Does the name Jesus derive from Zeus?

Dave-W

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That is a product of people NOT understanding linguistics at all. So they end up making ridiculous claims like this.
 
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Dave-W

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No "Z" anywhere.
That is a quirk of American english pronunciation.

Interesting side note: No classical Latin based word had a Z in it and the letter was eliminated from the alphabet. But since the Romans had such high respect for the Greeks, and their primary deity's name started with Z, it got added back in at the very end when Rome conquered Greece.
 
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Artra

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Jesus means 'God saves' and Zeus means 'Sky'. I believe the heart behind these speculations are meant to undermine the power of Christ's name or to accuse us of misconceptions of His name. Even if the falsehood is exposed it won't change unbelief.

1 Timothy 1:3-4
 
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Der Alte

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I encountered this bit of nonsense at one of the first forums I joined about 20 years ago. It was a "sacred name" forum which I was banned from since I didn't have the right "religion." One of their quirks was to eliminate all "suspicious" Biblical names and replace them with their version of transliterated Hebrew e.g. Mosheh vice Moses and of course Yeshua/Yehoshua vice Jesus. Because everybody knows there was no letter "J" in Hebrew or Greek etc. To them the transliteration explanation given above Ιήσους/Iesous/Jesus was "From the devil."
One of my arguments to them was Ιήσους/Iesous [Yaysoos] could not be associated with Ξευϛ because Zeus was not pronounced "Zoos," It would have been pronounced "Tzevs." When the LXX was translated, both יהושׁע/Yehoshua and ישׁוע/Yeshua were transliterated Ιήσους/Iesous. Jewish scholars 225BC would not have transliterated Yehoshua with a name which could possibly be associated with a pagan deity.
 
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Der Alte

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Hebrew "Joshua" (Yeshua), transliterated into Greek as "Ιησους", then into Latin as "Jesus"
No "Z" anywhere
.
When Martin Luther translated the NT into German he transliterated Ιησους as Jesus which in German is pronounced "Yaysoos."
 
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