the Greek Sun-deity!

      “Returning to our discussion on the reluctance of the translators to persist with all of the Hellenized names in the Greek of the New Testament, one could very well ask: But why did they persist with the Hellenized Iesous of our Saviours’s Name, and its further Latinized form Iesus?  It is accepted by all that our Saviour’s Hebrew Name was Jehoshua or Yehoshua.  So why did the translators of the Scriptures not retain or restore it, as they did with the names of the Hebrew prophets?

     “It is generally agreed that our Saviour’s Name is identical (or very similar) to that of the successor to Moses, Joshua.  But “Joshua” was not the name of the man who led Israel into the Promised Land.  The Greeks substituted the Old Testament “Yehoshua” with Iesous, the same word they used for our Saviour in the New Testament.  Subsequently the Latins came and substituted it with Josue (Iosue) in the Old Testament (which became Josua in German and Joshua in English), but used Iesus in the New Testament.

     “In the Hebrew Scriptures we do not find the word “Joshua.”  In every place it is written: Yehoshua.  However,   after   the  Babylonian  captivity  we  find  the shortened form “Yeshua” in a few places—shortened, because  they  then  omitted  the second and third letters namely: WH.  Everyone who sees the names Yehoshua and Iesous will agree: there is no resemblance between the names Yehoshua and Iesous or Jesus.

     “Before we continue with our study of the words Iesous and Iesus, we would like to point out that we have been led to believe that the Saviour’s correct Name is: Yahushua.  Our Saviour said in John 5:43, “I have come in My Father’s Name.”  Again, in John 17:11 He prayed to His Father, “Keep them through Your Name which You have given Me.”  According to the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, the United Bible Societies’ Third Edition, and the  Majority  Text.   Therefore, in John 17:11 our Saviour states that His Father’s Name had been given to Him.  Again he repeats this irrefutable fact in the next verse, John 17:12, “In your Name which You gave Me.  And I guarded them (or it).”  Read John 17:11-12 in any of the modern English versions.

     “So we have our Saviour’s clear words, in three texts, that His Father’s Name was given to Him.  Paul also testifies to this in Eph.3:14-15 as well as in Phil.2:9.  What then is His Father’s Name?  Although most scholars accept “Yahweh,” and many still cling to the older form “Yehowah” (or Jehovah), we are convinced that the correct form is Yahuweh.

     “Two factors contributed greatly to the substitution and distortion of our Saviour’s Name.  The first was the un-Scriptural superstitious teaching of the Jews that the Father’s Name is not to be uttered, that it is ineffable, that others will profane it when they use it, and that the Name must be “disguised” outside of the temple of Jerusalem.

     “Because of the Father’s Name being in His Son’s Name, this same disastrous suppression of the Name resulted in them giving a Hellenized, in fact, a surrogate name  for  our  Saviour.  He did warn us in John 5:43, “I have come in My Father’s Name…if another comes in his own name, him you will receive.”

     “The second factor was the strong anti-Judaism that prevailed amongst the Gentiles, as we have already pointed out.  The Gentiles wanted a saviour, but not a Jewish one.  They loathed the Jews, they even loathed the Elohim of the Old Testament.  Thus, a Hellenized saviour was preferred.  The Hellenized theological school at Alexandria, led by the syncretizing, allegorizing, philosophying, Gnostic-indoctrinated Clement and Origen, was the place where everything started to become distorted and adapted to suit the Gentiles.  The Messianic Belief, and its Saviour, had to become Hellenized to be acceptable to the Gentiles.

     “Where did Iesous and Iesus come from?  In Bux and Schone, Worter-buch der Antike, under “Jesus,” we read, “JESUS: really named Jehoshua.  Iesous (Greek), Iesus (Latin) is adapted from the Greek, possibly from the name of a Greek healing goddess Ieso (Iaso).

     “Like all authoritative sources, this dictionary admits to the real true Name of our Saviour: Jehoshua (or as we believe: Yahushua).  It then states, as most others, that the commonly known substitute, non-original, non-real name “Jesus” was adapted from the Greek.  We must remember that our Saviour was born from a Hebrew maiden, not from a Greek one.  His stepfather, His half-brothers and half-sisters, in fact all His people, were Hebrews…Furthermore, this dictionary then traces the substitute name back to the Latin Iesus, and the Greek Iesous.  It then traces the origin of the name Iesous back as being possibly adapted from the Greek healing goddess Ieso (Iaso).

     “To the uninformed I would like to point out that Iaso is the usual Greek form, while Ieso is from the Ionic dialect of the Greeks.

