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Saturday, November 29, 2014

Should Jesus Ever Be Called “Yeshua”?


Spend enough time among diverse Christian groups, you’re bound to encounter some who refer to Jesus by the term Yeshua.  Those individuals (a minority among Christians) will explain that Yeshua was Jesus’ “real” Hebrew name, and some (a minority of the minority) will go so far as to claim that using any other word for His name is unbiblical or ungodly.

In the extreme, such individuals may claim that your English use of “Jesus” is improper.  They might drop subtle hints that your entire faith could be in question, since only those who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved (see Romans 10:3).


WHERE DOES THE WORD YESHUA COME FROM?

Those who call Jesus Yeshua do so because they believe they are using the word Jesus’ contemporaries used when they addressed him.  They believe that the name “Jesus” is overly modernized, and that it might even be inappropriate.

Yeshua is a modern transliteration of the Hebrew name we usually render as Joshua, and Joshua was, in fact, the root of Jesus’ name.  By “transliteration,” I don’t mean “translation.”  In many ways, transliteration is the opposite of a translation.  It’s an attempt to show the original sounds of a foreign word without using the written form of that original language.

Chances are you’ve seen examples of Greek, Hebrew, or Arabic.  Those languages have a completely different script from English, which uses Roman-style letters.  To show you how to pronounce a word in one of those languages, I have to Romanize the word – give you the approximate sounds in letters you can read and practice for yourself.

Therein lies our first major problem.  Some languages have sounds that aren’t used in other languages, or at least not used in the same way.  The buzzing sound you hear at the start of the French phrase Je t’aime is the same sound English puts at the end of the word garage, but English never starts a word with that sound.  Likewise, the breathy, guttural rasps in the Hebrew toast l’chaim and the Spanish name José have no equivalent Romanized letter that is helpful for English speakers.  Still other languages have oddities that can’t even be reproduced in Roman letters – the Tsou language of Taiwan, for example, has variations for /f/ and /h/ that are made by inhaling air rather than exhaling air, sounds linguists call pulmonic ingressives, but which few in the Western world can make.

So when someone claims that Yeshua is the real name of Jesus, they don’t seem to realize that their spelling of it in Romanized letters is only an approximation, and more important, that their pronunciation of it is only a ballpark attempt to mimic the sounds of an ancient language no one had the technology to record.

This explains why a Google search of “What is the real name of Jesus?” produces so many variations on that “real” name, both in Romanized spelling and the suggested pronunciations: Yeshua, Yahushua, Yesua, Yehoshuah, and more.


WHAT LANGUAGE DID JESUS SPEAK?

Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew.
The second major problem with calling Jesus by the Hebrew name Yeshua is that it’s highly unlikely Jesus spoke Hebrew.  By the time He was born, the daily languages of his province were common Greek and Aramaic.  Latin was spoken by top politicians.  Hebrew was used primarily for ceremonial purposes, although even for those Aramaic had taken over in most synagogues.  Aramaic was a Semitic language, like Hebrew, but the two were as mutually unintelligible as French and Latin are today, even though French evolved from Latin.  If Jesus’ household spoke Aramaic on a daily basis, his name would be better transliterated as Eashoah, more nearly approximating the ancient Aramaic lettering.

Jesus spoke Greek.
However, it’s certain that Jesus spoke Greek as well.  Greek had been the common language of the area for almost 400 years, and Jesus' people were multilingual.  In fact, He may have used Greek as his primary language for teaching, evidenced by the fact that whenever he lapsed into Aramaic, the Gospels make a point of translating the Aramaic words he chose to use.  The New Testament was written entirely in Greek, even the Gospels.  Those who prefer the term Yeshua will sometimes claim that the Gospels were first written in Aramaic.  They are certainly mistaken, based on the Bible text alone.  Why would a Gospel writer composing his text in Aramaic go to the trouble of telling readers the translation of an Aramaic word?  Mark offers repeated translations of Aramaic (in 5:41, translating Talitha kum into Greek for his audience; in 7:34 translating Ephphatha; in 15:34 translating Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani”).  Matthew provides similar acts of translation to Greek, and John goes to pains to explain in Greek what rabbi and messiah mean in the language his readers understood.

Clear conclusions:
(1) The Gospel writers wrote in Greek.  If they had been writing in Aramaic, they would not be pausing to provide Aramaic translations for their audience, no more than I would write here, “The word audience translates to ‘audience’.”  You don’t translate a word from the language you’re already writing.

