Jesus' name meant "Yahweh saves" or "Savior" in Hebrew/Aramaic. He was commonly known as Jesus of Nazareth, identifying his place of origin, or Jesus son of Joseph, naming his father. The title "Christ" meant "Messiah" or "Anointed One" and was an important early Christian designation reflecting their beliefs about him. Non-Christian historians like Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger also indirectly referenced Jesus and the early Christian movement in Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, providing historical evidence outside the Bible for Jesus' existence.

1. THE HISTORICAL JESUS
•Jesus - late form of the Hebrew name,
Joshua, Yehoshua
•Literal translation of the name - “Yahweh is
salvation.”
•Matthew alludes to this name when he quotes
the angel speaking to Joseph, “she is to have
a son and you are to name him Jesus because
he will save his people from their sins” (1:21).
• This common Jewish name meant “Yahweh
saves” or “Savior” for short.
What is in a
name?

2. • Christ – not the last name of Jesus
• Christ - a title which means Messiah or
“anointed one.”
• Christ - one of the most important titles the
early Church gave Jesus, since it reflected
what the early Christian community
believed about him.

3. To distinguish Jesus from the other men of his day
named Jesus? His surname would have been one of the
following:
2. Jesus the Carpenter.
Another frequent designation of a person was by way
of profession. One of the most common English
surnames, Smith, designates a heritage of
blacksmithing or some similar trade. Mark’s Gospel
informs us that Jesus worked as a carpenter before
he began to preach (6:3).
1. Jesus from Nazareth or Jesus the Nazarene.
It was typical to identify a person by his place of
residence. Nazareth was a small, hilly town in
northern Palestine in the geographical region of
Galilee.

4. Jesus could have been known as Jesus, the
son of Joseph, or in Aramaic/Hebrew, Jesus
bar (ben) Joseph.
• People - known by their fathers’ names
e.g. Irish prefix “Fitz” means “son of” Fitzgerald,
signifies “son of Gerald.”
• Mark - designates Jesus by his mother’s
name, “Jesus, the son of Mary” (Mk. 6:3)

5. HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE
OF JESUS: Non-believers
1. Suetonius
- Roman author
- compiled biographies of the first 12 Roman
emperors, from Julius Caesar onward
- Writing about 120 AD in his Life of Claudius
he says of the emperor: “he expelled the Jews
from Rome, on account of the riots in which
they were constantly indulging, at the
instigation of Chrestus.”
- made a mistake in retelling of the Jewish
expulsion from Rome in 49 AD in assuming
that Christ was there…

6. 2. Tacitus
- Roman historian
- writes in his Annals (15. 44.) of the great fire
which swept through the city of Rome in 64
AD.
- in 115-117 AD recounts the story of the fire
and Nero’s successful attempt to fix the blame
on the Christians
- He writes, “They got their name from Christ,
who was executed by sentence of the
procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of
Tiberius.”

7. 3. Pliny the Younger
- known to history as a master letter writer
- advised Trajan to set free any accused
Christian if he/she rejected Christ and
worshiped the pagan gods of the emperor

8. Source:
Finley, J. and M. Pennock. (1977). Jesus and
You: Discovering Jesus the Real Christ. Ave
Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana.