Hebrew Voices #147 – What is the Sacred Name of God?

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Josias: You know the topic; we were discussing this before. And basically, according to all the evidence that you have explored in your field...

Nehemia: Yeah.

Josias: How do you think Moses would pronounce the name? But let's start with what evidence we have, biblical evidence.

Nehemia: Yahweh is the common understanding of most scholars today; that was introduced in 1699.

He was a Church Father who around the year 450 CE or AD, he wrote that “The Jews don't pronounce the name,” the Tetragrammaton, “but the Samaritans call it Yahveh.”

Josias: Does that have something in common with the name Yeshua?

Nehemia: So, I was just at the Israel Museum the other day, and they have an ossuary; it's a bone box. And there was a man buried in that bone box whose name was Yehoshua.

Josias: Hola nuevamente, aquí estamos en nuestro podcast “Amando tu Tanaj”, y estamos en el World Union of Jewish Studies, en la conferencia, en el congreso si pudiéramos llamarlo así de la unión mundial de estudios judíos celebrada cada cuatro años. Y como habíamos dicho, tenemos la oportunidad de entrevistar a un académico, un erudito, Nehemia Gordon está con nosotros. Nehemia es el creador del podcast “Hebrew Voices” y también obtuvo su PhD, su doctorado, en la universidad Bar-Ilan, exactamente donde estoy haciendo mi investigación y lo hizo prácticamente en el título del PhD en inglés, lo hizo sobre The Writings, Erasure, and Correction of the Tetragrammaton in Medieval Hebrew Bible Manuscripts. Eso es en español Los escritos, borrones o correcciones del Tetragramatón... El Tetragramatón es el nombre Sagrado de Dios, las cuatro letras en hebreo que forman el nombre sagrado de Dios. …en los manuscritos medievales. También obtuvo su maestría, su master's degree and bachelor's degree en la universidad hebrea de Jerusalén, donde estamos ahora mismo, the Hebrew University, right? (Hello again, here we are in our podcast “Loving the Tanakh” and we are at World Union of Jewish Studies, at the conference, at the congress, if we could call it like that, from the World Union of Jewish Studies celebrated every four years. And as we have said, we have the opportunity of interviewing and academic, a scholar, Nehemia Gordon is with us. Nehemia is the creator of “Hebrew Voices” podcast, and he also got his PhD at Bar-Ilan University, exctly where I’m doing my research and the title of his dissertation is The Writings, Erasure, and Correction of the Tetragrammaton in Medieval Hebrew Bible Manuscripts. The Tetragrammaton is the sacred name of God, the four Hebrew letters that form the sacred name of God. He also got his master's degree and bachelor's degree at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where we are right now, the Hebrew University, right?)

Nehemia: I studied right here, where we’re sitting - this is where I did my bachelor’s and my master’s.

Josias: Very good, very good! Also, he works in the Él trabajó también, claro en español, el trabajó también descifrando los antiguos manuscritos en hebreo de los Rollos del Mar Muerto. O sea que tenemos un erudito aquí de muy buen calibre para hablar del tema que nos compete hoy. (He worked also deciphering the ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, we have a very good scholar here to talk about the subject at hand today). Nehemia, thank you.

Nehemia: Thanks for having me, I’m glad to be able to speak to your audience. I’m looking forward to it, because although I live in the greatest Spanish speaking country in the world, Texas, I have not yet learned Spanish.

Josias: Okay! That's not the biggest Spanish speaking country in the world, but that's fine! I got you! Okay, you know the topic; we were discussing this before. And basically, according to all the evidence that you have explored in your field...

Nehemia: Yeah.

Josias: How do you think Moses would pronounce the name? But let's start with what evidence we have, biblical evidence.

Nehemia: Well, let's start with this - we don't have a recording from ancient Israel. When Moses heard God speak at the burning bush there wasn't a tape recorder, or if there was, we haven't gotten that tape yet! So, all we can really do is work with the evidence we have. And the common scholarly understanding is that Yehovah, or in English, Jehovah, and I think in Spanish Jehovas? How do you say it?

