It is undoubtedly one of the most famous names in human history, but now the question is being asked whether the name “Jesus Christ” is actually the name of the central figure of Christianity.
Scholars believe that ‘Jesus’ would have had a name in his own native language, Aramaic, which bears no resemblance to the modern version.
In fact, the name ‘Jesus’ even contains letters that were not used in written language until 1,500 years after his death, Daily Mail reported.
Over the 2,000-year history of Christianity, Jesus’ original name has been obscured by layers of translation.
The long journey of the name “Jesus”
The name Jesus went a long linguistic way from his own Aramaic to Hebrew, then to Greek and Latin, before it could receive an English translation in the 16th century.
Likewise, experts say that Jesus’ surname was definitely not “Christ”, but was actually based on his hometown.
This means that Jesus’ real name was most likely Yeshu Nazareen.
Jesus, the historical figure, and his disciples lived in a region of the Roman Empire called Judea, which is now part of Palestine and Israel, and most scholars believe that Jesus was born and raised in the city of Nazareth, which is part of Galilee, a smaller province to the north.
Aramaic, the everyday language of Jesus
Professor Dineke Houtman, an expert on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity at the Protestant Theological University in the Netherlands, told MailOnline: “We cannot know for sure what languages Jesus spoke. However, given his family background in Nazareth, we can assume that his everyday language was Aramaic.”
Aramaic is a language that first emerged in what is now Syria and spread throughout much of the Middle East during the time of Jesus’ life.
The surviving papyri from the Galilee region show that this was by far the vernacular language among the Jewish population and almost certainly the everyday language of Jesus.
In addition, the earliest Greek versions of the Gospel specifically record Jesus saying certain words in the original Aramaic.
For example, the Gospel records that Jesus would use the Aramaic word ‘Abba’ to refer to father.
Although Aramaic shares similarities with Hebrew, they are completely different languages.
In the time of Jesus’ life, Hebrew was used primarily as a religious language in the same way that Latin was for the Christian church during the Middle Ages.
The real name could be Yeshua
Jesus, with a ‘J’, was not a name that existed at the time of Jesus’ life, who would have used a name in his native language, Aramaic.
Houtman explained:
His name would probably have been in Aramaic: Yeshua
“We cannot know for certain what languages Jesus spoke. However, given his family background in Nazareth, we can assume that his everyday language was Aramaic,” Houtman concluded.