(2) Furthermore, the fact that the Gospel writers broke from their narrative to point out that Jesus had used Aramaic words at some points in His teaching is pretty strong evidence that they saw that switch to Aramaic as unique and noteworthy ... as if it were something outside the norm of the way He taught.  Chances are that when they mention, “And then, in Aramaic, he says ...” it’s because He hadn’t been speaking Aramaic up to that point.  The language switch jumped out at them, and they noted it.

(3) The Gospel writers called our Lord Iesous, Jesus.  They saw no need to translate that name, or to point out that it was a poor Greek variation on a better Aramaic or Hebrew name to call Him.  They’d already shown elsewhere that they had no hesitation pointing out important translations.  Matthew even went to the trouble to decode a title accompanying the name of Jesus, Emmanuel, God With Us.  But at no point did these Greek-writing, Holy Spirit inspired authors go to the trouble of saying, “We all really called him Yeshua,” or “Make sure you don’t use the Greek for that when you’re getting saved, though.”  They liked the name Jesus.  In the New Testament Scripture we have – written in its original Greek – there is no other name by which they called Him.  Nor by which Greek-writing Paul called Him.  Nor Peter.  Nor Jude.  Nor James.  Iesous, Jesus, was the preferred name.


AHA!  BUT HEBREW HAS NO LETTER “J”!

This is almost too small a point to bother with, but since it’s likely you’ll run into it, you may as well have it resolved right now.

Many promoters of the name Yeshua claim that Jesus can’t possibly be the name of the savior because the letter J didn’t even exist until the 14th century, almost a millennium and a half after He lived.

This is absolutely true and absolutely meaningless, for one simple reason: Letters are not sounds.

The letter J didn’t exist in Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew, and neither did the letters Y, E, S, H, U or A.  However, the sound represented by the modern letter J most certainly existed, and it exists in nearly every language we know.  Representing it as a Y is little different from representing it as a J.  I’ll prove that.  Say the following word:

YAY

Now say it 20 times fast without inhaling.

YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY

Did you feel the J sound forming?  Most likely you did ... in fact, I’m told that it hurts to keep the Y as a pure Y sound once you hit the tenth or twelfth YAY.  If you do the exercise in the other direction, repeating the word JAY, you’ll find your mouth slipping toward the Y of YAY as well.

The sound represented by an initial J in Jesus is nearly identical to the sound represented by the letter Y, just with the slightest of friction or buzz added.  There are many letters with such tricks (say “a little Tylenol” and notice how the two Ts in little are more like Ds than the initial T in Tylenol).  The letters J and Y are, in this case, the same essential sound.  There is no vast conspiracy to hide the true name of the Lord.

Here endeth the J lesson.


SO ARE THEY WRONG TO CALL JESUS “YESHUA”?

Am I saying that those who refer to Jesus as Yeshua are wrong to do so?  I’ll answer that with a hearty, confident, “It depends.”  Are the Spanish wrong to call Him by something that sounds to English ears like, “Hey, Zeus!”?  Are the Russians wrong for Isus?  The Chinese wrong of Yesu?  Punjabi speakers wrong for Yisu ne?  The Azerbaijani wrong for Isa?  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this: If Jesus was called Eashoah by his Aramaic-speaking mother, but Iesous by Paul and the Gospel writers, then the first act of transliteration was performed by the Holy Spirit, and I shouldn’t question the legitimacy of accommodating other languages.  The Christ who rose is the Christ who rose, and by any other name He is as sweet.

However – if the devotee of the name Yeshua begins to insist to you that his use of the name is more proper, more biblical, or more holy than your own use of “Jesus,” it may be time to discern the motivation behind the attitude.  Scripture warns us numerous times to avoid putting on airs, and there is something about pretending to have a special, secret name for God that smacks of something less than humility, more like Gnostic secrecy.  Real love does not put on airs.

If you hear your preacher or teacher or prayer leader suddenly bursting forth with declarations of “Yeshua ha Maschiach!” and Hebrew is not their native tongue, ask yourself what the speaker or pray-er’s motivation might be.  To invoke God with a better language?  To use a more powerful version of the name, as if it were a magic spell?  To stand out from others who don’t use those words, thus appearing to be more in tune with God?  To lead you to notice that they are unique, using special vocabulary, worthy of your focus and attention?

I can’t answer that for anyone, since it’s situational.  But pray for discernment, and always test the spirit of those who would try to get you to buy in to the idea of secret words and special knowledge.

And if they bring up the Letter J thing, just roll your eyes at them.