Josias: Jehovas.

Nehemia: Jehovas. So, the common understanding is that that is a Christian misunderstanding. They call it “an impossible hybrid”. That it's a combination, they say, of the vowels of the word adonai, and the letters of the Tetragrammaton of God’s name, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. The problem is that that's not true. First of all, we have it from Jewish sources, so I call this “The Stupid Christian Hypothesis”. The assumption is, there was a Christian, we know his name, his name was Galatinus. In 1518 he was the first one, as far as we know, to introduce the pronunciation “Yehovah” into the Christian world, and that’s where you get Jehovah in English. But we have it in Jewish sources that predate that, and then also their assumption is that Galatinus just didn't know that the Jews pronounce the name as Adonai. Well, that's not true - in the actual context of which Galatinus discusses the pronunciation Yehovah, he says, “Well the Jews read it Adonai, but if you take the vowels the way they are, the name will be read ‘Yehovah.’” So, he was well aware of that. So, this uninformed Christian hypothesis is a myth; it's not based on any actual evidence from history.

Yahweh is the common understanding of most scholars today. That was introduced in 1699 by a man named Gilbert Genebrard who was another Christian author. Now, what did he base it on? There is a statement by a Christian Church Father named Theodoret of Cyrus, some people pronounce his name is Theodoret of Cyrrus, I don't know what you say in Spanish.

Josias: Teodoro probably.

Nehemia: Teodoro, maybe, I don't know. So, he was a Church Father who around the year 450 CE or AD. He wrote that “The Jews don't pronounce the name,” the Tetragrammaton, “but the Samaritans call it Yahveh.”

And so, scholars have taken this supposed Samaritan pronunciation of the name, and then said, “Well, that fits our theology.” What's our theology? They say, “What does the name of God mean?” So, we know from the Torah, Exodus 3:14, God says, “Ehiyeh asher ehiyeh,” which means, “I am that which I am,” or “I will be which I will be.”

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: And then in the very next verse, He further says to Moses that the name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is His eternal name. And that's been understood for a thousand years at least; actually, it goes back a lot longer.

Josias: Oh, this is Exodus chapter 3...

Nehemia: Verse 14 and then 15.

Josias: Yes. Because the context there is when he asked, “The people asked me who sent me...”

Nehemia: Right. “What name should I give them?”

Josias: Yeah. So, the topic there is the name.

Nehemia: Oh, it's absolutely the name. And it's the first introduction to Moses, formally, of the name. Moses may have known that name, maybe he knew it from the Forefathers, it's a whole separate discussion. But the first time God reveals His name to him was at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14 and 15. And in 14 He says, “I am that which I am,” or “I will be that which I will be.” And in the next verse, He says His name is Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, and it's obvious, I think, to anybody reading this in Hebrew, that verse 14 gives you the explanation of verse 15. Ehiyeh is not the name, per se, it is an explanation of the name.

Josias: Oh, okay.

Nehemia: There is a principle of Hebrew linguistics, really of all Semitic languages, that every noun, adjective, and verb is based on a three-letter root. And the three-letter root of “I will be”, “ehiyeh”, is clearly the same as the three-letter root of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.

Josias: Correct, correct.

Nehemia: And already we find in… well, we find it in Jewish sources, we find it in the New Testament in the Book of Revelation, and we actually find it also in Samaritan sources…

Josias: Wait, when you say Jewish sources, which time are we talking about, the manuscripts?

Nehemia: Well, we're going to get to the manuscripts first.

Josias: Okay.

Nehemia: First, I'm talking about what the name means.

Josias: Okay.

Nehemia: Without even talking about what the pronunciation means, we'll talk about that in a minute. So, we have in Jewish sources, in the New Testament, and in the Samaritan sources, we have an explanation of the name as, “He that was, He that is, and He that will be.” Now how could it be in all three of those sources? The answer is that this was something that was known in the Second Temple Period.

