The stridency of Christian fundamentalists is based on a buried fear of creeping unbelief.

Karen Armstrong

The Cult of Joshua 2

The Name “Jesus”
A Common Name…
Then an Uncommon Name
Inchoate Final Thoughts

Abstract

The Jews might have had a cult of a god or demi-god named Joshua. Joshua was an old cult name for God, evolved from the idea of a Jewish saviour or messiah based on the Persian Saoshyant. The Joshua who “returned” with Zerubabel was a mythological personification of the saviour Joshua showing the eschatological significance of the “return” portrayed to the “returners”, the Persian colonists. The name Iesous (Jesus), throughout the Septuagint, was the Greek translation of the Hebrew name Jehoshua or Joshua. Jesus is Joshua—in Greek—and, in the original Acts and Hebrews, the scriptural Joshua is called Jesus. Most modern Christians do not know this, so what was clear to the first Christians is obscure to modern ones. Christian clergymen are not keen to make it known that Jesus is Joshua because their flocks might come to see that Jesus was not as unique as they make out, and it might seem he was trying to be Joshua!

The Name “Jesus”

Circumstantial evidence of the Jewish Joshua cult is the popularity of the name Joshua/Jesus at the time of the mission of the Christian Jesus Christ. The name “Jesus” is the modern representation of “Iesous”, which in turn is the Greek representation of “Yeshua”, itself an abbreviation of “Yehoshua”, otherwise nowadays written as “Joshua”, the Israelite hero of the Old Testament. According to the contemporary Jewish commentator, Philo of Alexandria, it was understood to mean the “Salvation of Yehouah”, the Lord God, and indeed the name is made up of “Yeho” standing for Yehouah, usually translated as “the Lord”, and “oshua” from the Semitic word relating to salvation.

Though the supposed original Joshua conquered Canaan around 1200 BC, or some believers think even earlier, the hero’s name was never a popular Israelite or Jewish name until after the supposed “exile”, when the Persians set up the temple state of Yehud. This is when the other famous Joshua of the bible appeared, the priest, Joshua, who supposedly “returned”. Joshua then became a popular name among the Jews.

Now, the colonization of the hill country of Palestine was presented to the colonists, and the people being colonized, as a salvation—the Persians had saved them. The Jewish scriptures, which began their chequered existence then, presented Cyrus the first great Persian king, as the “anointed” of God, meaning the messiah. The first priest Joshua came as literally “the salvation of God”, and it is hardly surprising that people who believed God had saved them through the actions of His messiah, the Persian shah, should celebrate the event by calling their kids Joshua. Nehemiah 11:26 even notes that a place in Yehud was called Yeshua.

It is remarkable, surely, that the famous heroes Moses and Joshua who had lived a thousand years earlier had made no noticeable impact on the people of Israel and Judah. Who was called Moses? Who was called Joshua? No kings of Israel or Judah are called by these names. Three men only have the name Joshua or Jeshua in the parts of the bible that purport to be history before the Persian colonization, and were likely insertions by later editors.

Then a Persian priest called Joshua arrives and suddenly Joshua becomes a popular name, and it is mentioned about six more separate times in Ezra and Nehemiah, after the colonization, including as founders of lineages. A branch of the priesthood thereafter was The House of Joshua (cf 1 Chr 24:11, Ezra 2:36,40; Neh 7:39, 1 Esd 5:24). Joshua, the high priest no doubt was the founder of this priestly family. But still there are no people called Moses! No priest called Moses is recorded, and the Jewish name Moses did not start to be used for several more centuries.

The reason is that Joshua was a name introduced by the Persian colonists, and the myth of Moses and Joshua was created even later than that, in Hellenistic times. Another biblical Jesus—Ben Sirach—praised the original Joshua, calling him “Jesus the son of Nave”, and associated this Jesus with God’s purpose:

Iesous the son of Nave (Nun) was valiant in the wars, and was the successor of Moses in prophecies, who according to his name was made a great saviour of God’s elect.
Sirach 46:1

Here was a Jesus who was brave, a prophet to succeed Moses, and so named for saving God’s elect! Jesus ben Sirach was writing no earlier than 200 BC, not long after the myth of Joshua, the conqueror, was created, and has little to say about it. The reason was that the detail had not then been invented.

The Persians presented themselves—generally, not merely to the Jews—as saviours of people and restorers of religion. Only then did the Jews have any reason to call their children “the salvation of Yehouah”—Joshua! Since the Jewish scriptures actually end when they were written, as they must do, in logic, since they purport to be history, most of the pseudo-history of the Jews does not record Joshua as being divine. It became a divine name because of the scriptures, and therefore after the Persian period, and in fact after the defeat of Persia. In other words in the very time that the Greek magic papyri were being composed.