Marana Tha (that’s Aramaic for either “Our Lord is coming” or “Our Lord has come”!),

Cosmic Parx

Sunday, November 16, 2014

On Heaven & Hell & Babies Who Die


Note: This was a tough blog post to write.  I try to maintain a wry, witty, playful voice when I create these blogs, but I found that hard to do with such a delicate, heart-twisting topic.  It doesn’t help that I’m recently married, and that many theoretical issues about babies and family are closer to home than ever before in my life.  So thank you for bearing with the uneven tone below.
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What happens to the souls of those who die in infancy?

It's a profoundly unsettling question, one that’s especially horrible for those who have experienced the loss of a baby.

The issue triggers default responses among those of us who are believers.  She's with God now.  She was too precious for this world.  She's in heaven waiting for you.  We'll be with her again one day, when the rest of us go to her.

In fact, it's a discussion so heartrending that it seems cold and unfeeling to try to accommodate it to our Christian doctrines and theologies.  If you were to ask anyone who’s experienced such a loss whether they think their baby went to heaven or hell, you’d likely get the most furious of stares in response.

But the question isn't a settled one.  The statement "All babies go to heaven" is surprisingly modern and liberal.  You see, the Protestant Reformation gave us a precise equation for salvation, pushing to the vanguard of our doctrines the Bible's assertions that humans are born in depravity and sin, and that only faith in the sacrifice of Christ can lead to saving grace.  For those able to experience faith, that equation is a blessing beyond words.  For those too young to have faith, it is a cold equation indeed.

It doesn't help, either, that centuries of scholars, commentators, and teachers of our faith have failed to reach a consensus on the matter.  To view them as a whole, it seems our spiritual forefathers can only agree that there is no clear Biblical direction on the fate of babies' souls.


What the Scriptures Say

Chances are, you’re the sort of person who is appalled by the idea that God would allow a baby to suffer eternally in the fires of hell simply because the infant never aged to a point when she could make a declaration of faith.  It would mean that God created that soul knowing she would die in her first year of life, knowing she would suffer eternal damnation as just payment for having been born a child of Adam and not being given enough time to get herself saved through faith and grace.  For most, such a God is unthinkable. 

However, the Bible is oddly silent about the topic.  This seems particularly unusual when you consider that it covers eras in which up to 25% of babies died in their first year, 50% before they were 10.  Why is the Bible so disturbingly vague about something so dear to the hearts of parents?  Even today, when infant mortality rates worldwide have dipped below 1% for the first time in recorded history, we are driven to ask, What became of those ninety-five million souls who died this year before seeing their first birthdays?  What does Scripture tell us?

Sadly, not much.

Some commentators, hoping to bolster their belief in infant salvation, grasp for 2 Samuel 12 in which David mourns the death of his infant son.  David declares he must cease his fasting and praying for the child, for “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (v. 23).  Doesn't this clearly show that David believed he'd go to heaven with the child?  However, other commentators point out that this verse does not clearly say the baby has gone to heaven; it simply says he died in the flesh, just as David will one day die in the flesh.  "I will go to him" simply means "I, too, will die."  To extrapolate from that verse a theology of universal infant salvation would be, according to those commentators, an act of imposing our own desires on the literal words of the Scripture.

A second passage of Scripture used to advance universal infant salvation is Matthew 19 (and its parallel in Luke 18): “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of heaven.” After all, commentators reason, if the Kingdom of heaven is made up of little children, how could babies not go right to heaven if they die before coming into the faith?  But this passage, too, falls quickly to the scrutinizing gaze of other commentators.  The children in this passage were clearly old enough to “come to Jesus” on their own, and in the previous chapter of Matthew are explicitly called “little ones who believe in me” (18:6).  They are, say some commentators, obviously old enough to be believers.  They are paidia (children) with saving faith, and not unaware brephoi (infants, toddlers, babes as in Luke 1 and 2).


Solutions from Our Spiritual Forebears

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that the late 1800s biblical scholar Henry Van Dyke raised conservative eyebrows by proposing that humans who die before reaching an age of moral accountability were automatically accepted into heaven.  Had Van Dyke made his declaration today, he’d be representing the majority view.  In his own time, however, the bold suggestion caused schism and contributed to a break that persists to this day between modern and conservative Biblical scholars.