Josias: Okay.

Nehemia: Otherwise, how would it be that Samaritans, Jews, and the Book of Revelation all have the same explanation? I guess you could say it was revealed to John at Patmos, but as a scholar I want to take a different approach and say, “What is the common source that all these three different streams have?” And that's that there's information that's known in the Second Temple Period; that's where we can for sure trace it back to.

So, the name means “Hiyah, hoveh, ihiyeh”, “He that was, He that is, He that will be”. And we get that from Exodus 3:14 and how the three-letter root ties into verse 15. So that's what it means. That really isn’t disputed in medieval Jewish sources, it's not really disputed in… like I said, it's in the Book of Revelation, it's in Samaritan sources.

In 1699, Gilbert Genebrard comes along, he's a Christian, and he says, “Wait a minute, the name of God should mean ‘creator’,” and how do we get from the word Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey to creator? Well, Hebrew has seven conjugations, or binyanim, and “Ehiyeh asher ehiyeh”, in Exodus 3:14, “I will be that which I will be,” is in the Kal conjugation, the simplest conjugation.

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: He says, “If it's going to mean ‘creator’, we have to put it in the hi’fil, which is the causative conjugation. And then he goes from Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, which is “Hiyah, hoveh, ihiyeh”, to Ya-haveh.

Josias: Okay. When you say, just for my audience…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Josias: When you say, “Hiyah, hoveh, ihiyeh”, it means, “He was, He is, He will be.”

Nehemia: He was, He is, He will be. “He is to come” or “he will be”.

Josias: Correct. So, what you're saying, just for my audience, what you're saying is that the name, the meaning of the name will include all these three statements.

Nehemia: The name comes from those three statements.

Josias: The name comes from those three statements.

Nehemia: And like I said, that's in Jewish sources. It's in the Book of Revelation, and it's in Samaritan sources, three very diverse types of sources.

Josias: Okay, because you have been repeating that…

Nehemia: Yeah. “Hiyah, hoveh, ehiyeh”, “He that was, He that is, He that will be”, that’s the meaning of the name, and that's what Exodus 3:14 is telling us. And look, you have to know a little bit of Hebrew, which you know, so we've got four prefixes of the future form. We have Alef, Yud, Tav, Nun, they call it Eitan letters, or in English I say Ethan.

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: So, ehiyeh, “I will be”, is “I”, and then he calls himself Yud, “he that is”, the Yud of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is “he that will be”, or “he that is”. So, Genebrard comes along, and he says, “No, we don't want it in the Kal like everybody's understood it up until now, it's got to mean ‘creator’ based on our theology.” And then he comes up with Yahveh, which in English became Yahweh.

Josias: Okay. Let me explain that... the thing is that Kal, that voice, if we can put it this way, the voice that he's proposing is one active and causative voice.

Nehemia: Absolutely.

Josias: Because he wanted to give the impression that God is constantly, He’s actively...

Nehemia: Well, we all agree He's creating.

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: They wanted his name to mean, “He that Creates”.

Josias: Ah, okay!

Nehemia: So, we went from His name meaning, which we get from Exodus 3:14, “I am He that was, He that is, He that will be”, we go from that, the Kal conjugation…

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: … to a causative, the hi’fiel, for theological reasons.

Josias: Yeah, I understand.

Nehemia: Now his name means “He that causes to be”, and therefore ‘creator’.

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: So, this is a completely theological construct.

Josias: And how does it sound when you put it in the Hebrew?

Nehemia: Yachveh.

Josias: Yachveh.

Nehemia: Yachveh.

Josias: Yachveh.

Nehemia: Americans say Yahweh! But it’s Yachveh. And it would have been Yachveh...

Josias: It’s important that you mentioned Yahweh because this is something very established.

Nehemia: Oh no, it's a scholarly consensus.

Josias: Yeah. When you say something different, if you are in a religious country, you're a sinner.

