Matthew 1:21 She [Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
A question which comes up from time to time is whether or not the Bible could be correct in attributing the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 to the fulfillment of Matthew 1:21. I have seen it questioned because the name applied to the baby here is different from that which is called for in the prophecy. This creates a bit of a conundrum for some people.
Translation?
The first thought that came to my mind when I discovered this is that it was simply the difference between the name in Hebrew (Old Testament/Isiah) and Greek (New Testament/Matthew). This seemed like a great thought until I learned the meanings of the two names.
Immanuel literally means "With Us is God" which we usually state as "God is with us" It is made up from the Hebrew words Im (Us) and El (God). The rest of the name contains a pronominal suffix (with).
Jesus literally means "Savior" and is derived from the Hebrew Yeshua -- which is itself a shortened form of Yehoshua (the name Joshua is an anglicized version of Yeshua). Yehoshua is made up of two main parts:
1.Yeho, being a form of Yaho, is a theophoric element standing for the name of God (Yahweh, often written as YHWH and known as the tetragrammaton).
2. Shua - meaning a saving cry, or a cry for help.
Literally the name comes to mean something along the lines of "Cry for help/salvation from Yahweh," or "Yahweh is our saving help." That, in turn, is more easily understood and translated as "Yahweh is salvation"...or even just "salvation/savior."
So how did we get to the name Jesus, and how does this solve our problem of the differing names in these two verses?
1.Yeho, being a form of Yaho, is a theophoric element standing for the name of God (Yahweh, often written as YHWH and known as the tetragrammaton).
2. Shua - meaning a saving cry, or a cry for help.
Literally the name comes to mean something along the lines of "Cry for help/salvation from Yahweh," or "Yahweh is our saving help." That, in turn, is more easily understood and translated as "Yahweh is salvation"...or even just "salvation/savior."
So how did we get to the name Jesus, and how does this solve our problem of the differing names in these two verses?
JESUS
The journey to the name of Jesus is filled with a little debate and depends a lot on the source you read. A few sources I have come across point toward it being a transliteration of a name that appears in the Talmud (a collection of doctrines and laws compiled by Jewish teachers between the 5th and 8th centuries A.D.). It is believed by some scholars that the use of Yeshu in the Talmud was actually an acronym for the phrase Yimah Shĕmo Wezikhro which meant "may his name be forever erased/forgotten/obliterated." This can only make sense from the point of view that the Jews did not see Jesus as the Son of God or Messiah and thus find worshiping him to be blasphemy. They would not have wanted his name to be used or to tarnish the name of some of the heroes of their beliefs (Old Testament).
Other sources show the name to come out of grammatical alignment in various translations on the journey to English. Going from the shortened form of Yeshua, the translation into Greek ran into a couple of issues:
1. The closest transliteration for the "Y" of Yeshua was "I" creating a Ieshua
2. The "sh" could best be transliterated as simply "s"
3. The "ua" would have been seen more as a feminine ending for the name. The grammar rules in play would have required the ending to be changed to one of the masculine endings commonly used in Greece. "S" would have been the most common.
This left a name that looked like Iesus or sometimes Iesous.
The "Ie" was pronounced either as ee-ay or, sometimes, as "hey."
So now that we have something that is pronounced as "hey sous" we can begin to see the formation of the modern name Jesus. The letter J came about in the 14th century, but was not widely used until the 17th century. In Spanish, the letter J is pronounced more like an h as in the word "hot." Being followed by the letter e gives a sound like "hey" which allows Iesus to become Jesus. The name itself becomes a complex transliteration spanning centuries and multiple languages.
Other sources show the name to come out of grammatical alignment in various translations on the journey to English. Going from the shortened form of Yeshua, the translation into Greek ran into a couple of issues:
1. The closest transliteration for the "Y" of Yeshua was "I" creating a Ieshua
2. The "sh" could best be transliterated as simply "s"
3. The "ua" would have been seen more as a feminine ending for the name. The grammar rules in play would have required the ending to be changed to one of the masculine endings commonly used in Greece. "S" would have been the most common.
This left a name that looked like Iesus or sometimes Iesous.
The "Ie" was pronounced either as ee-ay or, sometimes, as "hey."
So now that we have something that is pronounced as "hey sous" we can begin to see the formation of the modern name Jesus. The letter J came about in the 14th century, but was not widely used until the 17th century. In Spanish, the letter J is pronounced more like an h as in the word "hot." Being followed by the letter e gives a sound like "hey" which allows Iesus to become Jesus. The name itself becomes a complex transliteration spanning centuries and multiple languages.
THE DIFFERENT NAME PROBLEM
Now that I have taken you on a fun journey of how a name changes through various language translations/transliterations, I must address the problem of the differing names from the prophecy and fulfillment. This, fortunately, is a much easier journey to take. Instead of being a huge contradiction that is overlooked by believers throughout the world, it falls into a simple category of a nickname or a title. One needs only to read the Bible to find that there are hundreds of various names and titles attributed to Jesus. However, in case some feel that a prophet would only have the accurate name of our Savior, we must simply read just a little further into his own prophecies to find he has other names for Jesus.
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder; AND HIS NAME SHALL BE CALLED Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
Here Isaiah gives five names of which the Christ shall be called. It shows that it is not a contradiction for a different name to be given to our Lord than what the prophecy dictates. It shows that the prophecy dictates what will be said about that person: Jesus truly was "God with us," verifying the name of Immanuel. He is Wonderful. He is the Prince of Peace. A few other names for Jesus include:
Alpha and Omega (Revelation 1:8)
Bread of Life (John 6:35)
Rock (1 Corinthians 10:4)
I AM (John 8:58)
Word (John 1:1)
My brothers and sisters,I hope this study blesses you and enhances your faith and trust in the Bible: our instruction manual for life. Remember that the Bible will never contradict itself. God had His hand in writing it. Any seeming contradictions can easily be explained simply by studying and researching the source material and, in particular, understanding the original languages involved. There are many tools available to you to assist in your studies.
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