Is Jesus’ real name not ‘Jesus’? Scientists say...

Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, was not originally known by the name we know him today. Scientists say he would have been known by a title in his native language of Aramaic that is nothing like the current version.

They also say that ‘Christ’ was not a surname but an honorific meaning “God’s anointed one”, New York Post reported citing the Daily Mail report. If not Jesus Christ, then what was the name of the central figure of Christianity?

Let’s take a look.

Why Jesus Christ was not the messiah’s real name

According to scientists, Jesus likely spoke Aramaic, the native language of Judeah, the region in the Roman Empire where Christ and his disciples are believed to have lived.

However, he was probably born and raised in Nazareth in Galilee. Jesus is often referred to as “Jesus Of Nazareth” or “Jesus the Nazarene” in the Bible.

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“We cannot know for sure which languages Jesus spoke. However, given his family background in Nazareth, we can assume his day-to-day language was Aramaic,” Professor Dineke Houtman, an expert on Judaism and Christianity from the Protestant Theological University in the Netherlands said, as per the NY Post report.

There are papyrus documents from the Galilee region that show that the Jewish population mostly conversed in Aramaic at the time. Early Greek translations of the Gospel also mention Christ saying some phrases in this language.

Moreover, the letter ‘J’ did not exist when Jesus lived. It was recorded in written language 1,500 years after his death.

What is Jesus Christ’s real name?

Report says Jesus would have been called Yeshua or its variant Yeshu, two of the most common names in Galilee at the time.

“His name would probably have been in Aramaic - Yeshua. It is likely that this is also how he introduced himself. Another possibility is the shorter form Yeshu which is the form used in later rabbinic literature.” Professor Houtman was quoted as saying by Daily Star.

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Christ was not actually the surname of Jesus, who was Jewish. It would have been linked to his hometown instead.

“In the ancient world, most people didn’t have a last name as we understand it today,” Dr Marko Marina, a historian from the University of Zagreb in Croatia, said. “Instead, they were identified through other means, such as their parentage, place of origin, or other distinguishing characteristics.”

“For example, someone might be referred to as ‘John, the son of Zebedee’ or ‘Mary Magdalene,’ with ‘Magdalene’ probably indicating she was from a place called Magdala,” the professor added.

Jesus would have been called “Yeshu Narazene” in ancient Aramaic.

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How the name ‘Jesus Christ’ came to be

Experts attribute Yeshu Narazene becoming Jesus to transliteration, the act of converting text from one script to another.

When the New Testament was translated into Greek, the Gospel writers did not have the correct sounds for the Aramaic name Yeshua. So, they came up with a different plan.
“By the first century CE there was already a precedent for transliterating the Aramaic name Yeshua as Iesous,” Professor Candida Moss, an expert on early Christianity from the University of Birmingham, was quoted as saying by NY Post. “So, when Paul and the evangelists refer to Jesus — Yeshu/a — they use the already established Greek equivalent of Iesous with an ‘s’ sound at the end.”

She added, “When the New Testament was translated into Latin there was another slight shift, this time from Iesous was transliterated as Iesus.”

Scholars are of the view that the letters “I” and “J” were interchangeable in text until the 16th century. By the 17th Century, ‘j’ became a common sound that led to translators using it in Biblical names.

“This is a story of transliteration and of rendering a name into several different scripts from Aramaic to Greek, from Greek to Latin, and finally from Latin to English,” Professor Moss said.

With inputs from agencies