Nehemia: Well, I mean that's, that depends on…

Josias: I’m just telling you. I’m just telling you.

Nehemia: That seems like a theological statement. I don’t know.

Josias: Yachveh, it's very... you know.

Nehemia: So, it's a scholarly consensus, and The Anchor Bible Dictionary calls it a scholarly guess. So, what's the guess based on? First there's this theology, “He that causes to be,” and then we have the statement of Theodoret in 450, who says, “The Samaritans pronounce it, Yahveh.” And they said, “Oh, that fits perfectly with what we think from our theology.”

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: There's a few other points that I'm not going to go into right now. Clement of Alexandria is really the third piece of evidence; that’s a whole separate discussion. So, what do we have in Jewish sources? And what do we have in Hebrew Bible manuscripts? There isn't a single Hebrew Bible manuscript that has Yachveh or Yahweh; nothing, nowhere, anywhere. There isn't a single Jewish source that has Yahweh.

Josias: Wait, wait, wait, that’s important.

Nehemia: Let’s say an ancient and medieval Jewish source.

Josias: That’s important. You are saying that there is not even one source, manuscript evidence, textual manuscript evidence, that has Yahweh?

Nehemia: This is a beautiful example, so listen to this. I was writing something up about the name Yachveh, and then I went to put the Hebrew vowels in.

Josias: Of course.

Nehemia: And so, I went to look in Hebrew manuscripts, “What are the vowels? Is it a Patach or a Kamatz? In Modern Hebrew pronunciation, they're both pronounced “ah.” So which one is it?

I didn't have any manuscripts. So I wrote to these Christian folks, or maybe Hebrew Roots folks, who say Yahweh, and I said, “Which vowels do I put in here? Is it a Patach? Is it a Sh’va? Is it a Segol?” That’s what I thought based on the pattern of yarbeh, other hifiel verbs, meaning grammatically. They said, “We don't use Hebrew vowels.” “Okay... but if you can't translate it into the Hebrew vowel system, then it has no meaning in Hebrew.”

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: And of course, it's the Patach, Sh’va, Segol, without getting too technical, which is based on the pattern of yarbeh. But where did I find that? In Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, which is from the 19th century. So, I couldn't find a source before the 19th century that gave me the exact Hebrew vowels to use. The Latinist is writing it in Latin. What is it in Hebrew? I’ve got to go to a 19th century German to get the answer!

Josias: That's the information that I wanted to share with my audience, that Gesenius was a German scholar.

Nehemia: And a brilliant scholar!

Josias: He was brilliant! We still use him a lot.

Nehemia: Sure, he’s the basis for Hebrew Grammar.

Josias: So, he was translated into English, and that's the source...

Nehemia: The German, he wrote in German.

Josias: He wrote in German but was translated into English.

Nehemia: Right.

Josias: And that we use as a source.

Nehemia: Right, right.

Josias: But this is interesting, he’s a German guy.

Nehemia: Right. Well, now, what about “Yehovah”? Which is… we find that… I have a study called, Ten Rabbis Speak Out on the Name, and I actually right now have 19 rabbis who explicitly say that the vowels of the name are Yehovah. Sh’va, Cholam, Kamatz, in Hebrew, Yehovah. Now, you could say they didn’t know what they were talking about...

Josias: Sh’va, Cholam, Kamatz, like “eh”, “oh”, “ah”.

Nehemia: Or look… there’s different Hebrew dialects. In some of the Hebrew dialects the Kamatz is “oah”, so it’s like “Yehovoah”. That’s like the Spanish you speak, and the Spanish of Argentina. That doesn’t change the meaning.

Josias: It sounds very close to Modern Hebrew speaking the vowels.

Nehemia: It’s the traditional Sephardic pronunciation, and it actually goes back to what we call the Eretz Israel vocalization, which we find in some manuscripts… that’s a whole separate discussion. But here's what some of the rabbis say - they say it has the same vowels as the words le’olam, which means “forever”.