     “This startling discovery of the connection between Ieso (Iaso) and Iesous, is also revealed to us by the highly respected and authoritative unabridged edition of Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, p. 816, under “Iaso.”

     “The third witness comes to us in a scholarly article by Hans Lamer in Philologische Wochenschrift, No. 25, 21 June 1930, pp. 763-765.  In this article the author recalls the fact of Ieso being the Ionic Greek goddess of healing.  Hans Lamer then postulates, because of all the evidence, that “next to Ieso man shaped a proper masculine Iesous.  This was even more welcome to the Greeks who converted to Christianity.”  He then continues, “If the above is true, then the name of our Lord which we commonly use goes back to a long lost form of the name of a Greek goddess of healing.  But to Greeks who venerated a healing goddess Ieso, a saviour Iesous must have been most acceptable. The Hellenisa-  tion was thus rather clever.”

     “This then is the evidence of three sources who, like us, do not hide the fact of the Greek name Iesous being related to Ieso, the Greek goddess of healing. The Hellenization of our Saviour’s Name was indeed most cleverly done.  To repeat our Savour’s words or warning in John 5:43, “I have come in My Father’s Name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive.”

     “There is no resemblance or identifiability between our Saviour’s Name, Yahushua, and the Greek substitute for it Iesous.  The Father’s Name, Yah- or Yahu-, cannot be seen in the Greek Iesous or in the Latin Iesus, neither in the English or German Jesus.

     “In spite of attempts made to justify the “translating” of the Father’s Name and His Son’s Name, the fact remains: A personal name cannot be translated!  It is simply not done.  The name of every single person on this earth remains  the  same in all languages.  Nobody would make a fool of himself by calling Giuseppe Verdi by another name, Joseph Green, even though Giuseppe means  Joseph  and  Verdi  means Green. Satan’s  name is  the same in all languages.  He has seen to it that his name has been left unmolested!

“However, let us further investigate the names Ieso (Iaso) and Iesous.  According to ancient Greek religion, Apollo, their great Sun-deity, had a son by the name of Asclepius, the diety of healing, but also identified with the Sun.  This Asclepius had daughters, and one of them was Iaso (Ieso), the Greek goddess of healing.  Because of her father’s and grandfather’s identities as Sun-deities, she too is in the same family of Sun-deities.   Therefore, the name Iesous, which is derived from Ieso, can be traced back to Sun-worship.

     “We find other related names, all of them variants of the same name, Iasus, Iasion, Iasius, in ancient Greek religion, as being sons of Zeus.  Even in India we find a similar name Issa or Issi, as surnames for their deity Shiva.  Quite a few scholars have remarked on the similarity between the names of the Indian Issa or Issi, the Egyptian Isis and the Greek Iaso.

     “In our research on the deity Isis we made two startling discoveries.  The one was that the son of Isis was called Isu by some.  However, the second discovery yielded even further light.  The learned scholar of Egyptian religion, Hans Bonnet, reveals to us in his Reallexikon der agyptischen Religionsgeschichte, p. 326, that the name of Isis appears in the hieroglyphic inscriptions as ESU or ES.  No wonder it has been remarked, “Between Isis and Jesus as names, confusion could arise.”  This Isis also had a child, which was called Isu by some.  This Isu or Esu sounds exactly like the “Jesu” that we find the Saviour called, in the translated Scriptures of many languages, e.g. many African languages.

     “Rev. Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, p.164, also remarked on the similarity of Jesus and Isis. “IHS—Iesus Hominum Salvator—But let a Roman worshipper of   Isis   (for  in  the  age  of  the  emperors  there    were innumerable worshippers of Isis in Rome) cast his eyes upon them, and how will he read them, of course, according to his own well-known system of idolatry: Isis, Horus, Seb.”  He then continues with a similar example of “skillful planning” by “the very same spirit, that converted the festival of the Pagan Oannes into the feast of the Christian Joannes.”  (The Hebrew name of the baptizer, and that of the apostle as well, was Yochanan, or Yehochanan).

     “Thus, by supplanting the Name of our Saviour Yahushua with that of the Hellenized Iesous (in capitals: IHSOUS), which became the Latinized Iesus, it was easy to make the pagans feel welcome—those pagans who worshipped the Greek Ieso (Iaso), of which  the masculine counterpart is Iesous, as well as those who worshipped the Egyptian Esu (Isis)…

     “As I have stated, there is no resemblance between the Name Yahushua and the name Jesus.  Neither is there any resemblance between their meanings.  Yahushua means: “the Salvation of Yah or Yahu.”  “Jesus” is derived from Iesus, derived from Iesous (IHSOUS), obviously derived from the Greek goddess of healing, Ieso or Iaso…Further the short form, or original source of the name Iesous (IHSOUS) is Ies (HIS), the very surname of Bacchus, the Sun-deity.