A Common Name…

The popularity of the name, Jesus, in the first century AD, is shown by Josephus who mentions about twenty Jesuses, about half of them living at the same time as the man supposed by Christians to have been a god. Many other Jesuses appear on ossuaries, ostraca, papyri and even on inscriptions. The bulk of them are dated in the first and second centuries AD, though Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 816 mentions a Jesus in the first century BC.

A fascinating inscription from Tell-el-Yahoudieh in Egypt, dating from the Augustan era, is apparently a tomb memorial of a man who declares, “I am Jesus…” In a verse of eight lines, the author seems to say he begat Phameis, went to Hades, asked everyone to weep for him who departed suddenly to live in darkness in the innermost parts of the æons , but particularly Dositheos who had to shed bitter tears on the tomb, for he was his child, though he departed childless. It ends with everyone urged to bewail together “Jesus, the enemy”. The verses sound as if they have been taken from a Gnostic gospel. The man has sons or a son but died childless, and the one who seems ungrateful is called “The Gift of God”, Dositheos. Is it a plain funerary inscription of a man who died estranged from the son he considered a gift of God, or is it really a verse from some mystic gospel? If the latter, then Jesus was already a Gnostic hero who went into Hades, but was treated with some sort of ingratitude in life. It is intriguing.

Taking it simply as a personal memorial, this is at least one more Jesus of many who lived at the same time as the Christian Jesus. Even in the New Testament there are several others. A Jesus appears in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:29). A Cypriot magician (Acts 13:6) was the son of a Jesus. A friend of Paul and an early Christian was Jesus Justus (Col 4:11).

There are also signs that they were being erased or re-named to leave only the one Jesus! Certainly, some authors and the copyists of the New Testament thought Jesus was a name too sacred to be used for some unsavoury people in the Christian story, but the attempt to make “Jesus” a unique name as well as a unique person eventually extended to decent people in the account.

The criminal, Barabbas, in Matthew 27:16-17, according to several early miniscules and Syrian and Armenian texts, is properly called Jesus Barabbas—indeed the thesis here is that he was the Christian Jesus—but in later texts the “Jesus” of his name was habitually omitted. Recent discoveries have confirmed it, and latterly it has been restored, in the desire of some modern Christians to get to the earliest possible recensions of the Christian books. The writing of Origen, the first Christian intellectual, also confirms it. He said he read Jesus Barabbas in texts that he described as old even then. It shows that Jesus was erased from the name “Jesus Barabbas” early in the sequence of Christian copying. The alternative is that some copyists inexplicably added “Jesus” to the single name “Barabbas”, contrary to the trends noted here to get rid of the name “Jesus” where Christians did not think it was appropriate. This Jesus is a fossil of the original tale, and one that explodes the whole story. Jesus was Barabbas, and was crucified as a “robber”.

Even in Mark 15:7 where Barabbas is introduced, the Greek construction used implies a name, now seen to be Jesus, has been omitted, so that it actually read “Jesus who is called Barabbas”, not just “called Barabbas”. Erich Klostermann pointed it out in 1927. The passages in Matthew depend on Mark, so now, although there is no Jesus in Mark, merely a clumsy and inappropriate Greek expression, it must have been there at first to appear in Matthew.

Consider also the Jesus who was the ancester of Jesus in Luke 3:29. This Jesus has thrown up a strange variety of alternatives in variant texts for no obvious reason except that the copyists were deliberately trying to make the ancester not a “Jesus”. One of these, Iose (Joses), is the most common, throwing suspicion on the Joses who appears as a brother of Jesus in the gospels. Was this Joses really another Jesus? Was the name altered because the authors or copyists did not want another Jesus to be described as a brother of the Christian hero? After all, what mother would give two of her sons the same name? Well, these same gospels have this same mother of God called Mary have a sister also called Mary, so it is not as impossible as anyone might think. If two Marys can be sisters in the story, then why cannot two brothers be called Jesus? The explanation would be simply that the brothers were in a brotherhood like Catholic monks, and the sisters in a sisterhood, like nuns. They were Essenes. In any event, copyists certainly substituted “Joses” for “Jesus” in the genealogy.

