Calling on the Name of Jesus (at baptism)

[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by Esaias

Jesus is the English form of Iesous. It is not like Jehovah is to YHVH or Yahweh. That's ridiculous.

In my 1611 KJV read Iesvs which would have been pronounced "Yehsoos". The modern pronunciation of "Jee zuhs" is MODERN ENGLISH.

The lengths people go... amazing. To say "Jesus is as bad a transliteration as Jehovah" is patently ridiculous.

I am coming at this from a purely linguistic and phonetic schema, since this is where my collegiate training lays. I am not trying to make any theological claims here.

As such, Jesus/Gee-Zus doesn't do as well as we would like to think, as far as transliterations go.

You wrote "Jesus is the English form of Iesous". I submit that it's become the traditionally accepted English form of Iesous. And only because of the yod-dropping I mentioned before. English has evolved over the decades and centuries since "J" was introduced. "J" has become a completely different letter than it once was, especially phonetically.

The fact that your 1611 KJV has Iesvs is proof of that. No one reading the 1611 version would have read Iesvs and pronounced it as Jesus/Gee-Zus.

So the question remains: How many times are we going to evolve the name of our Savior? How many times are we going to let the evolution of our language dictate to us how we are supposed to pronounce the name of the Son of God?