Josias: Oh!

Nehemia: And why did they choose that specific word? Because He says in Exodus 3:15, “and He said further to Moses,” He says “Yehovah, the God of Abraham, the God of Issaac, and the God of Jacob,” “zeh shemi le’olam”, “this is My name forever”.

So, they say the name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey has the same vowels as “le’olam”, which is “eh”, “oh”, “ah”.

Josias: “Eh”, “oh”, “ah”.

Nehemia: Sh’va, Cholam, Kamatz. Now, you could say these rabbis didn’t know what they were talking about, you could say they’re wrong, but what you can’t say is that this was something invented by ignorant Christians.

Josias: Yeah, that’s true.

Nehemia: Because we have multiple rabbis, who, some of them were aware of what the Christians were saying, others had no clue what the Christians were saying.

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: And they all believed it was Yehovah, at least all of those that I’m talking about. There is no rabbi in historical sources who says it Yahweh, or Yachveh. That’s from literary sources. Then we go to the Hebrew Bible manuscripts, and we have the vowels Yehovah!

Josias: Yes. But people say… I’m just playing the devil’s advocate here, okay? People say, but that’s mostly based on the Adonai thing because the scribes want to hide the name. So, how do you respond to that?

Nehemia: If they wanted to put in the vowels of Adonai, they would’ve put in the vowels of Adonai. The vowels of A-do-nai, you can hear, are “ah-oh-ah”, not “eh-oh-ah”.

Josias: Oh, okay.

Nehemia: And then they’ll say, “Oh, well, it was impossible to put an “ah” into a Yud.” I can show you that it’s not impossible. I can show you manuscripts where they actually did put in the vowels of Adonai.

Josias: As a mistake? Or on purpose?

Nehemia: No, no, no! There were scribes who said, “I want to put the vowels of Adonai in there,” and they actually did it.

Josias: Oh, okay. So, you explored that evidence?

Nehemia: Absolutely. It wasn’t many scribes, but there were scribes who said, “We read this word as Adonai. Nobody disputes that the Jews read it as ‘Adonai’...”

Josias: Let me explain this, let me explain this.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Josias: Nehemia’s advisor was one of the professors in the same university that I’m studying at, one of my professors was Professor Yosef Ofer, right?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Josias: So, Nehemia explored… I don’t know how many manuscripts you explored in your research, but Nehemia’s PhD is basically...

Nehemia: I think my dissertation went through 90,000 manuscript pages, or something crazy.

Josias: 90,000 manuscript pages!

Nehemia: I don't even remember.

Josias: So, I don't know how many times in those pages you explored the sacred name, the Tetragrammaton, the Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey...

Nehemia: Look, in my PhD dissertation I wasn’t looking at that question. I was going back a step further, and why was I going back a step further? So, I’ve had people say to me, “Well Nehemia, you’re saying...” and this is...

Josias: Wait, wait, wait, you were not looking at that question in your dissertation?

Nehemia: No, I was looking at something even more fundamental, and I’ll explain that. Let’s back up a step. Years ago, I found in the Aleppo Codex that normally the middle vowel was not put in, and every once in a while the scribe put in the middle vowel. Meaning, when the vowel isn’t put in, you can’t read the name.

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: And that is the scribe saying, “Don't read it, because we’re trying to prevent people from reading it.” Not me, the scribes; they’re trying to prevent people from reading it, and therefore they leave out a vowel. And every once in a while, between six to eight times depending on how you count it, the scribe of the Aleppo Codex puts in the missing vowel, making it Yehovah.

And my initial understanding - and I think this is probably still true - is he put that in by accident. Why did he put it in by accident? Because in his head he knew it was Yehovah. And the response I got from people was, “Well, the scribes never made a mistake in the name; it’s impossible.” So, I investigated that and ended up writing a PhD dissertation to answer that question. Did the scribes make mistakes with the name? And when they made a mistake, what did they do?

Josias: They erased the name?

