One of my favorite seminary classes to teach is a survey of the four Gospels, where we work through Christ’s life from birth to resurrection. While students have several aha moments, none is bigger than when I broach the topic of the name Jesus. I explain to them that Jesus’s name is actually Joshua. The Hebrew name Joshua means “Yahweh is salvation.”

Recall what the angel famously tells Joseph in Matthew 1:21: “[Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” The angel explains to Joseph that the name Jesus (or Joshua) functions as a summary statement for his whole ministry. While this is a complex issue and this topic deserves more analysis and reflection, the task before us in this article is to examine the name Jesus and explain why our English translations read “Jesus” and not the preferred “Joshua.”

From Joshua to Jesus

The English name Jesus is a transliteration from the Greek word Iēsous. Transliteration refers to converting a word from one alphabet to another. It’s the same word but in a different language or script. To use a biblical example, the Aramaic word ʾabbāʾ is transliterated into English as “Abba” (see Mark 14:36; Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). That word means “father” in Aramaic, and English translations could render it as “father,” but they choose to preserve the precise word.

When it comes to the name Jesus, the New Testament authors substituted the Greek letters for the Hebrew letters for the name Jeshua, resulting in Iēsous. This process is different from translation, whereby the meaning of the source word is conveyed in the target language.

Why did the New Testament writers spell Jeshua as Iēsous? The Greek translation of the Old Testament, a body of literature known as the Septuagint, appears to transliterate a contracted form of the Hebrew name Joshua as Iēsous or (“Jesus”). For example, if you look up the Greek translation of Joshua 1:1, you’ll read, “It came to pass, after the death of Moses, the Lord spoke to Iēsous [Jesus]” (my translation). This transliteration of Joshua into Iēsous first occurred around 200 years before the New Testament.

King James Version’s Influence

The New Testament was written in Greek and completed at the end of the first century. Around a hundred later, it was translated into Latin. These Latin manuscripts (and the later Vulgate) transliterate the Greek name Iēsous as Iesus. The first complete English translation of the Bible, Wycliffe’s Bible (1382), was a translation of the Vulgate and likewise transliterates the name as Ihesus. The Tyndale Bible (1534) and the Geneva Bible (1560), though, depend on the Greek New Testament and both read Iesus. Published less than a century later, the original 1611 King James Version (KJV) also employs the name Iesus.

Stated simply, the English name Jesus is a transliteration of a transliteration.

The English name Jesus is a transliteration of a transliteration.

The Old Testament figure Joshua surfaces two times in the New Testament: Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8. The KJV also translates the Greek word Iēsous in both passages as Jesus. For example, Hebrews 4:8 reads, “For if Jesus [Iēsous] had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.” Clearly, this is a reference to the Old Testament figure Joshua (see Josh. 22:4).

So why do our modern English translations refer to Jesus as Jesus and not as Joshua? This is odd because contemporary translations rightly translate Iēsous in Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8 as Joshua (e.g., NIV, CSB, ESV, RSV, NLT). The answer probably lies in the indelible mark that the KJV made on Western religion, culture, and theology.

Because the KJV is, without a doubt, the most influential Bible translation in history, English translations dare not change the “Jesus.” Who would buy a Bible that substituted every occurrence of Jesus with Joshua? Imagine reading the famous words of Paul in Philippians 2:10–11: “At the name of Joshua every knee should bow . . . and every tongue confess that Joshua Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” It’s hard to even read! Other New Testament names, too, suffer the same fate. For example, James (Greek Iakōbos) should be rendered Jacob throughout the New Testament (e.g., Matt. 4:21; James 1:1; Jude 1).

Better Joshua and Better Conquest

Though I understand why modern translations preserve the name Jesus, I fear they’ve obscured an important dimension to Jesus’s identity. We noted above that Joshua means “the Lord saves,” and it appears to be the sixth most popular name in Palestine during the first century. This name is pregnant with meaning for at least two reasons.

First, “the Lord saves” encapsulates the whole of Jesus’s ministry, because, as the angel proclaims, “he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). The apostles never lose sight of this meaning when they invoke the name Joshua/Jesus.

When modern translations preserve the name Jesus, I fear they’ve obscured an important dimension to Jesus’s identity.

Second, the name Joshua also evokes Moses’s successor, the one who led Israel into the promised land (Josh. 1:1–5:12). Joshua’s entrance into the land and his partial victory over the Canaanites prophetically foreshadow Jesus’s entrance into the new creational promised land and complete victory over the spiritual Canaanites. In bearing the name Jesus/Joshua, Jesus of Nazareth will exterminate Israel’s longtime foes—sin, death, and Satan—and bring about an unparalleled act of redemption: the salvation of individuals from sin’s bondage.

At the end of the day, Christians should remain confident in their translations and be thankful for a plethora of resources that aid us in understanding difficult subjects like this one. Regardless of whether we translate the Greek name Iēsous as Jesus or Joshua, he remains the One who fulfilled the angel’s prediction by “saving us” from our sins.