A little linguistics lesson

People who take the Third Commandment seriously sometimes get upset when others do things like say "Jesus Christ" when angry or surprised, but they might be shocked to learn that the name "Jesus Christ" is an amazing mangling of His actual name. Let me break it down for you.

Jesus- from Spanish Jesus (hey-soos)
Jesus- from the Latin Jesu (yay-zoo) or Iesu (ee-eh-su), as in "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"
Jesu- from the Greek Yeshu or Ieshu, because Latin has no "sh" sound.
Ieshu from the Hebrew Yeshua or Yehoshua, meaning "God is Salvation", which makes perfect sense when you look at Matthew 1:21 "And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS (Yehoshua): for he shall save his people from their sins."
Yehoshua is the root of our name Joshua.

As for "Christ", it comes from the Greek krystos and has the same meaning (it was the word Paul himself used) as the Hebrew word messhiah, literally "the anointed one". Obviously, that's where we get the word Messiah., and this is also why Paul calls Him "the Christ" so often in the Epistles.

So it is actually more accurate to call Him "Josh, the Anointed One" than it is to call Him "Jesus Christ". Of course, I'd feel a little goofy yelling out "oh Josh" the next time I smash my thumb with a hammer.

CS

Thats one thing lots of people miss is " the" the before christ in lots of writings. Most of it has probably been removed fromt he text.

Great post

Originally Posted by Time

Thats one thing lots of people miss is " the" the before christ in lots of writings. Most of it has probably been removed fromt he text.

Great post

Using "Christ" without the article is a typically Pauline feature, but it's not unusual. There is very little evidence, given the large about of NT manuscripts we have, that the definite articles have been removed from the text (what purpose would that serve )

It's similar to English, where one might say "King George is a good man." ("Messiah Jesus is good"). :)

God bless

[RabbiO]

Originally Posted by CuriousSnowflake

As for "Christ", it comes from the Greek krystos and has the same meaning (it was the word Paul himself used) as the Hebrew word messhiah, literally "the anointed one". Obviously, that's where we get the word Messiah., and this is also why Paul calls Him "the Christ" so often in the Epistles.

So it is actually more accurate to call Him "Josh, the Anointed One" than it is to call Him "Jesus Christ". Of course, I'd feel a little goofy yelling out "oh Josh" the next time I smash my thumb with a hammer.

CS

Actually, mashiach, משיח simply means "anointed". To say the anointed, you would need to say ha-mashiach, המשיח

The important thing to remember is that the term is used not simply in regard what Christians would refer to as the messiah. For example in the Tanakh, what Christians refer to as the Old Testament, Cyrus is referred to as G-d's anointed in Isaiah.

B'shalom,

Peter