🚀 go-pugleaf

 
Jake--
 
The Greek spelling _ie:sous_ (the e: represents the long, open _e_ sound,
_e:ta_) is, apparently, a transliteration of the Hebrew/Aramaic name,
_yeshu:a:<_, with a final _-s_ ending to make it conform to a normal
pattern of Greek nouns.  The < in my transliteration of the Hebrew/Aramaic
name is for a distinctive Semitic consonant, _<ayin_, the same as the
initial consonant of _<azza_ ("Gaza"), and is made by slightly tightening
the very back of the throat at the beginning of the vowel.  The name
is indeed a variant of Joshua, which in Hebrew is _yeho:shu:a<_.  Another,
similar name is Isaiah, _yisha<'ya:hu:_.  They all mean, more or less,
"God saves," "savior," "divine savior," or something like that.  Remember
that, in the Hebrew Bible, the word for "save" has, primarily, a _concrete_,
political meaning:  to rescue from one's enemies.  Given how ancient
Israel was surrounded by hostile nations and ancient Near Eastern superpowers
(Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, later Persia and Syria), "savior" is a popular
theme for Hebrew names.  Hebrew and Aramaic, by the way, are very
closely related cognate languages.  In Jesus' day, Hebrew had become
a ceremonial language for Jews, while Aramaic was the common vernacular
for local matters.
 
The fact that one priest changed his name from _yeshu:a:<_ to _iaso:n_,
according to Josephus, as another poster mentioned, corroborates the
idea that the names simply sounded similar and that Hellenistic Jews
might find it convenient to go by that Greek name for that reason.
The names are not genuinely related and their meanings, though they
seem similar today from the vantage point of centuries of Christian
tradition, actually are quite different.  Moreover, I don't know
how transparent the name Jason would have been to Greeks of that
period, but I suspect (following some other posters) that it was
not very much so--that people would generally think of the famous
Jasons, especially the legendary one.  The meaning of the Hebrew
name _yeshu:a:<_, however, would have been quite transparent to Jews
who spoke Aramaic and knew Hebrew, since it is more or less the same
as a common noun that occurs fairly frequently in the Psalms and
other Biblical contexts and in liturgy.  Also, the meanings of names,
though they are clearly important in ancient Greek culture, seem to me
to be even more important in ancient Jewish culture.  When the names
of characters are introduced in Hebrew Biblical narratives, for instance,
they very often include an interpretation or suggestion of etymology
(sometimes correct and sometimes mere folk etymology).
 
I should have mentioned this first ... whereas Hebrew and Aramaic are
very close relatives, those two and Greek belong to different, unrelated
language families.  There are a few very distant resemblances that may
be accidental or may reflect some prehistoric "superstock," and there
are a few loanwords in both directions (probably through trade with
the Phoenicians, another Semitic people), but the connections are very
limited.  Jason and Yeshua (_yeshu:a:<_) are not related.
 
The Roman form of _ie:sous_ as "Jesus" (with a long _e_ and a long _u_)
would be the normal Latin transliteration of the Greek into Latin for
the period of the Empire, and is used in Jerome's translation of the
combined Hebrew and Christian Bibles into popular Latin (late 4th
century CE) known as the _editio vulgata_ or Vulgate.
 
Amittai F. Aviram