Jesus' Real Name

I had heard an arabicization/hebrewization combonation calling him Yeshua (the hebrew spelling of joshua) al-Nazareth, Yeshua bin Nazarath (son of nazareth :-S) and Yeshua bin Joseph (with the hebrew equivelant of joeseph, of course). I think Yeshua al-Nazareth sounds coolest, personally.

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What was Jesus’ real name?


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I was a bit surprised at Cecil’s reference to a date as “60 A.D”. Surely correct usage is “A.D. 60”, although the former style is being seen more and more often in these degenerate times.

Hi, JCDenton and welcome to the boards!

Just to make a minor nitpick. Yeshua is not the Hebrew form of Joshua. The Hebrew form of Joshua is Yehoshua.

Zev Steinhardt

I’m not sure what the correct answer to the Yeshua/Yehoshua is- I don’t speak Hebrew and I don’t know much about it. But I know names, and so I do know that there was one other mistake in the e-mail. Assuming the other stuff is right, “bar-Joseph” wouldn’t be correct if what Cecil is saying is true. “Bar” comes from Aramaic. If… if what’s-his-name was being named in Hebrew for the reasons Cecil explains, his surname would be ben-Joseph- ben-Yosef, really.
Whether this is really a mistake depends on who said “Joshua bar-Joseph:” if it was a speaker of Aramaic, it makes sense- that’s probably how they’d say it. If it was a speaker of Hebrew, though, it’d be a mistake. If it was a Roman, ben would make more sense than bar, but perhaps more sensible than either would have been (since they were speaking English “Jesus, son of Joseph” or (in Latin, something like) “Jesus Josephus,” which, if it’s correct Latin, means the same as all the other names.
So if we make a number of assumptions- Jesus or his historical equivalent was real, the bible gives accurate details as to his parentage and so on, and Cecil is correct about the naming style- I, Claudius would be wrong, and the proper name would be Ye(ho)shua ben-Yosef. If anybody else knows something about this that I don’t, please add it on (I’m sure you would anyway, of course ;)). --Marley

Zev, meet RedNaxela. ;j

In that case, I stand corrected.

Zev Steinhardt

oh. sorry, i dont speak hebrew lol. so Yeshoshua al-Nazareth lol?

I recall reading somewhere that the form of his name would be transliterated as Yeshu ha Notzri = “Joshua the Nazorean”. This is usually held to mean that he was from Nazareth, although there is a minority that thinks that it may mean something else, like “Joshua the Nazirite”, meaning the member of a sect of that name. (the first reliable mention of a village of Nazareth outside the NT apparently comes from long after Jesus’time.)