This is the History of the World Podcast with me Chris Hasler

And you're listening to volume three, the Classical World

Episode 36

A profile of Julius Caesar, part one. The Firstly, let's go off on a tangent and explain an anomaly that we simply take for

granted in modern English. Julius Caesar, the man whose name is used to give us the name of the month of July,

is one of the most famous people whose name begins with the letter J. This is strange

because there was no distinct letter J in the Latin alphabet for another 1,600 years after Julius Caesar's lifetime.

There is another character from the same era of our history that is even more famous than Caesar whose name

begins with the letter J and his name is Jesus. So how can it be that such famous people from 2000 years ago have a name

that begins with a letter that is no more than 500 years old. The story of Jesus' name takes us back to

episodes of the podcast from volume 2 when we discuss the ancient history of Levantine religion during episode 10 and then the

history of writing in episode 22.

Jesus is clearly the anglicized version of the original name.

So if we look to earlier works of the Bible not written in modern English,

then we can trace Jesus' name back to the Hebrew name, Yeoshua, which roughly translates to Yawe is salvation.

So we can see a direct link between Jesus and the ancient Jewish deity called

Yare, who is closely linked to the modern Christian concept of God.

The actual name of Jesus is a result of how the name Yoshua

has travelled over the years. When the name Yoshua

migrated to Greek lands it would morph into the Greek name Yesus and from Greek to Latin to become Eesus.

And then with the emergence of the letter J into the Latin alphabet it would become Jesus. The same can be said for the name

Julius Caesar. It would not have been Julius in Latin, but instead it would have been Eulius.

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