Did you know that Jesus, the name by which we know the Christian messiah, is actually the Greek form of his name? Jesus, or Iesous (Ἰησοῦς), is the Greek form of the Hebrew/Aramaic name Joshua or Yeshua. Jesus's friends and family probably knew him as Joshua, not Jesus; but since the New Testament was written in the more common language of Greek to facilitate its spread through the Empire, his name has come down to us in a different form than the Old Testament leader with whom Jesus/Joshua shared a name.