Jesus our Lord
by Mike Oettle
AUGUST has two
dates on its calendar which commemorate our Lord Jesus Christ: 6 August, the
Transfiguration;[1] and the 34th Sunday of the year, the festival of Christ the King.
Jesus has many titles – one recalls, for instance, those listed by Isaiah (Isaiah 9:5) which are quoted in Handel’s Messiah: “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” – but to keep things short, let’s look at His name only and one title.
Luke traces the name back to the Angel Gabriel’s words to Mary: “Listen! You are to
conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus.” In Hebrew, that name is
Yehoshua, which means “Yahweh is salvation.” (Hoshea, or Hosea, is the Hebrew word for salvation.)
The Divine Name’s origin appears in Exodus 2, where “God said to Moses, ‘I Am who I Am.’” Put that into the third person as He Is, and you have the Hebrew Yahweh.
Because Hebrew has no written vowels – vowels are regarded as sacred – this is written in that language as YHWH. (These letters, written in Hebrew, are called the tetragrammaton,[2] and are shown here at right – read them from right to left.)
This name is one of the riddles of the Bible, because it came to be regarded as too
sacred to pronounce, so it was customarily replaced, in any reading of the
Scriptures, by Adonai[3] (My Lord). This word eventually appeared in manuscripts of the Bible and even the pronunciation of the name was lost. However, most scholars agree today that Yahweh is the correct way to write it.
This
replacement of YHWH by Adonai is why most English translations have “the LORD” in most places where the Hebrew originally read YHWH. Some do, however, give God’s name consistently as Yahweh or Jehovah.
The Bible records another Yehoshua in Joshua, while Isaiah is almost the same (Yesha’Yahu in Hebrew); but Our Lord was probably called Yeshua by people who knew him. It passed into Greek as Yesous (IhsouV), and then into Latin as Iesus or Jesus (pronounced the same as in Greek). Most Western languages spell it the second way, but the pronunciation varies.
Since according to Hebrew law Jesus was Joseph’s son, He would have been known as Yeshua bar Yehosef (or Yosef). Away from Nazareth He would have been known by the town He came from: Yeshua ha-Notzrit – Jesus the Nazarene. But His followers would have called Him rabbi (my master) or adonai.
When the Epistles and Gospels were written in Greek, adonai was translated as kurios (kurioV, which means lord or powerful one) – the word used by a slave to address his master, or a subject to his ruler. And this word, in turn, was translated into English. But here comes a most extraordinary turn in the story.
Among the Anglo-Saxons, growing wheat and making bread from it were of great importance – so important that the hlafweard (loaf-ward) was a very prominent person. So a title meaning keeper of bread came to indicate a person of high estate – in Middle English a loverd or lord, and in Modern English also a lord. And when the word was applied to Jesus, it not only became the title of the King of Kings, but because He was the one who broke bread and said: “Take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you,” and on another occasion said: “I am the bread of life,” it was a title of extraordinary significance.
It is
something to reflect on that Jesus is both Lamb of God and Good Shepherd, both
Bread of Life and Lord – indeed all in all!
And if we can look back at Anglo-Saxon society for a moment, there is another title which stands out. The female counterpart of the hlafweard was his hlæfdige (kneader of bread dough) or lady. This was usually his wife, but if he were unmarried it would normally be his mother. When one thinks of Jesus symbolised by communion bread (wafer)[4] and of his mother, the one who brought him up (one could say “kneaded” him), the title of Our Lady given to her is especially appropriate – whether or not one feels Mary[5] should be accorded all the special honour given her in the Roman Catholic Church.
Of course, the title still applies to ordinary human ladies – members of the nobility – but it seems to me rather silly to talk of women who are republican citizens as “ladies” . . . especially if their only bread is the product of a modern bakery.
