A. According to the Messiah in John 5:37, He came in His Father’s name. Since biblical scholarship recognizes “Yah” as the short form of Yahweh’s name, the Messiah likely contained this name within His own. This would also explain why so many biblical scholars confirm that the Messiah’s name means, “Yahweh is salvation.” Consider the following:
- “Jesus Messiah – Greek form of Joshua and of title meaning “Yahweh is Salvation” (Holman Bible Dictionary).
- “JESUS: …meaning “Yahweh is salvation.” (International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia).
Also,both the Greek Diaglott and Exegesis Bible confirm the pronunciation “Yahshua:”
- “Jesus, [a savior,] the Son of God, the Messiah, the savior of the world. This name is composed of Yah, or Jah, I shall be and Shua, powerful;-‘I shall be the powerful.” (Diaglott, appendix under Jesus, emphasis added, 1942).
- “Yah Shua transliterated name {3091 yahshua} {3442, 3443, yashua} [2424 ieesous] Yah Saveth; the name of Mosheh’s successor, the name of the Messiah, and the name of other persons” (ExeGeses Bible, lexicon under Yahshua).
Yeshua is a Hebrew feminine term that simply means salvation and does not have a contraction of the tetragrammaton, the “heh” is absent after the yod: Reference: H3444 יְשׁוּעָה There is a similar masculine name Yayshua יֵשׁוּעַ H3442 which contains the tsere vowel under the yod. This name also does not contain a “heh” after the yod or the contraction of the tetragrammaton. The Hebrew name Joshua יְהוֹשׁוּעַ H3091 is a masculine proper name that we see for the son of Nun in the Old Testament which is also the name of the Messiah. This name is a contraction of YHWH and Yasha יָשַׁע (to deliver) and has the meaning of Yahweh is Salvation.
In Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8, the King James translators erred by inserting “Jesus” into passages clearly referring to “Joshua,” the Old Testament son of Nun. This is indisputable evidence that the name Joshua (Yahshua) had been changed by translators of the New Testament to Jesus. / Yahshua’s Name can be broken down to “Yah” and “Hoshua.” “Yah” is found in the Father’s Name Yah-weh, while Hoshua means salvation. Thus, “Yah is Salvation.” The Emphatic Diaglott says the name “is composed of Yah, or Jah, I shall be and Shua.
Another indicator for the short form “Yah” within the Messiah’s Name comes from Akkadian cuneiform tablets. Within these tablets are many Jewish names with the prefix “Yah” and “Yahu” dating to 572-477 BCE. Akkadian is a language cognate to Hebrew. Examples of such names include: Yahadil, Yahitu, Yahmuzu, Yahuazar, Yahuazza, and Yahuhin. YRM contacted several professors through email inquiring about these names and received the following responses. Professor Ran Zadok from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who specializes in Mesopotamian, Iranian and Judaic Studies, confirmed, “It seems to me that the cuneiform spellings render approximately *Ya(h)w.”
Professor Martin Worthington from Cambridge who specializes in Babylonian and Assyrian grammar, Mesopotamian literature, Mesopotamian medicine, Quantitative methods and the study of ancient languages, states, “…scholarly consensus has it that Yahwistic names are well attested in first-millennium Babylonia. There is a strong tendency (though not an absolute rule) for the form to be yahu at the beginning of the name, and yama at the end of the name (though yama is actually yawa, since in this period intervocalic m is usually pronounced w). The cuneiform script does include vowels. The sign IA is a bit of a special case, since it can represent ia, ii, iu or ie. But in this case we also have spellings such as ia-a-hu, showing that the vowel is indeed ‘a’.”
The evidence for “Yah” in the prefixes of Jewish names within the Akkadian may suggest a possible shift between “Yah” to “Ye” between the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid (572-477 BCE) and the Masoretic (6-10 century CE) periods.
So how did the name “Yeshua” develop? Some theorize that it developed through a linguistic process called dissimilation. The online Oxford Dictionary defines Dissimilation as, “Change (a sound or sounds in a word) to another when the word originally had identical sounds near each other (e.g. in taper, which derives from papyrus, the p is dissimilated to t).”
Another theory that may explain the development of “Yeshua” is a deliberate manipulation of the Hebrew text. It is well documented that the Masoretes (Jewish scribes) suppressed the true Name Yahweh out of a fear of pronouncing the ineffable Name. One particular instance can be proved from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Manuscript 4Q120-4QpapLXXLevb shows the Greek containing the short form of the name Iota, Alpha, Omega, transliteration: YAW or Yahw in Leviticus 3:12. In the Masoretic text (late-mediaeval)the vowels for Adonai were inserted into the Tetragrammaton in Leviticus 3:12, which changed the pronunciation from Yahw to Yehwah.
As noted in the book – The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, pg. 472: “…It is worth noting that in Lev. iv, 27 (4Q120, fr. 20, 4) the Tetragram (the divine name YHWH) is rendered semi-phonetically as Iao, and is not replaced, as was customary later, by the Greek Kurios (Lord).”
In Hebrew, Jewish scribes inserted a vowel point, shewa (:) instead of the proper qamets (T), thus changing the sound “ah” in “Yah” to “eh.” The Encyclopedia Judaica further explains, “In the early Middle Ages, when the consonantal text of the Bible was supplied with vowel points to facilitate its correct traditional reading, the vowel points for Adonai with one variation – a sheva (short ‘e’) with the first yod [Y] of YHWH instead of the hataf-patah (short ‘a’) under the aleph of Adonai – was used for YHWH, thus producing the form YeHoWaH. When Christian scholars of Europe first began to study Hebrew they did not understand what this really meant, and they introduced the hybrid name ‘Jehovah’” (vol. 7, p. 680).
To avoid offending the Jews and their proscription against even the short form YAH, this same pattern may have also been used in other names that contained the first half of the theophoric element, including the Name of the Messiah, Yahshua.
I was taught that the vocal shewa (shewa marked under an initial letter is classified shewa naʼ or mobil) makes a short “eh” sound. But I stumbled on a Tiberian Hebrew lesson that said that in Tiberian Hebrew, the vocal shewa makes an “ah” sound while modern Hebrew uses an “eh.” Can you please clarify? I understand that hateph vowels take on the sound of the vowel next to them but what about when these vowels appear alone in the initial syllable?
“The Modern Hebrew pronunciation ‘e’ of the shewa mobile is based on the medial Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew. The Tiberian Masoretes pronounced shewa mobile as a short a (like a hataf patah). We know this from: 1) the fact that sometimes a hataf patah replaces a shewa mobile when the consonant is not a guttural; 2) Tiberian Masoretic compositions; 3) the traditional Yemenite Hebrew pronunciation of Hebrew, which agrees in many points with Tiberian Masoretic compositions.” (Note: The Hateph Pathach has the sound of “a” as in amuse)
