Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament
Two names and a variety of titles are used to refer to Jesus in the New Testament. In Christianity, the two names Jesus and Emmanuel that refer to Jesus in the New Testament have salvific attributes. After the crucifixion of Jesus the early Church did not simply repeat his messages, but focused on him, proclaimed him, and tried to understand and explain his message. One element of the process of understanding and proclaiming Jesus was the attribution of titles to him. Some of the titles that were gradually used in the early Church and then appeared in the New Testament were adopted from the Jewish context of the age, while others were selected to refer to, and underscore the message, mission and teachings of Jesus. In time, some of these titles gathered Christological significance.
Christians have attached theological significance to the Holy Name of Jesus. The use of the name of Jesus in petitions is stressed in John 16:23 when Jesus states: "If you ask the Father anything in my name he will give it you." There is widespread belief among Christians that the name Jesus is not merely a sequence of identifying symbols but includes intrinsic divine power.
Names
Jesus
In the New Testament the name Jesus is given both in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew, and Emmanuel only in Matthew. In Luke 1:31 an angel tells Mary to name her child Jesus, and in Matthew 1:21 an angel tells Joseph to name the child Jesus. The statement in Matthew 1:21 "you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" associates salvific attributes to the name Jesus in Christian theology.Although the precise difference between a 'name' and a 'title' may be open to interpretation, 198 different names and titles of Jesus in the Bible are listed in Cruden's Concordance, first published in 1737, and continuously in print ever since. The first index of the book is entitled "A collection of the Names and Titles given to Jesus Christ", with 198 names listed, each accompanied by a biblical reference.
During his lifetime, when the need for specificity arose, a patronym or toponym would be added to his given name. These forms of address have been translated into English as "Jesus son of Joseph," "Jesus of Nazareth" and "Jesus the Nazarene."
Etymology
There have been a number of proposals as to the etymological origin of the name Jesus. The name is related to the Biblical Hebrew form Yehoshua`, which is a theophoric name first mentioned in the Bible in referring to one of Moses' companions and his successor as leader of the Israelites. This name is usually considered to be a compound of two parts: Yeho, a theophoric reference to YHWH, the distinctive personal name of the God of Israel, plus a form derived from the Hebrew triconsonantal root y-š-ʕ or י-ש-ע "to liberate, save". There have been various proposals as to how the literal etymological meaning of the name should be translated, including:This early Biblical Hebrew name underwent a shortening into later biblical , as found in the Hebrew text of 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—as well as in Biblical Aramaic at verse Ezra 5:2. These Bible verses refer to ten individuals. This historical change may have been due to a phonological shift whereby guttural phonemes weakened, including . Usually, the traditional theophoric element Yahu was shortened at the beginning of a name to ', and at the end to '. In the contraction of Yehoshua` to Yeshua`, the vowel is instead fronted. During the post-biblical period, the name was also adopted by Aramaic and Greek-speaking Jews.
By the time the New Testament was written, the Septuagint had already transliterated ישוע into Koine Greek as closely as possible in the 3rd-century BCE, the result being Ἰησοῦς. Since Greek had no equivalent to the Semitic letter shin , it was replaced with a σ sigma , and a masculine singular ending was added in the nominative case, in order to allow the name to be inflected for case in the grammar of the Greek language. The diphthongal vowel of Masoretic Yehoshua` or Yeshua` would not have been present in Hebrew/Aramaic pronunciation during this period, and some scholars believe some dialects dropped the pharyngeal sound of the final letter , which in any case had no counterpart in ancient Greek. The Greek writings of Philo of Alexandria and Josephus frequently mention this name. It also occurs in the Greek New Testament at Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8, referring to Joshua son of Nun.
From Greek, Ἰησοῦς moved into Latin at least by the time of the Vetus Latina. The morphological jump this time was not as large as previous changes between language families. Ἰησοῦς was transliterated to Latin IESVS, where it stood for many centuries. The Latin name has an irregular declension, with a genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative of Jesu, accusative of Jesum, and nominative of Jesus. Minuscule letters were developed around 800 AD and some time later the U was invented to distinguish the vowel sound from the consonantal sound and the J to distinguish the consonant from I. Similarly, Greek minuscules were invented about the same time, prior to that the name was written in capital letters: ΙΗϹΟΥϹ or abbreviated as: ΙΗϹ with a line over the top, see also Christogram.
Modern English Jesus derives from Early Middle English Iesu''. The name participated in the Great Vowel Shift in late Middle English. The letter J was first distinguished from 'I' by the Frenchman Pierre Ramus in the 16th century, but did not become common in Modern English until the 17th century, so that early 17th century works such as the first edition of the King James Version of the Bible continued to print the name with an I.
