UPDATE:
Going back, I see that I’ve used the Yeshua form myself in at least one post. I’ll correct it when I find it again. I will make sure to use the form Yehoshua.
Note: These posts on Esau should be read as my thoughts on the subject, from varying angles. I equate Edom/ Esau with a world tyrant/super-state.
Since the only power of that dimension today is political Zionism, I equate the two.
So why do I bring up the view of some influential Rabbis of Jesus and Christians as Esau?
Because it is a history and reality that Christians need to understand.
They should also understand that this is by no means a universal view among Rabbis or Jewish scholars. Many Rabbis considered Jesus as a profound Jewish teacher. Many accepted him as the Messiah.
Also, the “Jews” of Jesus’ time (Idumeans and true Jews) did not reject Jesus en masse, by any means.
A substantial number of the earliest disciples of Christ and the most influential were Jews.
Paul himself was a Pharisee, just as Jesus well might have been. [On the contrary, this blog considers that the suggestion that Jesus was a Pharisee is a meme floated by the Hebrew Roots Movement and is subversive in intention. So also, the idea that the Pharisee Hillel “taught” Jesus or that Jesus plagiarized Hillel. All these notions seem to diminish Jesus, which, ultimately, seems to be the goal of the movement.]
Finally, Jesus never founded something called “Christianity.” He created a body of believers in his resurrection and atonement, who instituted a practice of commemorating his death among themselves and committed themselves to obeying his commandments – and those of no other.
He never told these believers to call themselves Christians or to call other people’s faiths false or demonic.
He just told his Apostles to take his message of “Good News” about the availability of salvation through grace to the Gentiles (a word that doesn’t mean non-Jews) and the “nations” so that they would see the light and come to it.
Everything beyond that simple teaching is actually controversial, if not controvertible.
ORIGINAL POST
The name Jesus is the Greek rendering of Yehoshua (in English, Joshua) or Yeh – hoshua or Yah (weh) saves. (Strong’s Hebrew Concordance gives it as the Lord is Salvation).
However, I’ve often seen Jesus referred to as Yeshua, especially on Hebrew Roots websites.
Hebrew Roots is a growing movement among Evangelical Christians that seeks to see the Jewish context of Jesus’ teachings. They see Jesus as a faithful Jew and not the apostate he is often made out to be in Jewish writing.
However, there is a troubling angle. These sites often go beyond pointing out how Jewish Jesus was to imposing Talmudic practices – often from several centuries after Jesus – on non-Jewish believers, thus making “traditions of men” more important than Jesus’ atonement..
On these sites you will often find the familiar Greek words from the New Testament given their Hebrew rendering, something I generally find very helpful and a needed corrective.
However, I’ve always wondered where they got the variant Yeshua from, in place of Yehoshua.
Researching the Jewish view of Edom/Esau, which traditionally is equated with Christianity in Rabbinical texts, I came across a comment on a Noahide site that YESHUA is an anagram for ESAU in Hebrew. The equation of the two is made elsewhere.
[The Islamic name for Jesus, Isa, is also said to be derived from Esau/Esav.]
Jesus is Esau in to many Rabbis and thus by extension Christianity and Christendom is Esau or Edom to them.
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