The Messiah's Hebrew Name: "Yeshua" Or "Yahshua"? (2/2)
Saturday, January 5, 2013
, Posted by ManilasMan at 6:43 AM
The Messiah's Hebrew Name: "Yeshua" Or "Yahshua"?
by Dr. Daniel Botkin
Part Two.
Later Sacred Name literature appeals to the Messiah’s statement in John 5:43 as "proof" of the Yahshua form: "I am come in My Father’s name," He said. In the minds of Sacred Name believers, this means that "Yah," a shortened form of Yahweh, must appear in the name of the Son. However, the Messiah did not say "My name contains My Father’s name" or "My Father’s name must appear inside My name" or any such statement. He said absolutely nothing here about His own name. The only "name" mentioned here was the Father’s name. He said, "I am come in My Father’s name," which simply means that He was coming by His Father’s authority, on His Father’s behalf. If we take Yeshua’s statement "I am come in My Father’s name" to mean that His own name must contain the Father’s name, then we ourselves cannot do anything "in the Father’s name" unless our own personal name happens to contain the syllable "Yah." The folly of this interpretation is also evident if the same line of reasoning is applied to the rest of Yeshua’s statement: "…if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." If the logic of Sacred Name believers is applied to this half of the verse, it would be saying "a person’s name must contain his own name," which is meaningless. If, on the other hand, "in his own name" means "by his own authority," then the statement makes sense.
Why is the Yahshua form used by no one but Sacred Name believers and people who have been influenced by Sacred Name believers? Probably because no such name exists in the Hebrew Bible and, to my knowledge, no such name exists in any extra-Biblical Hebrew literature. It appears that Dr. Ben-Gigi is correct when he says that people invented the name Yahshua to fit their theology.
I have read a lot of literature from writers who seek to expose the "errors" of those who refer to the Messiah as Yeshua. The only thing these writers actually expose is their lack of knowledge. I could give several examples of statements which are absolutely ridiculous. I do not have the space in this publication to give all the examples I have in my files, and I do not wish to embarrass sincere people for their honest but misguided efforts. There are some examples, though, that grossly misrepresent the facts, and some of these examples need to be exposed.
In one popular booklet published by a well-known Sacred Name organization, the anonymous author makes this statement: "Most reference works agree with Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the NT statement on page 284, which states that the name Yahoshua was shortened after the exile to the short form Yahshua." This statement makes it sound like Kittel uses the forms Yahoshua and Yahshua. I went to the library and looked at this page in Kittel’s. The words Yahoshua and Yahshua do not appear even one time on this page. This can be verified by going to a library and looking up this page. (It’s in Volume III.) If your library does not have Kittel’s, I can send a photocopy of this page to any skeptics.
This same Sacred Name organization which misrepresents Kittel’s also misrepresented a Jewish author. In a magazine article written by this organization’s main leader, a lengthy segment is quoted from a book published by KTAV, a Jewish publishing house. When copying this quotation for his magazine article, this Sacred Name author freely used Yahshua, making it appear tat the Jewish author used that transliteration in his book. I got the book from the library, though, and discovered that "Yahshua" did not appear in the book. I wrote to this Sacred Name leader asking for an explanation. I told him that unless he had some other explanation, I could conclude one of three things: either he deliberately misrepresented the facts, or he did it accidentally, or the book I got from the library was a different version from his, in which case I would owe him an apology. My letter was sent September 1, 1997, and I am still waiting for a reply. I will not embarrass this man by mentioning his name or the name of his ministry. It is not my intention to embarrass anyone.
I am not writing this article to persuade people to quit saying "Yahshua." If people want to continue using a mistransliteration that was erroneously contrived by early Sacred Name pioneers who didn’t know Hebrew, it really doesn’t matter to me. I don’t that the substitution of an "ah" sound for an "e" sound matters much to the Lord, either. What does matter, though, is the spreading of false accusations against Messianic Jews and others who called the Messiah "Yeshua."
Paul warned Timothy about "doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmising [suspicions]" (1 Tim. 6:4). Unfortunately, this is an accurate description of what goes on among many people in the Sacred Name movement. Personally, I would rather fellowship with non-contentious people who call the Messiah "Jesus" than with contentious people who insist that everyone call Him "Yahshua."
NOTES
[1] Love Song to the Messiah newsletter, March 1999, p. 1.
[2] "The Fallacy of Sacred Name Bibles," Jerusalem Perspective Nov.-Dec. 1991, p. 12.
[3] These teachers very heavily rely on Strong’s Concordance, yet when Strong proves them wrong, as he does with the pronunciation of Yehoshua, they insist that Strong’s rendering is erroneous! I have a Sacred Name publication which actually claims that Strong wrote down incorrect pronunciations because "his understanding of the Name was lacking." Anyone who wants to disprove this ludicrous assertion can simply look at Joshua’s name in a Hebrew Bible and see that Strong used the very same vowel marks that are used in the Bible.
[4] There is some debate over whether or not the Jews’ final shortening of Jesus’ name to Yeshu (wvy) was a deliberate attempt to avoid acknowledging Yeshua of Nazareth as Savior.
[5] This article first appeared in a publication called The Eliyah Messenger in May-June 1966, and was reprinted in 1975 in World Today Analyzed, a publication of the Assembly of Yahvah in Tahlequah, OK.
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