In Acts 7:45 is a reference to the Joshua of the Jewish scriptural conquest, but called Jesus in the Greek. Yet one of the textual variants changes the name to Iessu. Again, the editors of the New Testament were trying to get rid of any superfluous Jesuses. In Paul’s epistles (Col 4:11), the apostle greets a man “Jesus which is called Justus”. Here the textual tradition is sound as far back as it is possible to go. What is interesting is the commentary of Pelagius on the letters of Paul written in Rome about 406-409 AD. The book was lost but a copy was found and published in 1926. In two places, the words “Jesus which is called” are omitted, leaving one of the first Christians being greeted simply as “Justus”. In Codex D, the full expression appears except that it is “Iessus who is called Justus”. So, here are two different ways of getting rid of an unwanted name “Jesus” in the text.

The short letter, Philemon, was addressed to the same people as Colossians except that one is omitted. It is Jesus Justus. Theodor Zahn noticed this in 1897. In fact, the phrase “in Christ Jesus…”, as it now stands in the epistle might have been “in Christ, Jesus…” originally, the comma in English being effected in Greek simply by having the terminal sigma of Iesous, or omitting it to get in Christ Jesus (“en Christo Jesou”). Paul would then have been writing “in Christ” not “in Christ Jesus”, and the Jesus was the first name of the recipients. Paul does use the shorter version more than the longer one, althouh he uses both. The Pelagius commentary on Paul has the shorter version, but misses out the “Jesus” all together. The point is that the unwanted “Jesus” disappears either way.

In Acts 13:6, in connexion with Paul, the magician, later identified (Acts 13:18) as Elymas, appears surnamed Barjesus. Here is a New Testament villain who was the son of a Jesus. Moreover, Paul calls Elymas “son of the Devil” (Acts 13:9) so the apostle identified a Jesus with the Devil. That was too much for the bishops, and the textual tradition shows a multitude of attempts to remove the name Jesus or to make it look different. In the original Greek, the ending is genitive to signify the son of Jesus (Barjesu). Nominative or accusative endings were the first attempts to dissociate Jesus from Elymas by effectively getting rid of the “of”. Others were dissatisfied. It was inadequate, too transparent, so a whole raft of alternatives were attempted by different editors, yielding Barjesuan, Barjesuam, Barjesuban, Barjeu, Barshumo and even Varisuas. No less a person than S Jerome explained what he was doing. He openly declared Barjesus was corrupt, and that the correct form must have been Barjeu (Greek, Barieu)—son of a Jew! Four hundred years later the Venerable Bede supported S Jerome saying:

For it is not fitting that such a wicked fellow, a diviner, should be named “son of Jesus” that is “son of the Saviour”.

All of this manipulation of Barjesus throws light on the same sort of manipulation that went on with the name Barabbas. That also was altered whenever it appeared in the gospels, except in connexion with the supposed bandit. Barabbas was an honourable name or title applied to Jesus and some at least of his followers, those, probably senior Essenes, who spoke of God as “my father”.

So, Jesus was a common name—too common to please the Christians—and it must have been common for some compelling cultural reason. One has to wonder whether the disciples, in Mark 6:13, and the other Jews, in Mark 9:38, were exorcising in the name of the Christian Jesus or in an already holy name expected to scare away evil spirits, just as the Great Paris Magic Papyrus implies. Any ambiguity about the name would have been resolved, for Christians, when they became convinced that their Jesus was the same as the divine Jesus of the Gnostic spells.

The Greek abbreviation IHC and the Latin equivalent IHS write “ies”, said by Christians to be a short form of Jesus. The “H” is the capital of the Greek letter “eta”, not the Roman “H”. IHS was also the name or symbol of a Phœnician god, the Phœnicians being the biblical Canaanites. The Roman Christians used the same letters but pretended they stood for “in hoc signo”, after the alleged vision Caonstantine had of the “Chi” and “Rho” in the sky, called the “labarum”.

Then an Uncommon Name

The remarkable difference caused by the rise of Christians as a gentile sect based on the deification of a man regarded by Romans as a bandit, and the earlier veneration of the name, Jesus, for obscure reasons, is that the Christians did not want to call anyone Jesus whereas previously many Jews did. After the foundation of the Christian religion, even Jews became reluctant to give the name to their children. The Christian explanation is that the name, Jesus, was too sacred to give to their children. For the Jews, it had become too Christian. The original reason why neither set of people would use the name was that the Romans knew a man, whom they had crucified for attempting to take control of Judaea, led a group of bandits and was called by them Jesus.

Now, if Jesus were any name that was just accidentally the name of a bandit, it is hard to see why they could have objected to it. If Romans objected to the name, Jesus, it implies that Jesus was a cult name. They judged it was used by followers of some god or hero called Jesus who stood for sedition. “Salvation” was in this sense equal to “liberation” or “freedom”. The gospel cry, “Osanna”, or “Save us!” meant “Free us” from the foreign, Roman, yoke. They considered the name, Jesus, meant “God is Freedom!”, and was therefore a slogan of freedom fighters—terrorists to the Romans.

