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Matthew said the reason the baby was called "Jesus" was
Joshua's name change
The name "Jesus" from the Greek New Testament is the same as the name "Joshua" from the Hebrew Old Testament. The man we call Jesus Christ was actually Joshua Christ.
Joshua was, of course, the name of the second leader of the nation of Israel. He was the man who saved Israel from its wilderness wandering and took it to the promised land.
Joshua's full name means "Jehovah saves." Joshua is actually a combined name. The first part is the name "Jehovah." The second part is the name "Hosea" (meaning "saviour").
However, most people do not know that "Joshua" was not this man's birth name. In Deuteronomy 32:44 he is called "Hosea." It appears that that was his birth name.
This is shown by the fact that the name "Jehovah" was not revealed to humanity until after Joshua's birth (Exodus 3:15). So it could not have been part of his name at birth. His name must have been changed later in life.
This name change was appropriate. If he was "Hosea" (saviour), people might think he was the one saving them from life in the wilderness. But as Joshua ("Jehovah-Hosea"), it shows that Jehovah was their true saviour.
A difficult task
About 1000 years after Joshua died, the Hebrew Old Testament was for the first time translated into another language, into Greek. The translators had a particularly difficult task translating Joshua's name.
The "Hosea" part of the name could be written in Greek fairly easily. (In Greek, it became "Osea," there being no "H" written in Greek.
However, the "Jehovah" part of Joshua's name had a serious problem.
In Hebrew, the word "Jehovah" is spelt YHWH. However, none of those letters occured in the Greek alphabet of the time. There was no Y or W in Greek. And while the letter H did exist, it was never written and was always the first letter of the word. So none of the letters from "Jehovah" could be written in Greek.
When the translators wanted to translate the word "Jehovah," they put a substitute word in its place. They used the Greek word for "Lord."
However, translating Joshua's name wasn't so easy. You couldn't put another word as part of the name. You had to make it the closest sound that the Greek alphabet could make for the name.
The translators did this by translating the Y in YHWH with the Greek letter "I." The other three letters (HWH) they just left out entirely. They also had to leave out the H at the start of "Hosea." So the name "Jehovah-Hosea" became "I-osea," or "Iesou." Since most Greek male names end in "s," "Iesou" became "Iesous," (Jesus).
Centuries later
Now what does this little piece of history have to do with the name given to a baby born at Bethlehem many centuries later?
The New Testament teaches that this baby was actually God. He was the One who created the world:
"By him, all things in heaven and all things on earth were created.... All things were created through him and for him" (Col 1:15-16).
"He created the worlds" (Heb 1:2).
However, in the Old Testament, the being who created the world was called "Jehovah."
Are they the same being? Yes they are! And God shows that they are by the name Jesus.
Because YHWH cannot be written in Greek, "Jesus" is almost the only name in Greek which includes the name of "Jehovah!"
Thus, the name "Jesus" was selected not only because it showed the baby was "Hosea" (Saviour). It was also selected to show that he was YHWH ("Jehovah.")
So 1500 years beforehand, God provided a name for himself to show us that he was Jehovah -- even though the name "Jehovah" would not be able to be written in the language of the New Testament.
Amazing!