     “Therefore, the two names differ completely in their origin, and in their meaning.  And more important: Our Saviour’s Name contains the Name of His Father, which the substitute name does not.”

                                      *******************************

 Dr. Koster’s book Come out of Her My People can be ordered at this address:

Institute for Scripture Research

545 Newport Avenue, #151

Pawtucket, RI 02861

The Savior’s Original Hebrew Name–What His Mother Called Him Chapter 7 YAH IS SAVIOR: THE ROAD TO IMMORTALITY

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“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the children of God, to those believing in His Name.” It is difficult to believe in His name if we do not know His real name and what it means.

    What name did Mary, the mother of the Messiah use when she would call him into the house for supper when he was growing up in Nazareth?  When she and Joseph looked for him those three days during the feast, what name did she use when she asked his whereabouts?  “Have you seen my son, _______?”  What sound came out of her mouth when she uttered her son’s name?                                                     

     The New Testament Greek, translated from lost Hebrew Messianic scriptures cite the name “Iesous” as the Savior’s name.  “Iesous” was transliterated into the Latin as “Iesus.” This spelling was used as the English spelling until the 17th century.  At that time the letter “J” replaced the letter “I” in that name.  The letter “J” was non-existent in the English alphabet until 1630.

     But what was his Hebrew name?  Mary (actual Hebrew name: Miriam) and Joseph were devout descendents of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Phares, and on down through King David.  The Heavenly Father chose a righteous couple to raise His Son here on earth. “When they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.”  They lived righteously, living by the Torah, the law.  They kept the Passover festival of Yahweh (Luke 2:41). 

     All of the above goes to show us that Mary/Miriam and Joseph were seriously devoted, righteous people with full knowledge of whose lineage they were of.  The Hebrew language was the language that they spoke. The mother of the Messiah would not have called her son “Jesus” or even the Greek “Iesous.”  They would not have named that special Son “Iesous” or “Jesus” upon whom all of them (Mary/Miriam, Joseph, Zachariah and Elizabeth and Simeon and the other faithful) had been waiting.  There is absolutely no way that she would have called out the front door for the Son of God, “Iesous! Iesous! Come on in the house!”  That would have been an absolute abomination unto the Almighty to have called Him that!  And she could not have called him by the English name, Jesus.

    So what did Mary call her son, the soon to be Savior?  What name did she and Joseph give him?  It was a name very close to the English name Joshua.  Go to Strong’s Concordance and look up the patriarch’s name, Joshua; it is #3091 in the Hebrew.  Joshua’s real name in Hebrew when transliterated  (when  you  write  it out in English in order to get the Hebrew pronunciation) is Yehowshua, pronounced Yeh-ho-shoo-ah.  The “e” is the “uh” sound.  The accent is on “shoo.”  It has come down to us as Yahshua.  The name itself, as is the case with the great majority of Hebrew names, has a specific meaning.  It means, “Yah is Savior” or “Yah is Salvation.”    

Hebrew names are prophetic

In ancient Hebrew times, much value was placed on the name of a person.  A name was symbolical.  In other words, the meaning of a name spoke of that person’s character.  Biblical names were descriptive and prophetic with much religious significance.  “It seems strange to us that at its birth, the life and character of a child should be forecast by its parents in a name.” A good example of this is the following passage in Mt.1:21:  “Thou shalt call his name JESUS, for  he shall save his people from their sins” (“God, Names of”, International Standard Biblical Encyclopedia).

     Looking up the word “JESUS” from the above passage in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance Dictionary of the Greek Testament, we are referred to #2424 in the Greek: “Iesous; of Hebrew origin [#3091]; Jesus (i.e. Jehoshua), the name of our Lord and two or three other Israelites.”

     #3091 in the Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary has  this entry:  “Yehowshuwa or Yehowshua, from #3068 and 3467: Jehovah saved; Jehoshua (i.e. Joshua).”  #3068 is the Hebrew word  “YHWH,” the Tetragram- maton, the divine Hebrew name of the Creator.   #3467 is “yasha,” meaning “to save” or “savior.”

     Consequently, with a little sleuthing, we now see that the Savior’s true name would not be a Greek “Iesous,” later to be Latinized into “Iesus” and then on into the English version “Jesus.”  The Savior’s true name would be the same as the Hebrew patriarch Joshua’s name, Yahshua.