After the two massive Roman wars with the Jews in 66-70 AD and 132-135 AD, the Romans were fed up with Jewish intransigence. Romans massacred Jews across the empire. Being a Jew was objectionable enough, in those times, to a Roman, but to bear the name Jesus proclaimed a seditionary upbringing. Such men could be dangerous. So, sensible Jews and Christians had cause not to label their children with the name Jesus.

The Christians, even before the first Jewish war, had tried to establish themselves as a non-Jewish, gentile sect, and so would hardly have wanted to associate themselves openly with a tarnished name. That is why they were a secret society or mystery religion at first, but Romans had laws against those who met in clandestine meetings. Even the mystery religions whose membership was exclusive had to meet openly, not in secret. The Jews were even more directly implicated, even though they had rejected Jesus as their messiah, because they nevertheless continued to rise up against the occupying forces. Christians developed the myth of “gentle Jesus”, to counter the previous connotations of the name. Then, after the Bar Kosiba revolt, having been excluded from their homeland, the Jews withdrew from all proselytising and revolution, and developed Pharisaism into Rabbinism, free of messianic expectations.

The recorded disappearance of the name fits the context. It was popular until early in the second century, then died out quickly. In the wider empire, gentile Christians did not readily turn from their familiar classical names to Jewish ones, even though they had adopted a Judaism for gentiles. It was because both Jews in general and Jesus in particular were unpopular among the Roman plebeians. Palestinian Jews continued to use Jesus even after the first Jewish war, Christians being of no real consequence in Judaea, and the local people remaining largely anti-Roman. The second war was the end for the Jews. They abandoned messianism and dropped the name Jesus along with it, suggesting the two had always been connected.

What had been a hugely popular name for two centuries became anathema to Jews and Christians. After the triumph of Christianity under Constantine, Christians explained the absence of Jesuses among them by saying that it was too sacred a name to use. Jesus as a name was out and remained so, with few exceptions, until Jesus became popular to Spanish speakers as an alternative Christian name, much later.

Among Jews, only a few were willing to ignore the Christian association and name their son Jesus. Outside the Roman empire, it was still used by the Qaraites, a resergent Essenism among the Persian Jews of Babylon—Yeshua ben Yehudah, and Aron ben Yeshua. The name, Isa, used for the Christian Jesus in the Quran as an esteemed prophet meant Moslems had no reservations about using it as an honourable name for their sons, except perhaps that it was the name of an Arabic fertility god. Isa ibn Omar (d 766 AD), an Arab grammarian, and Isa ibn Musa ibn Mohammed (d 737 AD) and emir Isa ibn Muhanna (d 1334 AD) are examples. From the middle ages, the name became more popular among Moslems, the shameful connotation of the fertility god having been forgotten.

Inchoate Final Thoughts

The Iesous messianology had a dying military messiah—Joshua son of Nun—and a priestly messiah—Iesous the high priest, but seeming to be originally Phineas in the pseudo-history of the Jewish scriptures.

From the now half missing history associated with the early colonization of Yehud by Joshua and Zerubabel came the idea of a priestly and a royal messiah. Or the supposed history is a legend stemming from a mythology conveyed at the time of the Persian colonization but misunderstood and later garbled as history. Later Greek revision integrated the high priestly Iesous messianology and the military messianic Iesous by the anatole/anatellein links between Zechariah 3-6 and Numbers 24:17. The pair of messianic figures could also be seen as one in the royal and priestly figure of Melchizedek (Psalms 110). When the Greek extension to the scriptures was written, Exodus 23:20 could be used to justify the messiah as an angelic and therefore supernatural figure—a god. So, some Jews expected God’s messiah to be like Moses’ successor Joshua—a conquering angel.

Samaria with its reverence for Joseph-Ephraim and its antipathy to any suggestions of a Davidic messiah might have been where the expectation was preserved. This influence is most noticeable in early Christian traditions associated with Alexandria, central Palestine, and perhaps Eastern Syria. A Samaritan tradition designates Joshua as the “sceptre” that “arises” and the priest Phineas as the “star” in the “star and sceptre” dyad of Balaam’s oracle in Numbers 24:17. Later in Jewish biblical tradition (Zech 1-6) appears a high priestly Joshua, alongside a royal messiah (Zech 4.14), opposed by Satan (3.1) and somehow connected or identified with the figure of one called “branch” or (in Greek) “rising”, “anatole” (3.8, 6.12).