Nehemia: Well, they did lots of different things. There’s a Rabbinical rule that you’re not allowed to erase the name. So, what do you do when you make a mistake? And I documented in my PhD dissertation numerous different things that they did; sometimes they actually erased it, which they weren’t supposed to do.

Josias: I saw one of the lectures that you gave in Bar Ilan in Hebrew, actually, where you showed manuscripts where they erased the name.

Nehemia: We say in Hebrew, “chad ve’chalak” – definitively. They took a razor, and they erased it. They weren’t supposed to, but they made a mistake; sometimes they cut it out, sometimes they put a circle around it.

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: There’s a whole bunch of different things they did. But the point is that I had to answer a more fundamental question because I had serious scholars telling me, “They never made a mistake with the name, it’s impossible.” Alright, let’s go see if that’s the case. I looked through thousands of shelf marks of Bible manuscripts, over... I don’t remember the number, it was like over 90,000 pages, maybe it was over 100,000, I don’t remember. Thousands, and thousands, and thousands of pages searching for mistakes, and sometimes you go through a thousand pages, and you don’t find any mistakes, right?

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: Or you find a mistake and it’s really hard to see because you don’t have a good photo. But I ended up finding twelve or thirteen different methods of dealing with mistakes of the Tetragrammaton.

Josias: The Tetragrammaton, again, is the sacred name, the sacred name of God.

Nehemia: Right. And how did they fix the mistake? And so, to say they never made mistakes... any manuscript of any length is going to have some kind of mistake. And what makes the Aleppo Codex, the most important manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, what makes it so valuable isn’t that there are no mistakes, it’s that the mistakes have been fixed. And this is what Maimonides actually says, this 12th century rabbi...

Josias: Yes.

Nehemia: He mentions the Aleppo Codex, and he says it’s so important because Ben Asher, the scribe, spent years proofreading and fixing it. Now, when I was studying the Aleppo Codex, I actually got to hold the Aleppo Codex in my hands and examine it with a microscope!

Josias: This is important.

Nehemia: Which no one's ever done before!

Josias: I know, I know! You can shout out this point! This is important, we’re almost closing, but this is important. The Masoretic text is the basic text for all the translations basically.

Nehemia: The Aleppo Codex is the best representative of the Masoretic text.

Josias: Which is very important.

Nehemia: You can’t say the Aleppo Codex and the Masoretic text, the Masoretic text is the tradition of the bible down to the letters and the dots, to the dots and the tittles, preserved by Jewish scribes.

Josias: Where all the translations are coming from…

Nehemia: Absolutely.

Josias: You held that thing in your hands, and you examined it?

Nehemia: I spent three days examining it with a microscope, literally. The Aleppo Codex is the best representative of the Masoretic text, and already in its time when it was written in the 10th century it was considered the best representative of the Masoretic Text. Scribes used to come from all over the Jewish world to Jerusalem to check their manuscripts against the Aleppo Codex.

Josias: Perfect.

Nehemia: And in that manuscript the name usually is missing a vowel, thousands of times.

Josias: Which vowel?

Nehemia: The middle vowel of the name. So, Ye-ho-vah.

Josias: The “oh”, the cholam.

Nehemia: It was written, “ye”- “va” and there’s a missing vowel in the middle. And in Hebrew you can’t pronounce the word without that vowel. And really, that’s a cue to the reader, “Don’t read this word.” Either by accident or on purpose, that’s a different discussion.

Josias: That’s perfect. I just have one last question, because I think I read something that you wrote, or I heard you in a conversation, if we conclude, if we accept, then, that Yehovah is the pronunciation, does that have something in common with the name Yeshua?

Nehemia: Maybe, we could start with... I don’t know what you say in Spanish, Hesus?

Josias: Hesus.

Nehemia: Alright. And so, in English we have Jesus. So, where does that come from? So, I was just at the Israel Museum the other day and they have an ossuary: it’s a bone box. And there was a man buried in that bone box whose name was Yehoshua, and it says that. And there’s many people named Yehoshua in the 1st century, it was a very common name. It’s like Tom in America.

