Name of Jesus
Yeshua
Yeshua'
יֵשׁוּעַ
- Meaning
- 'YHWH saves' / 'YHWH is salvation' — a shortened form of Yehoshua (Joshua).
- Occurrences
- 29 times in the Hebrew Bible as a personal name (Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles)
- First occurrence
- 1 Chronicles 24:11
- Languages
- Biblical HebrewBiblical Aramaic
Pronunciation
yeh-SHOO-ah
Origin
The Second Temple period Hebrew/Aramaic short form of Yehoshua. It was an extremely common name — Josephus mentions around twenty men called Yeshua. This is almost certainly the name Jesus was called in daily life in Galilee.
Usage & scribal practice
Central to Messianic Jewish practice and to Hebrew Roots movements. It is also the Hebrew name of Joshua son of Nun in later biblical books, which is why the Septuagint calls both men Iēsous.
Cross-references
Matthew 1:21
'you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people' — the wordplay only works in Hebrew.
Ezra 2:2
Yeshua the high priest returning from exile.
Hebrews 4:8
'Jesus' in the KJV here actually refers to Joshua — same Greek name.
How translations render it
Theories, myths & conspiracy claims
Each claim is stated as its proponents state it, then assessed against the manuscript and linguistic evidence.
'Jesus' means 'hail Zeus'
The claim: The name Jesus was constructed from Ie- + Zeus to smuggle pagan worship into Christianity.
Assessment: Linguistically impossible. Iēsous is the standard Greek transcription of Yehoshua/Yeshua and appears in the Septuagint (3rd–2nd c. BCE) for Joshua, centuries before Christianity. Zeus is Ζεύς, genitive Διός — a different stem entirely; the -sous ending is a Greek masculine nominative suffix.
You cannot be saved unless you say 'Yeshua'
The claim: Hebrew Roots teaching that Greek or English forms of the name are invalid.
Assessment: The New Testament itself was written in Greek and consistently writes Iēsous, and Paul quotes Joel 2:32 in Greek when saying 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved'. The apostolic practice is against the claim.
Yeshu is an acronym for a curse
The claim: The Talmudic form Yeshu is read as an acronym for 'may his name be blotted out'.
Assessment: A medieval polemical reading in both directions. Yeshu is a plausible Galilean phonetic shortening; the acronym is later interpretation, used by both Jewish polemicists and Christian counter-polemicists.