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Why quran chose the name or as some scholar suggested (arabized) the name of Jesus so strange that has puzzled the scholars of both experts of language and scholars of comparative study for centuries which lead scholars to propose different theories. It also led Christians to believe that Quran distorted the name and person both. In Semitic languages hebrew and aramaic his name has been recorded as yeshu' and in eastern syriac it's isho' but all have ayn at the end. The Arabic speaking Christians also just transilerated the hebrew yashu' as yasu'. But quran shifted the ayn and inverted the name.

I'm asking because this is very odd because the name of every prophet from semitic languages have been arabized normally and maintained the original words and composition but it only occurred in case of Jesus. The gospel of Matthew and Luke said that angel said Mary that he will be called as Iesous which is greek of yesu' and quran said he will be called 'Isa.

Is there any evidence to support that his name in his mother language was yeshu' or isho'? Is 'Isa a different name just like john the baptist is called yahya? And if 'Isa is arabized form then quran was supposed to retain the original words and their composition as every Semitic language have same alphabets but quran changing the name is very strange because I think that every name has etymology which carry significant meaning and when quran changed the name the meaning of the name was lost because Semitic languages are same just dialect and pronunciation differences?

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  • The quran was revealed in Arabic and it uses names that the addressed people from the Arabic peninsula at the time of revelation were common with. Whatever later people may find strange is irrelevant.
    – Medi1Saif ♦
    Commented Jan 29, 2023 at 9:49

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The original name is probably Jeshua from "jeweh shuwa" = "God saves". The name has been pronounced differently in foreign languages and it has been written accordingly.

The scribe who wrote down the first Quran may not have had any knowledge of a traditional spelling of his name in Arabic. He may even have heard gheshoaa, it would have been spelled the same (similar to the original pronunciation of the word Qur'an which was probably Qurghan). The character base of the Quran has not been altered since but the consonant and the vowel signs have been added later - again according to the pronunciation the one who added them was used to.

The question why it was so cannot really be answered, it is as it is.

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