There never was a person named Jesus Christ! His first name wasn’t Jesus and his last name wasn’t Christ. Would you believe that Jesus’ real name in pre-exilic Hebrew was Yehoshua or in the Second Temple period Yeshua or Joshua? When the English rendered the Latin IESVS from the Greeks who translated the Semitic name Yeshua they came up with Jesus (Yehoshua became Yeshua became Iesous became Jesus), and that name stuck. But his real name in his own language was Yeshua, which was a very good name in the Hebrew tradition. It meant – “Yahweh (God) is savior (helper)”.

Josephus mentions more than 20 Joshuas, the most famous of whom was the “Son of Nun” (Exodus, 33:11), from the tribe of Ephraim, who was the successor to Moses as the leader of the Israelites. We remember him best as the trumpeter who blew down the walls of Jericho. What is not so well known is that Nun in Hebrew means fish, the symbol of life, especially for Galileans who lived by the Sea of Galilee. Interestingly enough, the symbol of the fish became associated with Jesus [1], as did the fact that the start of the Age of Pisces (symbolized by the fish) represented the start of the “end of times”, since Pisces was the last symbol of the Zodiac, and the start of the new age coincided with Jesus’ birth. Moreover, the symbol for “Nun” is equivalent in the Jewish gematria [2] to the number 50, which represents freedom and the fullness of life, and Nun is the fourteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the number 14 symbolizing David, the King of Israel. Thus, in many ways the name Joshua was a very holy name and had many connotations that later became associated with Jesus’ life (e.g., Jesus was said to be descended from David, was said to be a “fisher of men”, preached the “end of times”, etc.).

Joshua ben Nun was not the only Joshua. Some of the other Joshuas included:

• Joshua ben Stada was a Nazorean in 80 BC, who studied under a famous religious man, formed his own group, had disciples named Matthew and Thaddeus, was betrayed and killed at Passover. He came from Galilee and his mother’s name was Mary.
• Joshua ben Sirach, the reputed author of the Book of Sirach (part of the Old Testament Apocrypha), who combined Jewish “wisdom” literature with Homeric-style heroes.
• Joshua ben Gamala was a well known rebel and “peace activist” who was put to death during the first Jewish rebellion.
• Joshua ben Ananias (Ananius) was known for prophecy (e.g., destruction of the Temple) and preached the “end of times” until his death at Roman hands in 68/69 A.D.
• Joshua ben Saphat was a Galilean who led the Zealot revolt in Tiberias. Just before the city fell to Vespasian’s Legionnaires he fled north to Tarichea on the Sea of Galilee.

As far as his last name goes, in those days, people didn’t have last names. He would have been called Yeshua bar Yahosef bar Yaqub, Joshua, son of Joseph, son of Jacob. Yet many people think his last name was Christ! Not true. He was never called Jesus Christ! Jesus/Joshua was believed, by some, to be the Messiah, which in Hebrew (moschiach) means “the anointed one” [3]. The Greek word for the oil used to anoint someone is “khrisma”, and the person so anointed is “Khristos” in Greek, “Christus” in Latin, and “Christ” in English. In reality, had he been considered someone deserving of anointing, he would have been called Joshua the Anointed, or Jesus the Christ.

Many people mistakenly believe that because Jesus was the “anointed one” he was the Messiah. Not true: being anointed was not solely reserved for the Messiah. Other people who were anointed were Kings, High Priests, and prophets. Indeed, in special circumstances, sick people would be anointed to help in the healing process (James 5:14).

The person referred to as “Jesus Christ” is best understood, then, to have been “Yeshua bar Yahosef ” or “Joshua, son on Joseph, son of Jacob” or “Joshua the Anointed One”. No one ever called him Jesus Christ!

Updated 12/29/2006

 [1] The fish was also one of the symbol for Horus, a precursor to Jesus, who was also known as a “fisher of men” (Harpur, 2004).

 [2] The numerology of the Hebrew language, that involves translating Hebrew characters into numbers, then seeking the meaning of the numbers.

 [3] The Hebrew word, in turn, was derived from the Egyptian word messeh, the “holy crocodile”, which referred to the practice of the Pharaoh’s sister-brides anointing their husbands with the fat of the crocodile. Interestingly enough, it’s a woman (with the alabaster jar) who anoints Jesus during his fatal trip to Jerusalem (Mark 14:3). Later Gospels changed this event to hide the fact that a woman anointed Jesus, since this action implied that a woman was a priest, which was anathema to the later Gospel writers who had a definite masculine prejudice.