From the unfinished conflict of Joshua with Amalek came the idea of a dying messiah son of Ephraim or Joseph, who in the last days will finally overcome Amalek/Satan and then die. The Joshua who first confronted Amalek in the pentateuchal tradition is described as an Ephraimite (Num 13.8), and the Joshua of Zechariah’s vision is introduced as in conflict with Satan.

Heavenly portents, such as the sun and moon not moving, and implications, such as “the east” meaning “the one arising”, similar to those of the Joshua traditions in the Hexateuch (Josh 10.12ff) and in Zechariah (3.8, 6.12) suggest a future heroic apocalyptic figure.

At the specific level, we have such tantalizing passages as:

Sirach 45:1ff, where the name of Joshua is explicitly connected to his role as “saviour” of God’s elect.
Samaritan Asatir 10:45, on Numbers 24:17, where Phineas is the “star to arise from Jacob” and Joshua is the “sceptre”, in a tradition not sympathetic to Davidic messianic expectations;
Sibylline Oracles 5:256ff, with its reference to the “noblest of the Hebrews who caused the sun to stand still” and who will “come from the sky” in the last times;
Habakkuk 3:13 in some ancient interpretations including the anonymous Greek Sexta version, which reads “you went out to save your people, by Joshua your messiah” (in the context of a reference to the staying of the sun and moon—Habakkuk 3.11);
4 Ezra 7:28f in some Latin MSS, where the victorious messiah Joshua dies at the transition to the new world.

Philo sees the Logos in the Aggelos of Exodus 23:21, in Melchizedek who is both king and priest in Genesis 14:18, in the anatole of Zechariah 6:12.

A Joshua messianology appears in the background of certain Qumran passages. 4Q Testimonia juxtaposes the Mosaic prophet passage from Deuteronomy 18:15—and in a Samaritan text form, cf Exodus 20:21—the star and sceptre oracle from Numbers 24:15ff, a portion from the blessing on Levi in Deuteronomy 33:8ff. A passage from the 4Q Psalms of Joshua material dealing with Joshua’s curse on Jericho (Jerusalem? cf Cyril of Jerusalem). Similarly, the “star and sceptre” testimony is given in the War Scroll in the context of the final battle between the forces of God and the evil world dominion (cf 1QM 11:6ff).

Some passages in the New Testament take on fresh meaning through a second Iesous messianology. In Acts, Peter refers to ”the before appointed messiah, Iesous” and then the ”prophet like Moses” (Acts 3:20-23). The Mosaic prophet appears in Stephen’s speech (Acts 7:37) as does an “angel” who shared in Moses’ ministry (7:30, 35, 38, cp 53). In Acts 18:24-28 the Alexandrian Apollos was ”well versed in the scriptures… and taught accurately the things concerning Iesous, though he knew only the baptism of John”. There may be further hints in the hymn of Zechariah in Luke 1:67ff (”horn of salvation… saved from our enemies… prophet… go before the Lord,” etc, applied to John the baptist) or in the ”another Iesous” reference by Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:4.

The Epistle to the Hebrews high priestly interpretation of Iesous Christos (Heb 4:14, 10:21, cp 13:20) never refers to the Zechariah high priestly Iesous figure, but has some interesting parallels eg, in Hebrews 2:14, Iesous defeats death as the devil. In 2.9, Iesous is crowned as in a psalm. In 7:14, Iesous is said to have risen (again the verb anatello) from Judah, and is thus not of Levitic descent but is still high priestly after the order of Melchizedek. In 9.12, Iesous removes sin/unrighteousness in one stroke, all possibly evidence of a pre-Christian Joshua messianology in which both Moses’ successor Iesous and Iesous the high priest from Babylonian played a role.

Samaria is the most likely place of origin with its reverence for Joseph-Ephraim and its antipathy to any suggestions of a Davidic messiah. The connexion that seemed to have existed between the Essenes and the Samaritans but that is not yet clear will offer a point of contact. From Samaria, and perhaps by means of Diaspora Samaritan communities such as we find in Alexandria, the rudimentary Joshua messianology influenced Greek as well as Semitic Judaism.

Finally, Carsten Thiede attempted to show that the early Christians already regarded “Jesus” as a sacred name (nomen sacra), but his evidence was poor and flawed. If better evidence is found, however, though it might impress believers that Jesus was really a god, what it must mean actually is that there was an already pre-Christian god called Jesus whom the Christians thought had appeared and died. It will be evidence for belief in a pre-Christian divine Jesus rather than that one had actually appeared on earth.

Page Tags: Jesus, Pre-Christian Joshua Cult, Christianity, New Testament, Bible, Essenes, Christian, Christians, God, Greek, Iesous, Jesus, Jewish, Jews, Joshua, Justin Messiah, Moses, Prophet

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.