Faithbase

Good morning and welcome to Thinking About the Bible. We're starting a new series today thinking about the important names and terms in Scripture. We want to jump right in here because I'm trying to keep these to about three minutes. Talk about the name of Jesus. Most important in my opinion, and I think most of us would agree, the most important name, most important term in the Bible, Jesus. In the time that Jesus lived, Aramaic was the common language of the Hebrew people, the Jewish people. Also Latin and Greek were in wide use. Greek, of course, was the universal language of the day. Joshua is the name that, as was later transliterated from Joshua, Yahoshua, or Yeshua, became Yesus in the Greek. And there's a lot of folks who would say that we need to pronounce Jesus' name as Yeshua, and the truth is we don't really know how his name was pronounced in the Aramaic. We don't know how it was pronounced even in the Greek for that matter because that was 2,000 years ago. And let's face it, we don't know anyone who speaks Aramaic or Greek or Latin as it was spoken 2,000 years ago. Look at English, for instance. In 200, 300, 400, you know, 500 years, English has changed dramatically. And so the way that it was pronounced, things that were pronounced, you know, 100, excuse me, 500 years ago or so, are very different than they are now. And so you would have dialects, you have accents. The Galileans were famous for their inability to pronounce certain words. All that comes into play. So the truth is we don't really know how Jesus' name was pronounced 2,000 years ago. So when we say Jesus, there's nothing wrong with that. Some folks actually get a little bit upset and say, no, his name's Yeshua. Well, we pronounce it that way. And it was probably something like that in the Aramaic. But one of the things about the Christian faith is that it is adaptable. It doesn't change the principles or anything else, but it can be adapted through translation and so forth of the scriptures to the culture and the language of the day. So Iesus would have been the Greek pronunciation we think, but Jesus is how we say his name. Jesus means Jehovah or Yahweh is salvation. And what I want to focus on today is not so much that whole thing about the linguistic background and so forth. I want to talk about the fact that Jesus was a very common name in the time of the first century. I think I read someplace it was one of the fifth or sixth most common names for a male Jew in the first century. And I want to read to you from Isaiah 53 verses 2 and 3. My servant grew up in the Lord's presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about him, his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised and we did not care. I want to focus on the fact that not only was Jesus a very common name, but Jesus was a common man. There was nothing about him, his physical appearance, he didn't look like a superhero. I think oftentimes we think of Jesus as being some kind of a Marvel comic superhero or something of that sort, and he wasn't. He was a common man. He went through the same things that we go through. He didn't have the advantage, you look at research today, people who are very attractive can often have advantages that less attractive people do not have. Jesus didn't have that. He was a common-looking man, nothing majestic or beautiful about him. Common name, just another Jew, you might say, in that society. Nothing special about him whatsoever, except that he is God incarnate, that he is the perfect man. He is the one who died that we might have life, that our sins are washed away by his blood. But the focus is this common man went through what we go through. He experienced all the same temptations that we experience, and he was sinless. He knows what it's like to be just another brick in the wall, you might say. He knows what it's like to be just the common man. So that's what I want you to think about today, that Jesus, the majestic name of Jesus, is actually a name that was very common, given to a very common, nondescript man, who just happened to be God incarnate. And yet he went through the same things that we go through. So think about that today, that Jesus the Christ, Jesus our Savior, a common man who experienced life like we do, is someone that we can turn to because he knows exactly what we have gone through, what we're going through in our lives. So be blessed as you think about that today, and I'll see you again tomorrow.