After recently writing a long article defending the true Name of Yahweh the Father and upsetting the adherents of the blasphemous 'Jehovah' (and its variants) and the ficticious 'Yahuah' (and its variants), I now come to an error of Messianic Judaism that needs to be rectified, namely, the claim that the Name of the Messiah in biblical Hebrew or Aramaic is 'Yeshua'. It isn't.

I know that there are many who think I am wasting my time in 'quibbling' over the pronunciation of Divine Names though I am the first to agree with them that salvation in Messiah is predicated upon trusting in the person of Messiah (Christ) however you pronounce it. My interest is in emet (truth) and accuracy because like it or not knowing the True Names opens precious doors to priceless revelation whereas the false ones shut them out. So this is not so much a salvational issue as one of obeying the mitzvah (commandment) of our Master to be "perfect" or "complete" (Mt.5:48). I'll not, moreover, argue with those who insist that the kind of 'perfection' that interests the Master the most is taking care of the poor (Mt.19:21), developping patience (Jas.1:4), doing good works in general (Rev.3:2) or other moral imperatives - like the "weightier matters of the Torah" (Mt.23:23) such as ahavah (love) and mercy, because I agree with these people too. Absolutely. No, what interests me here is in being complete as a person. It's the difference between making that fine adjustment between someone calling me 'Lav' (with its WC or toilet connotations) instead of my real Hebrew name, 'Lev' - it is a matter of showing respect.

What you do with this information is between you and the Most High. You may think it trivial, I do not. I'll not disfellowship you or claim you are unsaved (as some Ultra-Messianics do in their 'Name Cult') though I will wonder, if you are convinced, what it is that is stopping you making an adjustment in pronunciation now which will in turn make me wonder whether you might be resisting making other truth-adjustments. The bottom-line, if you examine it honestly, is still one of emet (truth) vs. lies and therefore purity vs. sin.

Today we shall not address the problem of the Greek pseudonym 'Jesus Christ' in any depth, a name which is used as a substitute for the True Name, Yah'shua (or Yah^ushua) the Messiah other than to say that had you been the famous Italian composer 'Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi' and I had transliterated that into English and announced you to some admiring musician friends as 'John Fortunate Frank Green', I doubt you would have been flattered. You might, if you were very gracious, have put up with it, but I doubt you would have felt respected if you had known that I knew what your actual Italian name was all along. And I suspect some of your friends would have suspected I was poking fun at you, or worse, mocking you.

It's a matter of showing respect, don't you think? And shouldn't the Creator be given the utmost respect? That is one reason why I want to know what His Name really is.

The Names of Deity that we were taught in the churches are born out of a long history of misinterpretation, confusion, misunderstanding and sometimes out of a desire to deliberately hide or even mock them. It's for the last reason we must absolutely having nothing to do with the blasphemous 'Jehovah' or 'Yehovah'. The equivalent insult would have been calling Verdi something like 'Dirtybum'.

We now know, thanks to careful scholarship, that 'Jesus' was a Greek substitute for the name Yah^ushua. All you have to do is open your copy of the Greek Septuagint (LXX) at those places where Yah^ushua is used in the Hebrew (i.e. throughout the Book of Joshua), and in the Book of Acts (7:45). The name Iesous ('Jesus') was created at the time that the 'Ineffible Name' superstition and manmade rule of the Talmudic Rabbis crept into the first Messianic/Christian Assemblies.

The first part of the Name Yah^u-shua, 'Yah^u', was considered too sacred to use and to remedy this 'problem' the scribes dropped 'Yah^u' from the Name altogether and retained only '^ushua', meaning 'saviour'. In Hebrew-Aramaic yeshua means 'he saves' but unfortunately this Hebraic form serves only to deny us the identity of who 'he' is. The Hebrew-Aramaic 'Yeshua' became Iesou and Iesous in Greek, or 'Jesus' in English. Contrast this with the true Name, Yah^ushua, which means 'YAH saves' - that is, our Heavenly Father Yahweh (whose Name is abbreviated to 'Yah') - and you'll understand why the name 'Yeshua' robs our Elohim (God) of His full and deserved glory. Not only that, but it makes plain that the Father's Name begins with 'YAH' and not 'Yeh' or 'Jeh' (grammatical quibbling aside).

The unfortunate tendency of getting the Messiah's Name wrong - whether as the Greek 'Iesous', the English 'Jesus' or the Jewish 'Yeshua' - is that it tends to shift the emphasis away from the Father and onto the Son, making Him the Pre-eminent One in Heaven, which He is not, even though He rightly has preeminence amongst those believing brethren who are resurrected from the dead:

"And He is the head of the Body, the Messianic Community (church), who is the beginning, the bikkurim (firstborn) from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence" (Col.1:18, NKJV).

Though truly the Father has given Him all authority, it is only on loan, and will one day be returned to the Father when the Kingdom is returned to Him:

"But now Messiah is risen from the dead, and has become the bikkurim (firstfruits) of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Messiah all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Messiah the bikkurim (firstfruits), afterward those who are Messiah's at His coming. Then comes the end, when He (Messiah) delivers the kingdom to Elohim (God) the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power...Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that Elohim (God = the Father) may be all in all" (1 Cor.15:20-24,28 NKJV).

When Yahweh the Father declared that "besides Me there is no Saviour" (Isa.43:11, NKJV; also Hos.13:4) that's exactly what He meant. And the Messiah's Name - 'YAH saves' or 'Yah^ushua' - means 'Yahweh saves', that is, Yahweh the Father is doing the Saving through His Son! Don't you think that's an important doctrine? I would say that it was of immeasurable importance. And whilst this is in no way to diminish the amazing work that Messiah did for us, for which we shall be eternally grateful, it does mean that all the Glory belongs to the Father just as the Son would have wanted it. And the name 'Yeshua' denies Him that.

That is why Messianic Evangelicals do not use the half-name 'Yeshua' but the complete one, Yah^ushua or its other form 'Yah'shua' (not 'Yahshua' which is grammatically impossible in Hebrew). All glory to Yah through His Son 'Yah Saves'!

Acknowledgements