I came across this meme online posted by a Noahide follower of modern Judaism and decided to present what I found. Here is the accusation She posted along with her meme:
Your christ is the same Zeus of Greek mythology. J+Zeus. The Greeks wrote your New Testament. That is why Israel rejects Christianity because the Greeks made your religion. The Greeks made you worship their god by renaming your christ after their god.
Point number 1:
First, notice what exactly we are being presented with. This is a comparison between an Anglican translation of the Greek God we know as Zeus alongside a Greek transliteration ofἸησοῦς, Jesus name in Greek. She is comparing the two on different grounds and presenting it as a fair and accurate comparison.
Point number 2:
Ie - ee-ay. This is NOT, as far as I was able to discover a prefix related to any Greek word meaning to Hail, praise, or worship. It is simply a baseless claim. Please post in the comments below if I am mistaken.
Point number 3:
The Greek deity was specifically referred to in the new testament as a worthless idol. Paul and Barnabas were confronted with a cult of Zeus followers in Acts 14. They were so enamored with them that they were calling Barnabas and the Apostle Zeus and Hermes. They tore their robes in protest and cried out:
"and saying, "Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you, and preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, WHO MADE THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH AND THE SEA AND ALL THAT IS IN THEM." - Act 14:15
Point number 4:
The New Testament was spread around the world initially, through extensive copying, recopying while being widely distributed. We get our current English translation through rigorous examination and textual criticism of approximately 5,000 ancient manuscripts. The texts reads Iesous because that is what the original authors wrote. There is no possibility that it could have been altered later.
Points 5,6 and 7:
Zeus is Greek it means "father of help." No paganized Greek Christian would confuse them. Jesus was not the father, but the son and the prefix does not mean to hail. It is a derivative of his actual Hebrew name Yahshua. Yah, Jah, Yeh are abbreviated forms of God's name. Just like in Elijah, Jeremiah, Hezekiah, and on and on. The phonetics do not support any parallel with Zeus either. That too is an anglicanized pronunciation which originally would have been Dzyoos.
Final Thoughts:
Ζεύς. is not the same as Ἰησοῦς just because they have the same last two letters.
Διὸς is the Genitive form of Ζεύς It is where we get our words divine and deity from. These two words together appear more than 15,000 times in the English translations of the various texts modern rabbis rely upon*. So if you have ever made the mistake of saying that Elohim was deity or that His ineffable name-divine then you are manifestly more guilty of what you are accusing Christians of.
Christians do not have the same mystical understanding of the nature of words. To me at least they are sounds that represent Ideas, which in turn represent our subjective notion of some ontological real-world fact. The words we use are important, They must accurately represent the ideas we are trying to convey such that they will be understood by our listeners in the way we intend them to be understood. They are not magical incantations with esoteric meaning hidden from a speaker and a listener.
There are Millions of people who follow Jesus. They are not all following the same person. Muslims know a different Jesus than a Catholic. Catholics know a different Jesus than the Baptist. The Jesus Mormons Worship is not the same as the Jesus the Jehovah's Witness's appeal to. They all use the same name, but that name represents many different ideas. D.Q. McInerny writes: "To ensure that our ideas are clear, we must vigilantly attend to the relationship between any given idea and its object."
My Idea of Iesous is deity, to a Jehovah's Witness and a Muslim he is not. Both their and my idea of deity is God, thus we can say that we disagree. My idea and every Jew's Idea of Zeus is an impotent piece of stonework. For us to argue over the matter would require one of us to disavow the objective underlying reality that ought to undergird all of our ideas.
One Christian says the same thing. Here is a correspondence from him.
Who are they praying to?
For example, go to the Mother Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church and listen.
YOU WILL NEVER HEAR - YHVH but only JESUS AND MARY
and the name of the SON is not even JESUS - and again they pray wrongly
JESUS - JESUS
Jesus false name of the Messiah - the anointed, a product of the Greco-Roman church.
The Hebrews gave their names the suffix or prefix Yah (u) to give glory to their God Yahuah.
Eg EliYAHU (Elijah) YeshaYAHU (Isaiah) YirmiYAHU (Jeremiah) ZecharYAH, YAHUel ...
Even today’s Israeli prime minister has that suffix Yahu- Benjamin NetanYAHU.
While the Greeks gave their names sufix sous / sus / us to pay homage to their god Zeus (Professor John C. Metford- Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend)
Thus, for example, Olympius means "Temple of Zeus", Ephesus means "daughter of Zeus", Mercurius means "messenger of Zeus", Hiereus means "priest of Zeus", Lyceus means "festival of Zeus" ... then ask yourself what "Jesus" means.
The name Iesous does not exist in old manuscripts until the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century. All the names of Emperor Constantine have this suffix: Flavius, Valerius, Aurelius, Constantinus, Augustus, it is no wonder that the name of the Messiah who glorifies God Yahuah (Yahusha) was changed to that blasphemous name Iesous.
From the Greek Iesous came the Latin Jesus and then the late Latin "Jesus". Latin is the official language of the Catholic Church. The word "sus" in Latin means "pig."
Today, in the official language of the world - English - we cannot say Jesus without mentioning Zeus. It is no wonder that in Christianity they celebrate the birthday of Jesus on December 25, because on that date the Greeks also celebrated the birthday of Zeus.
The school teaches that proper names are not translated. That is international law.
My name is Zoran in Germany and in Japan.