Understanding Our Lord Jesus Christ...

A Rose by Any Other Name
by

Charles Bryant-Abraham, Ph. D.

About 75 years before the final destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, a middle-class Galilean, Aramaic-speaking, observant Jewish couple made their way from Nazareth, an outlying suburb of the great cultural and commercial center of Sephoris, on the road south toward "the fields of Bo’az" in the land of Yehudah and the townlet of Beyt-Lehem, "the house of bread." The man, Yosef ben Ya’aqob, was swarthy from the hot Middle-eastern sun and powerfully built from his honest labor as a professional contractor and builder. His wife, Miryam, called "Maryam" by her Aramaic-speaking friends and family, was in her ninth month of pregnancy. The woman had had a remarkable premonition about the child she was carrying and the role he would play in human history.

The Hebrew name given to the child at his circumcision the eighth day after his birth was, according to minhag (Jewish custom), Yeshua’ ben Yosef ben Ya’aqob. But his parents in their Aramaic vernacular called him simply "Yeshu," a very popular name in that generation, as we see from its frequency in the Greek writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. In Greek we find that the letter "sigma" (s) replaces the Hebrew/Aramaic letter "shin" (sh) because Greek lacks palatal sibilants (sh/zh). Moreover, Greek distinguishes four cases, the nominative (subject), genitive (possessive), dative (indirect object), and accusative (direct object). Consequently, Josephus and other Greek writers of the age invariably suffix the masculine singular nominative "sigma" to mark the nominative functions of the name. Thus, Hellenistic Greek normally pronounced the Aramaic name Yeshu as "yesu" and distinguished its nominative case form with a final "sigma" (s), yielding "Yesus." This form of the name also entered the liturgical usage of the early Latin-speaking adherents of the Jesus movement, which we know as the Proto-Catholic Church. With the exception of English and Yiddish, all other Germanic languages still retain the pronunciation "Yesus," though spelling it with "J" rather than "Y." Presumably Anglo-Saxon also kept this pronunciation inherited by the Early British (Celtic) Church from Medieval Latin, and it may well have characterized English-speaking Christendom until well into the Protestant Reformation.

But it is the name itself that most intrigues us, for it illustrates what we intuitively know: "There is no coincidence, though there are indeed God incidents." Despite the emotional content the name bears for Christians, relatively few realize its original Hebrew meaning. On the contrary, there has been considerable confusion on this question in many sincere circles of Restorationists. By "leaning unto their own understanding" and "walking in the imaginations of their own heart," instead of studying Semitic philology, many have missed the profound significance of the name for their own Christian faith, their own walk with the Lord. The tri-literal root of the name is Y/Sh/’, "save; rescue." From this same root was derived the name "Yehoshua" (Joshua), but neither was that Jesus’ name. Nor has there ever existed a hypothetical reconstructed form "Yah-shua," as if in some way related to the divine name Yah, known so well in the liturgical formula hallelu-Yah, "you (pl.) Praise God!" Rather, his Aramaic name Yeshu, showed loss of the final ‘ayin, a phonological trait retraceable to venerable Akkadian (Assyrian/Babylonian) influence. No, it is far simpler than that, for that little Galilean child was to bear a name throughout history with a singular message. Its Northwest Semitic etymon exists to this day in the Modern Israeli Hebrew noun, yeshu’ah. It means, "salvation."

The noun occurs in the first verse of the popular Ashkenazic Chanukkah song, Ma’oz Tzur Yeshu’ati. Normally translated "Strength of a Rock, my salvation," the song for a Christian might well be rendered into English, "Strength of a Rock, my Jesus!" And, lest we miss the opportunity here, let us point out that Jesus himself celebrated Chanukkah, the "Feast of the Dedication," not the Roman Saturnalia transmuted into "Christmas" by Hellenized Western Christendom: "And it was at Jerusalem the Feast of Dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s Porch" (John 10:22).

Of the career of the man Jesus, Peter came to write: "For even unto this were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow in his steps, who did not sin, neither was guile found in his mouth" (1 Peter 2:21-2). "Who did no sin," i.e., kept the precepts of the Torah, the only standard for "sin" in that generation. Peter refers here to Jesus as the example in both suffering and the observance of the Torah. And it is this use of the concept of "example" that facilitates resolution of a deep-structure paradox in the New Testament.

Jesus himself categorically rejects "lordship" as a way of thinking about him: "And he said unto them, ‘The Kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise authority are called "benefactors." But ye shall not be so; but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For who is greater, he that sitteth at meat? But I am among you as he that serveth’ " (Luke 22:25-27). In point of fact, Jesus makes it emphatically clear that he disavows the entire social framework of "lordship" as it was practiced both in those days and in ours. How then are we to understand the honorific "Lord" consistently applied to Jesus to this day. Is it a paradox?

To resolve this seeming paradox, we must first pass in review the usage of the Greek word kyrios, "lord," in the New Testament. Primarily it continues its use from the Septuagint as the replacement of the ineffable name Y/H/W/H, the "Tetragrammaton." Thus, one must carefully and consistently discern when the word "Lord" in the New Testament refers to the Father, rather than to Jesus. Secondly, in Hellenistic society kyrios was the honorific bestowed upon the head of a Greek school of philosophy and, among the Greek-speaking "Alexandrian" Jews of the Western diaspora, to heads of a yeshivah, a "rabbinical academy." We find its parallel Aramaic/Hebrew usage, "Rabbi, Rabbuni," equally applied to Jesus at various times. But it is Peter’s reference to Jesus as the "Example" par excellence that best confirms for us the third usage of kyrios as an honorific applied to Jesus, the usage that resolves the apparent paradox cited.

In every aristocratic or royal court, namely, it is the "lord" of the court who sets the standards of dress, etiquette, and personal conduct. Here the term kyrios would more happily be rendered as "example," and this is precisely the insight that Peter provides us. "Jesus is Lord," would then not contradict his specific teaching (Luke 22:25-7) but rather point us in the right direction in our own daily conduct. Jesus is our Example, in suffering, in joy, and in observance of the Torah. Just as he "did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth," so too must we strive to observe the "Ways of the Lord" (Tetragrammaton) without fault.

Many of or beloved friends are convinced that the correct pronunciation of the ineffable Name, the Tetragrammaton, Y/H/W/H, is "Jesus." Just as the Jewish people replace pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton with ha-Shem, "the Name," in all liturgical functions, can it not be argued that both the historical linguistic blunder "Jehovah," and the selective usage of "Jesus" do in fact serve cognate functions?

Finally, we cannot pass in silence the essential meaning of the Greek adjective Christos, "anointed."

Once we understand the underlying semantics of the familiar phrase, "Our Lord Jesus Christ," our appreciation of the supernal "Rose of Sharon" broadens and deepens. In whatever linguistic form it is expressed, the meaning remains identical: "Our Example, Anointed Salvation." William Shakespeare got it right, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Dr. Charles Bryant-Abraham is a widely-published scholar of Biblical Hebrew, Imperial and middle Aramaic, Syriac, Koinè Greek, and Ecclesiastical Latin. As a fellow of the AMI Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies and Research, Jerusalem, he has taught internationally in German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, and English. Charles, his wife Lu Ellen, and their sons, Daniel and Joshua, divide their time between Jerusalem and San Diego, California.

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