User:Jaredscribe/Joshua ben Miriam

Greek: Ἰησοῦς, romanized: Iesous, Jesus, is a transliteration of the hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎ ("Yehoshua", Joshua, Joschka: "Yah Saves") which was commonly used in the Septuagint, Josephus, and the New Testament for Joshua son of Nun. The New Testament uses this transliteration to refer to the historical Joschka of Nazareth, Miriam's son, of paternity unknown, disputed, or divine.

was a hasidic pharisee and healer from Galilee,

whose Torah teaching emphasized mussar with and before halakha,

and whose apocalyptic anti-nationalism in the tradition of Jeremiah offended the Judean nationalists,

who was crucified under Pontius Pilate on the accusation of Roman collaborators, the Sadducee chief priests Caiaphas and Annas.

Spelling and Meaning

Every reliable ancient source transliterates the Hebrew name: Yehoshua, into the Koine Greek Ἰησοῦς. which christian bibles all give a theologically motivated mis-interpretation as Iēsoûs, Jesus, and translate it back to hebrew as merely Yeshua - salvation without God.

Septuagint transliterates Yehoshua as Ιησους

In the Septuagint and other Greek-language Jewish texts, such as the writings of Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, Ἰησοῦς Iēsoûs is the standard Koine Greek form used to transliterate the Hebrew names: Yehoshua.

Philo interprets the name Ιησους

In the 1st century, Philo of Alexandria, in a Greek exposition, offered this understanding of Moses’s reason for the name change of the biblical hero Jehoshua/Joshua son of Nun from Hoshea [similar to hoshia` meaning "He rescued"] to Yehoshua in commemoration of his salvation: "And Ιησους refers to salvation of the Lord" [Ιησους or Iesous being the Greek form of the name] (Ἰησοῦ δὲ σωτηρία κυρίου) (On the Change of Names 21.121).

Joshua son of Nun in the New Testament

Greek Ἰησοῦς or Iēsoûs is also used to represent the name of Joshua son of Nun in the New Testament passages Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8. (It was even used in the Septuagint to translate the name Hoshea in one of the three verses where this referred to Joshua the son of Nun—Deut. 32:44.

Yeshua in Hebrew Bible as diminutive of Yehoshua

The name ישוע occurs in the Hebrew of the Old Testament at verses Ezra 2:2, 2:6, 2:36, 2:40, 3:2, 3:8, 3:9, 3:10, 3:18, 4:3, 8:33; Nehemiah 3:19, 7:7, 7:11, 7:39, 7:43, 8:7, 8:17, 9:4, 9:5, 11:26, 12:1, 12:7, 12:8, 12:10, 12:24, 12:26; 1 Chronicles 24:11; and 2 Chronicles 31:15, and also in Aramaic at Ezra 5:2. In Nehemiah 8:17 this name refers to Joshua son of Nun, the successor of Moses, as leader of the Israelites. Note that in earlier English (where adaptations of names of Biblical figures were generally based on the Latin Vulgate forms), Yeshua was generally transcribed identically to "Jesus" in English.

Disambiguation from Others by this Name

This essay refers to the Historical Jesus simply as Joshua, Joschka, or Rabbi Joshua, since most parties agree that his mother was Miriam (Mary), and since disputes over his paternity are covered exhaustively in other articles. In wider contexts, he will be called Yehoshua ben Miriam, Joshua son of Mary, or Joshua of Nazareth, to distinguish him from others by this name, such as Joshua ben Nun or Joshua ben Perachiah.

The title Yeshu, without the ayin, is an acronym that refers to any anonymous heretic or traitor, which simply means "may his name be erased". In the Talmud this acronym is applied to two different heretics, neither of them could have been Joshua of Nazareth, since one was in the prior century and one in the century after. If the title Yeshu is used in modern Israeli Hebrew to refer to Christ as taught by the church, that is because according to Torah law, he would be a false prophet. If the title is used to refer to the historical Joshua of Nazareth, it is a modern error or obfuscation, not a talmudic one.

Generally Reliable Sources on the Historical Joshua

None of these deserve an unqualified recommendation; they are notable for being merely better than a very low average.

