Tuesday, October 26, 2010

What Is His Name?

I was twiddling through the dials (so to speak) of the Internet when I happened upon a Messianic Jewish website that gave me Strong's Hebrew Lexicon Search Results.
After doing a Control-C and Control-V of what I wanted, there at the bottom of the page was this "Discovering the Hebrew Roots of Christianity"  which happened to be a long but interesting discussion about the names of God and His Christ. Here are a few of the highlights.
The word, hallelujah, is more accurately rendered, halleluyah, and that one word is made up of two words; hallelu and Yah, which is translated as Praise God. One can easily see here the Hebrew word for God...Yah.
Over time devout Jews came to consider the name of God (YAHWEH) to be too holy to utter or render in full spelling and it was reduced to the tetragrammaton, YHWH.
The name Jesus, known to most, is actually derived from the Latin Iesus, which reportedly appeared in the 1611* first edition of the King James translation of Scripture and which is a departure from our present understanding of the name of the Christ. Controversy over the name of Jesus has been raging back and forth (in the minds of some) since the 1930's.
Interestingly, the Hebrew name for Jesus is very much like the name of the man who led the children of Israel into the promised land; Joshua. The Hebrew rendering of that name is this; Y'hoshua. (The parallel of Joshua and Christ leading God's people from captivity [Egypt/sin] into the promised land [Literal Canaan/Heavenly Canaan] should not be lost here).
The Complete Hebrew Bible (translated by David H. Stern) translates the name of the Messiah as Yeshua. The narrated Power Point presentation alluded to above made a  case for the name of the Christ: YAHUSHUA. One instantly makes the connection; YAH, YAHUSHUA, YAHWEH, YHWH. But is this correct, and perhaps more importantly, is it a critical issue in our worship? Most probably not.
YAHUSHUA, Yeshua, Y'hoshua, Jesus, the Christ, carried the name of God because He was God incarnate; He was the Creator God and the Passover Lamb of God. The Oneness of the Trinity and the truth of His deity is summarized in the words; "I and [my] Father are One." [John 10:30]. The core of the question/issue is this; have we given our hearts and minds to our Savior, and are we serving Him by telling others of His soon coming. I firmly believe that there will be those who are saved who have never heard the name of Jesus...in any form...because they followed the leading of the Holy Spirit in surrender and obedience.
Blessings as we think on the Name above all names. e.c.
*Further Study Sources:
http://www.seekgod.ca/htwhatsinaname.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_(name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominus_Iesus

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