Josias: Yehoshua, will be like Joshua?

Nehemia: Yehoshua is Joshua.

Josias: Josué en español.

Nehemia: So, on that man’s ossuary it says, “Yeshua” and it also says, “Yeshu”. Now later, the rabbis took the word Yeshu, which is short for Yehoshua, and they said, “Oh, that is an acronym that means something bad.”

But that’s actually… in English we call that a backronym, from the word “back”. It didn’t start out as an acronym, it started out Yehoshua, and the Jews in the Galilee didn’t pronounce the H-sound, the “hu”, so Yehoshua became Yeshua. And then Yeshua became Yeshu, because they couldn’t pronounce the Ayin. It’s actually not Yeshua, its Yeshu’a.

Josias: Yeshu’a.

Nehemia: So, if you can’t pronounce Yeshu’a, then it becomes Yeshu. And then the Greeks took Yeshu, they didn’t have a “sh” in Greek, and they made it Yesu! Which it still is in Italian, it’s Yesu!

Josias: Right, right, yeah.

Nehemia: And then Yeshu in Greek...

Josias: Because they don’t have the “sh” sound.

Nehemia: They don’t have the “sh” in Greek.

Josias: The Shin.

Nehemia: And then in Greek, you end many words with “-us”. Like Joseph, Yosef, becomes Josephus. And so hence, Yesu, became Yesus. That’s where it comes from. It doesn’t have anything to do with Zeus. I've had people say, “Oh, Jesus is Zeus.” No, no, no, not from evidence that I’ve seen.

So, now if we take back, Yesu, Yeshu, Yeshu’a to Yehoshu’a. So, Yehoshua is “Yehovah yoshiya”, “Yehovah saves”, that’s the meaning of his name, Joshua, the son of Nun.

Actually, right here at the World Conference of Jewish Studies you have these free sandwiches if you’ve paid your membership. And one of the sandwiches, I want you to get a photo of it and put it here in the video! It’s called the Yehoshua sandwich! Why is it called the Yehoshua sandwich? I assume somebody in the kitchen named Yehoshua came up with that formulation.

Josias: Okay, okay.

Nehemia: It’s a certain type of cheese, with lettuce or something. Anyway, so Yehoshua is simply a Hebrew name; Joshua the son of Nun was Yehoshua. In the Book of Nechemiah he’s called Yeshua the son of Nun, Yeshua ben Nun. And in Greek, both Jesus and Joshua are Yesus.

Josias: Yes. I asked that question because, and with this we’ll finish, I asked the question because it starts with a Sh’va is similar because it carries the name, “Yeho-”.

Nehemia: Right. Yehoshua is “Yehovah yoshiya”, “Yehovah saves”.

Josias: Correct, correct, correct.

Nehemia: That’s not even a matter of dispute. That’s not some great discovery, that’s obvious in Hebrew!

Josias: That’s obvious, that’s obvious in Hebrew, okay. Well, Nehemia, thank you so much for your time.

Nehemia: Thank you.

Josias: I know that we have another section, I need to go to another section.

Nehemia: Muchos Gracias.

Josias: De nada.

Nehemia: Toda Rabah.

Josias: Be’vakashah.

Okay, bueno, eso fue todo por hoy, esto fue un segmento, una entrevista más de “Amando tu Tanaj” con Nehemia Gordon, Dr. Nehemia Gordon y espero que esto haya sido bien informativo y espero que haya respondido mucho sus preguntas. Así que esto fue todo y nos vemos la próxima. (Okay, well, that was it for today, this was a segment, another interview of “Loving your Tanakh” with Nehemia Gordon, Dr. Nehemia Gordon and I hope this has been quite informative and that may have answered your many questions. This was it, let’s see us next time).

Shalom, lehitra’ot.

Nehemia: Shalom.

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