I posted this on another forum and got a lot of flak. I am so convinced of what I'm saying, I thought I would give it another shot. Since this is a form of right division and since dispensationalists are the only people on the planet that attempt to obey 2Tim 2:15 and rightly divide, I thought maybe dispensationalists would see the light. I didn't put a tag on this thread because the problem is universal and I believe everyone should at least take a look at this.
As a totally convinced 30 year Acts 28 veteran, I have always been taught, mainly in the writings and audios of Charles Welch and Oscar Baker, my main mentors, that the name "Jesus" was Jesus Christ's name ONLY when he had left His Glory behind and had come down to earth, necessarily as a man, in order to become the ultimate sacrifice. But now, He is no longer a man and the name "Jesus" no longer applies to Him. Instead, He should be addressed in a much more respectful manner.
In order to see whether or not this is true, I scoured the NT to determine the frequencies of the various Titles that might be used.and compare them, numerically, with the frequency oh the name "Jesus." The titles I tabulated were:
Jesus--Jesus Christ--Christ Jesus--Christ--Lord Jesus--Lord Jesus Christ--Lord Christ
I separated the NT into 7 categories. Here are the results. The numbers of the various titles and names are in the same order as I have written them above, in bold. I will do an Excel sheet at some point. The Bible version used was the KJV. I checked out some other popular versions and there were some variations, but, except for the Gospels, these were slight and would affect the results very little. I have no answer as to the large deviations of the Gospels. To avoid Version deviations, I am looking for a English/Greek version that is as easy to search as was the search on BibleGateway. With it, unlike BlueLetter, BibleHub and E-Sword, you could use search variations (e.g., + - " "), like those on Google. Also, on the right of the search page, BibleGateway lists each Bible Book with the number of how many of the search items are contained in each.
-------TITLES> ----J---JC--CJ---C---LJ-LJC--LC
--------Gospels --558--5----0---45---1--0---1
-----------Acts ---28--9----1---10--13--6---1
-----Paul's Acts ----5--29--15--126--13--44--0
Paul's post-Acts ----3--24--29---61---5--18--1
--------Hebrews ---9---3---1----9----1---0---0
-General Epistles ---2--18---2---11----0--10---0
------Revelation ---4---5---0----2----1---1---0
Paul's Books(13) ----8--53--44--187--18--62--1
-All Epistles(20) ---10--71--46--198--18--72--1
Totals of Paul's 13 epistles - "Jesus" vs All Others = 8 vs 365 = 97.8% Others
Totals of All 20 epistles - "Jesus" vs All Others = 10 vs 406 = 97.6% Others
Totals of all except Gospels - 51 vs 469 = 90.2% Others
In the Gospels, the nearly total use of "Jesus" was expected, since He was a mortal man, at that time, and that was His common name, the name by which people addressed Him.
Acts and Hebrews surprised me. In neither, did I expect that many occurrences of "Jesus." In Acts, maybe it was due to much of the discussions being about His earthly ministry.
The ones I was really interested in were the epistles of Paul, James, and the 12. To me, these are the keys to what we should do. Paul is our only apostle. He tells us to follow him in 1Cor 4:16, 11:1, and he repeats that up in his after-Acts books, in Phil 3:17. I take Paul's directions seriously. He only used "Jesus" 8 times on his 13 epistles = 2.2% of the times he addressed our Lord. Follow Paul.
The General Epistles, written by the ministers to Israel, James, Peter, John, and Jude, did almost as well - Only 4.7% usage of the much less respectable "Jesus".
I skimmed over the numbers of probably 30-40 other versions, on BibleGateway. Most were very similar, but 1 stood out - the J.B. Phillips New Testmant. It only had one instance of Paul using the the name of the mortal man, "Jesus". Then I saw that Mr. Phillips must not of believed the pagan concept of "hell", because he only used it 4 times, each for something unrelated, and there were none in the Gospels. I immediately found and ordered a new Phillips NT paperback on Amazon for $15. Who knows, it might be lousy otherwise, but anyone that has the guts to not tell lies about the faux hell in their Bible, deserves a chance to be read. I was disappointed that he left the comma in the wrong place in Lk 23:39, and he mangled 2Tim 2:15, by putting "how to use the word of truth to the best advantage", instead of some word involving cutting or dividing or dissecting, as Strong's says it means. You can't have everything.
Yesterday, I showed the "Jesus" numbers to my son and he said that, awhile back, he had quit a Baptist church because the preacher constantly used Christ's man-name "Jesus." He couldn't take it anymore. I didn't blame him one bit. Christ Jesus is surely not a man now and he hasn't been one for about 1988 years. Gotta show some respect. Do you call the Queen of England "Liz"? When Christ rules on Earth with a rod of iron during the Millennium, I pity anyone that addresses Him as "Jesus."
Until today, I never thought of this being a right division issue. For a 3-1/2 year period, when Christ was a mortal man, His name was "Jesus". Since about 30AD, His name has not been "Jesus" for 2 millenniums and our God, Savior and Creator deserves to be addressed by one of those 6 titles. We must rightly divide between His time of being a mortal man and NOW. Any of the actual titles Paul used is OK.
