Jesus, "There's Something About That Name"

Bill Gaither's song "Jesus, There's Something About That Name" is a great song on which to meditate. While I was singing along,  it made me think about the origin of the name of Jesus. What does it mean and where did we get it?  Jesus. The Bible says a lot about that name. But the first hint that I could find as to what it means was found in Matthew the first chapter and the twenty-first verse. In Greek:

te√xetai de… uiÔovn, kai… kale√seiß to; o[noma aujtou: =Ihsou:n` aujto;ß ga˝r sw◊sei to;n lao;n aujtou: a˙po; twÇn aÓmartiwÇn aujtwÇn. "And she (Mary) will bear a son and you will call his name Jesus. For he will save his people from their sins." 

So according to this Greek verse "Jesus" means, if you will allow me to cheat a little, "salvation" in the classical Christian meaning. And that is what Jesus does, Jesus saves us from our sins. Jesus saves. Now the angel was probably not talking Greek, but we don't know for sure. Even if he did speak Greek, we still might want to know where the name of Jesus comes from.

The word for Jesus in the Greek is IhsouV. The Greek NT name is taken from the Septuagint (LXX), which as we know is the Greek translation of the OT done by seventy or so rabbis. This existed before the NT and was used by many of the early Christians for OT readings. Many quotes of the OT in the NT are from the LXX. :-)

How did the Septuagint scholars arrive at =Ihsou:V ? Well you can almost see where English got Jesus just from the transliteration from the Greek, Iesous. And this is the problem. Different languages have different alphabets that may or may not have all the same letters. Hebrew does not have the all same letters as Greek and Greek does not have all the same letters as English. For instance Greek does not have a 'J"  and English does not have an eta or h. And both have many letters that do not correspond to the Hebrew. 

Now we were talking about where "Jesus" originally comes from. It is felt almost with certainty that the Angel said Joshua or Ao¢Uvwøh◊y or the more correct term yeshua(h). This second name yeshua(h) is transliterated. The "ah" at the end is the short name for God. It is like when we say hallelujah or more better halleluyah, which means "praise God". The "yah" is short for Yahweh. Yah is God's nick name. :-)   It is the same in Elijah's name. It means "God is Yahweh". Well, Yeshua(h) means "Yahweh is salvation".  Now follow this next part.

Since Greek does not have the Hebraic y or "y" it has to go by the sound that is made. The sound of "y" is sort of the Greek iota eta or Ih. Then the Hebraic v is like "sh" which Greek does not have either, but it does have "s" sound. So so far we have Ihs. The "u" sound is under the  v. It is the 3 little dots. This is the Mesoretic voweling and it means "U". And finally the Ao is the "ah" sound. But you say that Jesus does not have the "ah" sound. That is correct. Oddly enough it was left off. So we have "salvation" and not "Yahweh is  Salvation". Did the early Septuagint scribes mean to leave off the final "ah" on IhsouV? Did they not want to give it a totally Jewish slant? I don't know. The angel said "because he will save his people from their sins?" He did not say " Yahweh is salvation who shall save his people from their sins." 

 I do have one more thought. The Jewish names do not have "us" on the end as far as I can find.  Who does? Greek and Latin names do. For example the mythological god  Αχιλλευς is Greek and the Latin is  Achelous. Here is the jump. Maybe the name was Hellenized or Latinized by the early writers?

However we want to spell it or pronounce it, it is still the name above all names. It is so powerful that to voice it in context of a relationship with our Lord "has power on the lips of the most humble saint that is greater than the most powerful demon"(JRStevens).  

Bill Gaither is right "There is something about that name."