December 12

When Becca was pregnant with our son, she and I had several discussions about what his name should be. They started out with options for a boy and options for a girl, and then once we knew we were expecting a son, we pretty quickly narrowed it down to the name, “Samuel.” We decided on his name from the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel. She had prayed to God for a long time to have a child. We had been praying fervently to have a child, having lost our first in an early miscarriage. Partly it was due to Hannah’s faith that God was listening to her prayers, but mostly it was her choice of names that resonated with us so deeply. She named her son שְׁמוּאֵ֔ל in Hebrew, which is best transliterated as Shemuel and has become Samuel in English. However, the Hebrew people would not have heard his name and had to ask what it meant. They would have heard the combination of words familiar to them: Shama (to hear) and El (God), which could be translated as God has heard. We decided to name our son, God has heard, and so his name is Samuel.

I also remember in 2004 when Gwyneth Paltro and Chris Martin named their daughter Apple. There was actually some substantial public outcry over the name. I’ve often wondered if people would have been so upset if they had named her Pomeline, a name of French origin that literally means little apple.  We have a tradition of using names that mean something in another language. Gwyneth Paltro and Chris Martin did not choose to name their daughter something that in another language means apple; they went straight to the point and named her Apple. This was true when Hannah named Samuel. Unlike me and Becca, she did not name her son something that means God has heardin an ancient language. She literally named her son, God has heard. I think this is an important point to keep in mind when we jump into the future and find an angel telling Joseph what he will name his son. We translate the Greek to English as, “She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” However, what we’ve really done is translated most of the sentence into English, but not the word, Jesus. The Greek word here is Ἰησοῦν, roughly transliterated as , but instead of translating it into English, which is a Greek name coming from the Hebrew meaning Yahweh is salvation. However, Mary and Joseph spoke Aramaic (as did Jesus), which was the primary language in Nazareth and Galilee. So, assuming the angel spoke to Joseph in the language he understood, he would have told Joseph to name his son, ישוע, pronounced Yeshua, which has become Jesus in English. The angel did not tell Joseph to name his son a name that in another language means God is salvation. He told Joseph to literally name his son, God is salvation. To me, this gives a completely new depth to the sentence if we literally translate the whole thing and read it as “She will give birth to a son, and you will call him God is Salvation, because he will save his people from their sins.

I know this is a lot of deep academic thinking, and it’s much more than I would usually include. However, I think when we translate this sentence the way it has always been translated, it gives us the name with which we are familiar, and it points to a meaning we can easily understand, but it takes away some of the true power of what the angel is saying. When Jesus was a baby or a little boy, and someone asked Mary for his name, she would have said, “His name is God is salvation.” When he was traveling the countryside preaching to the masses, people would have said, “Look! It’s God is Salvation. Let’s follow him and listen to what he has to say.” When the pharisees and the Sadducees accused him of Blasphemy, they would have had to say, “God is Salvation claims to forgive sins, but only God can forgive sins.”(Luke 5:21) When he was hung on a cross to be humiliated, tortured, and killed, the sign above his head would have actually read, “God is Salvation, The King of the Jews.” Although he told people over and over again that all of his authority to forgive sins, offer love, recognize the value in all human beings, and to go and prepare a place for us in the house of God, he shouldn’t have had to. All of this was being spoken by God is Salvation. The very uttering of his name clearly told everyone the origin and the giver of the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6) for all of creation, and the power of these words goes all the way back to an angel who appeared to Joseph (as well as to Mary in Luke 1:31) to tell him not to break off his engagement, but to name Mary’s son God is Salvation, something I hope we always recognize when we hear the great and powerful name of Jesus.

Prayer: Mighty God, as we prepare to once again celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior here on the Earth oh so long ago, may we always remember that the very sound of his name should swell up in us the sure and secure knowledge that our salvation come not from who we are, what we have accomplished, or how pious we seem, but from the unending love of the creator of the all that exists, who knows our names and values us enough to send his son to live among us under the name, “God is Salvation.” Amen.