     Knowing that ancient Hebrew names were prophetic, especially the Savior’s name, the above passage in Matthew proves that His name foretells His character and destiny as being the Savior.  “Thou shalt call His name Yahshua, for He shall save His people from their sins.”  Joshua, or Yahshua means “Yah is Savior.” 

     What is His Name?  Yahshua.  He said, “I am come in my Father’s name.”  This is a marvelous thing, for the name of the Father is Yahweh, and in the abbreviated form it is “Yah.”

    The King James translators consistently put “LORD” in the Authorized Version in place of the name Yahweh—all except for one place that they overlooked, no doubt by heavenly design.  In Psalms 68:4 it says: “Sing unto God, sing praises to his name, extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH…” “Extol” means to lift up, to praise.  The command is to “extol him…by his name JAH (YAH).”  Since there was no “J” in English until the 17^th century, David is saying in this Hbrew song lyric for us to praise Him by His name YAH!  Praise YAH! Hallelu-YAH, which means ‘Praise Yah’ in Hebrew [For more confirmation see the footnote on Psalm 106 in the NIV where the editors even say that it means ‘Praise Yah.’ 

    Yah or Yahweh is the Father’s name.  And the Son said,  “I am come in my Father’s name.  The Father’s name “Yah” was literally a part of the Son’s name. Yah-shua.  I know that this is disturbing to some good Christian brethren, for they have never been taught this truth, and it goes seemingly against what their elders have told them since childhood.  But we take a stand for the truth.  We must study and prove it right or wrong.  He said, “Prove all things.”  Not just what we believe to be the truth, but things that seem strange to us.  What does the word say?

  The Father’s name Yah is not in the  name Jesus  or  Iesous.   It  just is not in there, any way you want to slice it.

    And so, to believe in His name is to believe what His name means.  It is to believe that YAH-IS-SAVIOR, the Father taking up residence in His Son.

Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality Chapter 6 “Secular Sources Confirm the Name of Yahweh”

Chapter 6 

 Secular Sources Confirm the Name of Yahweh 

     Sometimes it helps us to hear it from another source, to have it confirmed from an expert. The following is a quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 23, 1970 edition, page 867:

    “YAHWEH, the proper name of the God of Israel; it is composed of four consonants (YHWH) in Hebrew and is therefore called the tetragrammaton.  The name was first revealed to Moses (Ex.3), but the god of Moses was the God of the fathers (Ex.3:6,15), known to the Israelites as El Shaddai (Ex. 6:2-3).  In the bible, the name Yahweh is derived from the verbal root “to be,” “to exist,” and means “he who is” (Ex. 3:14 ff.).  Other etymologies, suggested by modern scholars, lack cogency: no real parallels have been found in the Egyptian or Babylonian pantheon; a god Yaw in the ancient Canaanite city of Ugarit is poorly attested; and the close links between the Israelites and the Kenites are unlikely to have included the adopting of the Kenite god.

     “The origin of the name Yahweh must be sought within Israel itself, and may well be older than the time of Moses, for the Bible speaks of a much earlier institution of his worship (Gen. 4:26), and the first syllable of Jochebed,  the  name  of  Moses’  mother,  seems   to   be derived from Yahweh.  Possibly the tribe of Levi or the family of Moses already knew the name Yahweh, which may have been originally, in its short form Yah or Yahu, a religious invocation of no precise meaning called forth by the terrible splendour of the holy made manifest.  If this is so, Moses did not receive from God a revelation of a new name; instead, a name already familiar was given, in his prophetic experience, a new meaning which thereafter prevailed.  But there is no need to reject the derivation of Yahweh from the verb “to be,” for it is supported by occurrences in Babylonian tests of the verbal root ewu (emu) meaning “to be” or “to exist” which also, in the imperfect tense, forms part of proper names such as Yawi-ilu, “the god (ilu) exists (yawu).”  The pronunciation of the Hebrew name of God may have varied in antiquity; the accuracy of the form Yahweh is supported by both the etymology in Ex. 3 and the transliteration used by Church Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria.