Historically, the Christian faith has taken multiple approaches to resolving the question.  As you might already guess, the “resolving” has never fully hit home for 100% of the Body of Christ.  Some less-than-satisfying solutions have included the following:

  • Inventing Limbo: Roman Catholics struggled with the disposition of infant souls as much as any other part of Christendom.  Their populist solution (technically, it was never an explicit church doctrine) was to declare that unbaptized babies wound up in Limbo, an afterlife realm of Eden-like joy and peace.  Limbo was outside the presence of God (and thus did not violate the cold equation of salvation by faith and baptism), but it was a realm of as much eternal bliss as one could imagine outside the knowledge of God.

  • The Friends and Family Plan: Acts 10, 11, 16, and other passages of Scripture offer up a tantalizing idea of salvation with the words “you shall be saved and your entire household,” hinting that the faith of the home’s head person leads to salvation for everyone in the house.  This idea is particularly comforting for those who suffer the loss of an infant: We believed, they reason, therefore our child was covered by the faith lived through us.  I love this idea, but it is not without its gaping holes ... it implies that everyone in the household being discussed gets access to salvation through the faith of another, not through their own faith.  Prominent households had servants and adult children, extended family, cousins, countrymen from afar taking long-term shelter.  Are those members of the household automatically covered by the faith of the head of household?  Would their own rejection of Christ be overridden?  And when father turns against son, mother against daughter, does the salvation act of faith of the household’s head get severed somehow?  Clearly, this solution causes more theological problems than it solves.

  • Forget the Friends, Just Save the Family: Other commentators narrow the scope of household salvation through an appeal to 1 Corinthians 7:14 – “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now they are holy.”  Right there seems to be definite affirmation that children are saved by the faith of a mother or father, and the matter seems closed.  "We Christian families go to heaven," says this line of reasoning.  "The babies of unbelievers go to hell."  As cold as that might sound, it was the driving conviction of many Reformed, Calvinist, and Presbyterian believers for centuries.

  • Maybe Some Other Smart People Know: The 1 Corinthians 7:14 verse has sent ages of commentators into contortions.  Some examples (and pardon my rapid name dropping): Benson suggests that it means that by being born to even one Christian parent, an infant is “federally holy,” deserving of baptism and thus salvation.  Barnes counters that there is no Scriptural support for such an idea, and that the verse is meant to prevent believing parents from divorcing and thus making their children illegitimate in this world.  Meyers interprets the “sanctification” mentioned in the verse as permission for the believing partner to keep having sex with the unbelieving spouse.  Bengel’s Gnomen interprets the holiness of the children as a state of being “more open” to the faith once they’re old enough to accept it—location, location, location, a distinct advantage over the children of unbelievers but not salvation itself.  Jamieson-Fausset-Brown rather cavalierly declare the verse to mean that the believer shouldn't worry about being made impure by the unbelievers in his family, and that he gets to be holy despite the sinful, unbelieving state of the others in his house.


So, What’s The Answer?

Do all babies go to hell due to being born in Adam’s sin and separated from God, as we learn from the Reformers?

Do they go to heaven because they had no chance to choose the Lord, as we learn from modern preachers?

If they go to heaven without accepting Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, does that mean the Protestant Reformation was wrong, and that there are alternate paths to the Father?

If the children of believers -- but not of unbelievers -- go to heaven, then what happens when the unbelieving parents come to the Lord after the death of the child?  Is that child punished eternally for having parents who believed too late?  Are the offspring of unbelievers punished simply for not having been born into the right family?

If all the billions of infants and unborn miscarriages are souls who go to heaven, do they represent by sheer number the vast, vast, vast majority of the saved?  Is heaven staffed by babies?  Is the way to salvation that Paul considers primary – coming to Christ through faith in his death and resurrection – actually a minority, secondary path?

If dying before coming to an age of accountability is a surefire way to eternal fellowship with God, then what benefit is there to surviving and risking rejecting the Lord, as the Scripture says a majority of adults will do?

Questions, questions, questions, and here’s my answer: I don’t know.

But here’s something I do know: A friend of mine, a Methodist minister, discussed this issue with me at length.  He reached an “I don’t know” conclusion as well, but his final declaration hit home with me.  He avowed, quite simply, that he couldn't even imagine a God who sends babies to hell.  He said, “ I have no solid Biblical reason for thinking that, but in my heart, I can’t imagine a universe working that way.”

And that’s where I am, currently.  Scripture passages aside ... there are so incredibly few of them for such a vital issue, and the ones we do have are maddeningly unhelpful ... the idea settles right into the “Yes, but ...” area of my heart.  Yes, the Bible says little on the topic, much of it less than hopeful.  But the Spirit within my heart speaks volumes.

Sometimes you just have to embrace the still-speaking voice of God.

Maran Tha,

Cosmic Parx / YoYo Rez