A Question That Must Be Asked

Part 8 of 8

 

Two Different Treatments

Across the Hebrew scriptures and into the New Testament, the names bearing YHWH were not all handled the same way. There is a pattern within the pattern and it is one of the most revealing observations in this entire series.

The complex names of the major Hebrew prophets, Yeshayahu, Yirmeyahu, Yechezkel, Tzekaryahu, Malachi, were largely transliterated rather than translated. They were carried across into Greek and English as approximate sounds. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Malachi. The sounds are imperfect renderings of the Hebrew, but they are renderings. A curious reader who encounters Isaiah and discovers it traces to Yeshayahu can then investigate the meaning. The thread, however frayed, is still there.

 

The Names That Were Translated Away

But the names of those most directly involved in the events of the cross were not transliterated. They were translated into forms that bear no trace of their Hebrew content. No thread. No possibility of recovery for the ordinary reader.

Yeshua became Jesus — via Greek Iesous, via Latin Iesus. The divine name within it: gone.

Yochanan became John — via Greek Ioannes, via Latin Iohannes. The divine name within it: gone.

Mattityahu became Matthew — via Greek Matthaios, via Latin Matthaeus. The divine name within it: gone.

Yehudah became Judas — via Greek Ioudas. The divine name within it: gone.

And with it, the entire theological weight of the tribe of Yehudah, the line of the Messiah, the name of the one who handed the Lion of the tribe of Yehudah over to death.

The prophets who pointed forward were transliterated. The participants in the event they pointed to were translated into silence.

 

The Question

Why were the names handled differently? Why were the prophets given at least a recoverable transliteration while the people at the cross were given opaque translations? This series does not claim to answer that question definitively. What it claims is that the question is real, the difference is consistent, and the effect is systematic.

The names of the prophets point forward to something. The names of the participants at the cross declare what that something was. And it is precisely the declarative names, the ones whose Hebrew content announces the meaning of the event, that were translated most completely out of existence.

 

What Comes Next

The second series in this collection, Names Changed to Hide the Truth, examines a different category of erasure.

These are names that did not carry YHWH within them, but carried other forms of dangerous truth: prophetic resonance, covenantal tension, narrative accusation.

Miriam. Yehudah. Yakov.

Three names. Three deliberate erasures. Each one burying a truth that the Hebrew original declares plainly. Those documents may be read as a companion and continuation of what this series has established.

Names meant everything in the Hebrew text. To change them is to change the understanding of the very text. The recovery of these names is the recovery of the proclamation they carried.

YHWH saves. That is where it begins. That is where it ends. That is the name.

 

The Gospel Revolution  •  Mike Williams Ministries

William Ethan Massengill  •  Michael Lilborn Williams  •  Daniel Thomas Rouse

Published by Audrey Williams