What's in a name? Part 1

The word name appears 800 times in the Old Testament.  It is the Hebrew word shem.  Remember that Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japhath.  Shem is in the line of the Messiah - the line of the Jews and Semites.  The word shem means "name", therefore the Semites are the People of the Name.
 
The name Jesus in English comes off a Greek word - Iesous, pronounced Yasous.  The "I", or "J" in English is sounded like a "Y".  So basically it is not translated but simply pronounced in English as Yasous or Jesus.

The Greek word, Iesous, comes off a Hebrew word.  The word is often called Yeshua, but that is just an abbreviation of His name.  The real name is Yehoshua which means "Yahweh is salvation" or "the Lord is salvation".

When people say that Jesus is Yeshua ben Abraham, Yeshua ben David, or Yeshua ben Joseph, they are simply saying "son of".  The word ben placed in front of the name is used to denote "son of".

The word "Christ" in English is from the Greek word christos, which is a translation of the Hebrew word for Messiah, Masheach.

The book of Matthew begins by saying "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham"  Mathew was a Jew.  His Gospel was most likely written in Hebrew and translated to Greek for all the world to hear the message of the gospel.  It is the book of the generations of Yahoshua ha Masheach, Jesus the Messiah, or as we often say, "Jesus Christ".

The next thing that Matthew states is "ben David", the son of David.  This immediately identifies Christ as the messianic King.  So here we have the book of the generations of Yeshua ha Masseach [Jesus the Messiah] ben David [the son of David] (the messianic King) and ben Abraham [the son of Abraham] (the promised seed).  We also know He is the son of Joseph (ben Yosef).

Jews never say that a person is the son of a woman, they always list the man.  Now I digress here, but let me follow this a little bit.  Matthew 1:16 says Jacob begot Joseph (the husband of Mary).  The next phrase "of whom" is a feminine pronoun that is highly unusual in any Jewish genealogy.  It is indicating that Jesus is not the natural son of Joseph.  Isaiah 9:6 states "for unto us a Child is born," (birth) "unto us a Child is given." (adoption).   Matthew shows the genealogy of Jesus through David - Solomon - to Joseph.  However there was a curse on the Kingly line of David through Solomon (Jeremiah 22:30) and the Lord took the kingship away from the line of David thru Solomon because of the sins of Jehoiachin. Mary's lineage, as seen in Luke 3:23-31 (here Joseph is shown as the son-in-law of Heli, the father of Mary)  is the line of David though his son Nathan, the older brother of Solomon.  So, Jesus being the oldest son of Joseph, thru adoption, inherits the kingly line of David - yet being the son of Mary, the line of David thru Solomon's older brother Nathan, Jesus is the legal heir of David's throne.

Okay, that is enough for now.  To be continued . . .