     “When Moses asked God his name, the answer he received, “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14), must be understood as a revelation of profound meaning, not as a refusal by God to disclose his true identity.  The revelation does not dissolve the mystery that surrounds God, but the passage in Exodus shows that the revelation alone enabled Moses to accomplish his mission.  The emphasis lies not simply on God’s existence but on his close and dynamic presence with Moses and his people (Ex. 3:12).  This presence and power of God is stressed in the frequent biblical phrase “Yahweh Sabaoth,” “Yahweh of hosts,” those hosts both earthly and heavenly which God uses to establish his sovereignty over Israel, and through Israel over the whole world.  The name Yahweh was thus for the faithful Israelite a never-failing source of confidence, power and joy.  The ideas of God’s eternity and changelessness, not found  in  the  Exodus  passage, are present in later texts (e.g., Isa. 40:28; 41:4; 43:13; 44:6) and became predominant in the Greek versions and in most modern versions.”

     Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1972 edition, page 1645 has this to say:   Yahweh, [Heb.: see JEHOVAH] God: a form of the Hebrew name in the Old Testament: see TETRAGRAMMATON.   Jehovah, [modern transliteration of the Tetragrammaton YHWH; the vowels appear through arbitrary transference of the vowel points of adonai, my Lord], (page 756).

     So we see that “Yahweh” is a very close rendition of YHWH, much closer than “Jehovah”, which is a modern appellation of the divine name.

YAH IS SAVIOR: THE ROAD TO IMMORTALITY CHAPTER 5 “The Importance of His True Name YHWH”

Every year here in southwest Missouri in November, an onslaught of hunters converge into the tens of thousands of acres of hardwood forests in hopes of bagging a prize buck.  Imagine yourself in the middle of a 2000 acre tract alone in a deer stand.  You hear the sounds of other hunting parties, for many have the same thing in mind as you do.  You hear the word, “Daddy,” faintly off in the distance, and then it fades into the whisper of the wind in the leaves.  You don’t pay it much mind.

     I dare say that if you had heard your name coming through those trees, be it ever so faint, it would have gotten your attention.  It would have generated thoughts immediately!  Who could that be?  Is that one of my kids?  What are they doing out here?  Are they hurt?  Do they need me?  And chances are that it would have sparked a search for that voice until you had found that person who had called your name.

     Are names important?  In this scenario a certain name is.  The use of our name gets our attention.  It could have been anybody’s daddy from anywhere, but when our name is uttered, we perk up.

     I can’t help but think of our Father in heaven.  We have been made in His likeness, in His image, both physically and emotionally.  If our attention is corralled, galvanizing us into a desperate action by the mere mention of our name, could it be that His attention could be gotten in the same manner?  Could it be that if only we could call upon the Creator and our Father using His real name, His given name, the name He said was His name forever—would that perk up His ears to our prayers, to our requests, to our cries?

     The scriptures say that if we humans know how to give good gifts unto our own children, how much more will the Father give to those who ask Him.  If we could respond to a faint cry of our own name in a deep forest, is it a big stretch to believe that the Almighty God, who is Love, could not be moved in His heart by hearing His own name expressed by one of His little ones?  

The substitution of  titles for YHWH

     Now we know His real name.  YHWH, pronounced “Yahweh,” is not a new revelation unto man.  The name of the God of the Hebrews has been known for many centuries, but the translators have deliberately substituted the titles “LORD” and on occasion “GOD” and “JEHOVAH” for “Yahweh.”  This is despite the passage quoted above, “Yahweh is my name forever.”

     But Yahweh already knew that men would try to change  His  name throughout the ages.  That’s why He said that it was His name forever and how we will remember Him.  His name is His memorial unto all people in all times.  You know His real Hebrew name, and you will begin to remember Him.  His name  Yahweh  has  been  set  up  from  the ancient times as a way for His people to bring Him back into their memories. The Hebrew word for “name” is shem, #8034, meaning “reputation; memory; renoun.”  It was sometimes used as a synonym for “memory” (“Name,” Vine’s Expository Dictionary).  

Believing in His Name 

     Just how important is the name of the Supreme Being?  “But as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons (children) of God, even to them that believe on His name,” (John 1:12).  Two major points are to be considered from this passage.  First, when we receive Him, we are given authority and power to become the Spirit-Creator’s children.  A comma sets off the second part of the verse.  It is set up like an appositive, which renames what just went before in the verse.  The second part of the verse says, “even to them that believe on his name.”

     In other words, those who receive Him are those to whom He gives power and authority to become His offspring.  And these are equal to those who believe in His name.  His name is very important then.  Those believing in it are equated with those who have received Him, who have received His Spirit (“I will come to you,” He says in John, speaking of the Comforter, the Spirit).  Those believing in His name are  those  who  are  to  become  His  children.    The  Creator  came  in  human  form;  the Word was made flesh.  “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.”  He came unto His own people and they did not receive Him.  But some will.