Ish, you've brought up a good question. My answer is no, I cannot present any evidence that the formation of this acronym came prior to the name. I actually like your theory better: that people tried to make it fit at a later time. This is funny, because I always thought that A Marginal Jew, the book you cited above, was deliberately trying to take a subtle swipe at Jesus by writing yeshu in the halo hovering over the head of the child pictured on the cover of the first volume.

My name? Actually no, I'm not Jewish, but I was once a fundamentalist Christian who studied Hebrew and even considered conversion to Judaism (or the Noachide faith) for some time. Now I'm just an Atheist with Buddhist leanings, who likes to focus on Islam. Since I know Hebrew, grasping Aramaic is very easy (though there are vewry few Aramaic resources, and I have no one to conversate with)... as for Arabic I'm a real novice, with no real skills to speak of. =)

I have no knowledge of Greek, and I really enjoyed your points about Greek texts often transliterating Joshua ina way that gets us Iesous.

Thanks. What was your source for the phrase behind the acronym though?

You are right about "Ysu" being on Jesus' halo on the book cover. I mentioned this on some other thread a while ago. According to the book, it was definitely not a "swipe" though. I believe Meier is Catholic. However, he draws a clear and appropriate distinction between what we can know about the Jesus of history as opposed to the Jesus of faith.

Oh, my fault. I thought Giron might have been Jewish for "smooth path" or something like that - (gimel,resh,nun) - but the vowels don't seem to work anyway, so never mind.

Interesting. I just discovered the "Noachide" faith not too long ago. I believe it is supported by othodox Judaism. I find it curious though. Where is the benefit in a Jew following his much more strict set of laws when he can simply abide by the "Noahic covenant" and be ok? "Noachide faith" seems to me to do away with the need for orthodox Judaism...

I've noticed that it is very hard to find Aramaic sources too. I usually have to go to a specialized library. Someone needs to bring more Aramaic info to the web, huh?

Thanks. Actually there were many more details that I wanted to add but didn't because it was already long enough.

I'll add one more thing about the transliteration of the Hebrew "Yeshu" to the Greek "IHSOYS". As you may know, there is no Greek letter equivalent to the Hebrew "shin" in "Yeshu", therefore translators back then tended to use the Greek "sigma" in its place. This explains the 'sh' in the Hebrew "Yeshu" as opposed to the 's' in the Greek "Yesus".

Ish