• Vermes, Geza (1981) [First published by William Collins, Sons & Co. Ltd. (1973)]. Jesus the Jew: a Historian's Reading of the Gospels. Fortress Press. ISBN 0-8006-1443-7.
• Boyarin, Daniel (2013) [First published (2012)]. The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ. The New Press. ISBN 978-1-595-58878-4.
• Most works by Paula Frederiksen.
• Daniel Thomas Lancaster, "Restoring the Torah of Moses to the Disciples of Jesus".
• Myself, a God-fearing gentile and ex-christian, who has adequate Greek and is fluent in Hebrew, who now prays with Orthodox Jews, who reads the text without ignoring its original context. I confess that the theory on his name presented here is my "original research", yet it is so obviously correct and yet so universally denied or ignored, that this proposition alone throws all other sources into doubt. That he is a pharisee is obvious, that he is a hasidic Galilean pharisee is also obvious: this explains his intra-mural disputes with and rebukes of the Judeans (nationalists) and the (Judean) pharisees. None of Joshua's rebukes amount to a wholesale rejection of Pharisees, or of Judaism, or of Judea as homeland. These are suppositions of later Christianity, which are still maintained according to the unbiblical, ahistoric, and gnostic-lite doctrine of supercession and replacement, which is still held by every major christian denomination and whose malign influence still permeates most new testament so-called scholarship.

Generally Unreliable Sources on the Historical Joshua

Christian Sources Generally

interpret him as abrogating the law and declaring himself G*d. A close reading of the gospels will show that he did neither. There is a wide range of quality in the evangelical and catholic historical Jesus studies. But even the good ones make these theologically motivated errors of eisegesis.

Christian sources tend to intepret his ethical teachings, such as the sermon on the mount, as being demands for perfection that are impossible for ordinary human beings to fulfill.

Anne Rice

writes from an imaginative catholic perspective, and as a consequence is totally ignorant of the meaning of baptism in the Jewish context, or the political significance of the Jordan river. Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana is a great novel, better than most of her vampire novels, but it isn't reliable new testament scholarship.

Islamic Sources Generally

interpret him as a warrior and an illiterate, after the model of Mohammed. But it is clear from even a cursory reading of the any gospel in its original Jewish context, that Joshua was highly literate in the law and the prophets, quoting extensively from Deuteronomy, the Psalms, and other books, and able to use them as proof texts in his debates with the Judean pharisees, whose oral Torah he also knew and understood well enough to debate it, seamlessly weaving his literary references into stories, parables, and common case law with a high degree of rhetorical skill. His self-aware use of esoteric and exoteric rhetoric, his awareness of various audiences and their levels of sophistication, his self-awareness of the power of his own words and their associated political dangers, explain how he was able to silence highly literate and politically powerful adversaries. Moreover, his sermon on the mount is a systematic exposition of the second tablet of the decalogue. He was highly literate, and anyone who says otherwise is probably too illiterate himself to know better: one consequence of anti-judaism is that it tends to make people ignorant.

Joshua is not a pacifist, but neither is he a warrior. His political project was indeed revolutionary, conservative, and eventually anti-Roman, anti-colonialist, and anti-imperialist, but was first and foremost aimed at removing the heretic sadducee high priesthood of the house of Annas and his son-in-law Caiaphas, who had been installed by the Roman imperial power that had occupied Judaea. He and his disciples and parade of followers were able to occupy the temple mount and disrupt the concessions for at least two or three days, but they did this not by force, but by non-violent direct action and overwhelmingly superior intellectual and moral persuasion.

Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

After an hour scanning the book, I decided not to waste any further time with it, for the reasons mentioned above.

Dubious But Occasionally Useful Sources

Amy-Jill Levine?

Adela Yarbro Collins

Bart Ehrman

Sandbox

In later books of the Hebrew Bible and among Jews of the Second Temple period. The name corresponds to the Greek spelling from which, through the Latin IESVS/Iesus, comes the English spelling Jesus.

References

• Ilan, Tal (2002). Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity Part I: Palestine 330 BCE–200 CE (Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 91). Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr. p. 129.
• Stern, David (1992). Jewish New Testament Commentary. Clarksville, Maryland: Jewish New Testament Publications. pp. 4–5.