The movie The Man From Earth, gives a detailed description of how the name John was translated into Jesus. From Herbrew, to late Greek, to late Latin and then medieval Latin. How accurate / possible was the explanation given in the movie? (Video link inside)

by socool111

The Scene I hope this is a valid question, as I thought it was a very elegant explanation, but wanted to confirm its accuracy.

Mods, if not allowed please delete, but I love this sub, so keep me not banned! :) thanks.

talondearg

Two things are being confused in your question, though not as much in the movie, they are transliteration of a name and translation of a name. The former is representing the sound of a word, the latter the meaning (at least the way those terms are normally used)

John is an English form derived from Latin Ioannes, Greek Ἰάννης*, itself a transliteration of the Hebrew Yohanan (I'm not that good at typing hebrew anyway).

Jesus is an English form derived from Latin Iesus, from Greek Ἰησοῦς, a Greek rendering of Hebrew Yeshua, often represented directly in English as 'Joshua'.

But 'Jesus' is not a translation of 'John', not at any stage in those languages. It's a legitimate Greek version of the Hebrew Yeshua.

Your movie clip claims that John was misunderstood as 'Yohanan', which is kind of going backwards - mistaking a presumably non-Hebrew version for the Hebrew version, and then 'skipping' over to Yeshua and deriving from there.

brojangles

Yeshua, not John. Hebrew/Aramaic is Yeshua. That's a shortened form of Yehoshua which is transliterated directly from Hebrew as "Joshua." Greek has no "sh" sound and no letter for the y as in "you" sound, so Yeshua becomes Iesous in Greek (with the masculine male ending, pronounced, "ee-AY-soos"). That becomes "Iesus* in Latin (Latin male ending, pronounced pretty much the same as the Greek) and eventually "Jesus" in English.

"Jesus" and "Joshua" are actually the same name in Hebrew. It's just that "Joshua" is transliterated directly from Hebrew, while "Jesus" went through Greek and Latin first.