"Jesus" forms
"Jesu" is a remnant in modern English of the declension and use of grammatically inflected case endings with some proper nouns in Middle English, which persisted into Early Modern English to around the time of Shakespeare. The form Jesu is often a noun of address, "Jesu!", but may also stand for other cases, such as genitive, as in Latin. The form "Jesu" was preserved in hymns and poetry long after it had fallen out of general use in speech, for example in poet laureate Robert Bridges' translation of Johann Schop's wording for the English translation of Johann Sebastian Bach's cantata, Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and in T. S. Colvin's hymn, Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love, based on a song from northern Ghana. During the late 19th century, as Jesu was increasingly seen as antiquated, some churches attempted to update the wording of hymns containing "Jesu" to "Jesus". In modernizing hymn texts the use of "Jesu's" or "Jesus'" could cause problems where the metre only allowed two syllables, "Je-su's".Significance of the name
Christians have attached theological significance to the name of Jesus from the earliest days of Christianity. Devotions to and feasts for the Holy Name of Jesus exist both in Eastern and Western Christianity. The devotions and venerations to the name Jesus also extend to the IHS monogram, derived from the Greek word for Jesus ΙΗΣΟΥΣ.The significance of the name of Jesus in the New Testament is underscored by the fact that in his Nativity account Matthew pays more attention to the name of the child and its theological implications than the actual birth event itself.
Reverence for the name of Jesus is emphasized by Saint Paul in Philippians 2:10 where he states: "That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth".
The use of the name of Jesus in petitions is stressed in John 16:23 when Jesus states: "If you ask the Father anything in my name he will give it you." Many Christian prayers thus conclude with the words: "Through Our Lord Jesus Christ". There is widespread belief among Christians that the name Jesus is not merely a sequence of identifying symbols but includes intrinsic divine power, and that where the name of Jesus is spoken or displayed the power of Jesus can be called upon.
Emmanuel
provides the name 'Emmanuel'. 'Emmanuel', which is taken from Isaiah 7:14, does not appear elsewhere in the New Testament.The name 'Emmanuel' of the Hebrew עִמָּנוּאֵל "God with us" consists of two Hebrew words: אֵל and עִמָּנוּ ; Standard Hebrew ʻImmanuʼel, Tiberian Hebrew ʻImmānûʼēl. It is a theophoric name used in the Bible in Isaiah 7:14 and.
Some interpreters see Matthew 1:23 providing a key to Emmanuel Christology in the New Testament, with Matthew showing an interest in identifying Jesus as "God with us" and later developing the Emmanuel theme at key points throughout his Gospel. The name Emmanuel does not directly appear elsewhere in the New Testament, but Matthew builds on the motif in Matthew 28:20 to indicate that Jesus will be with the faithful to the end times. According to Ulrich Luz, the Emmanuel motif brackets the entire Gospel of Matthew between 1:23 and 28:20, appearing explicitly and implicitly in several other passages, setting the tone for the salvific theme of Matthew. Some Christians see the same meaning in Matthew 28:20 indicates that Jesus will be with the faithful to the end of the age.
Titles
Christ
The title "Christ" used in the English language is from the Greek Χριστός, via the Latin Christus. It means "anointed one". The Greek is a loan translation of the Hebrew mashiaħ or Aramaic mshiħa, from which the English word messiah is derived. "Christ" has now become a name, one part of the name "Jesus Christ", but originally it was a title and not a name; however its use in the phrase "Christ Jesus" is a title.The Greek-language Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, used the word Christos to express in Greek the Hebrew word mashiach, meaning "anointed". The New Testament states that the long-awaited Messiah had come and describes this savior as the Christ. In Matthew 16:16, the Apostle Peter—in what has become a famous proclamation of faith among Christians since the first century—said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." In John 11:27 Martha tells Jesus "you are the Christ", just before the raising of Lazarus.
In the Pauline Epistles the word Christ is so closely associated with Jesus that it is apparent that for the early Christians there is no need to claim that Jesus is Christ, for that is considered widely accepted among them. Hence Paul can use the term Christos with no confusion as to whom it refers to, and as in First Corinthians 4:15 and Romans 12:5 he can use expressions such as "in Christ" to refer to the followers of Jesus.
Canonical biblical texts lack any account of a formal literal anointing of Jesus as "Christ" with the traditional oil. Christological thought may interpret the baptism of Jesus in water by John the Baptist as a metaphorical anointing carried out in the light of Isaiah 61:1 – "the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings".
Early followers of Jesus, who soon became known as "Christians" after the title Christos, developed symbols for representing Christ – for example, the Chi Rho symbol, formed by superimposing the first two Greek letters in "Christ" : chi = ch and rho = r, to produce ☧.