This is absolutely stunning. This comes from the Blue Letter Bible Institute, (blueletterbible.org) where I'm surrently taking classes on Christology. Hey, I love to continue learning. Read these excerpts from the teaching about the name of Jesus, and His Old Testament name before He was given the name "Jesus"...it was simply "the Name". Read this great teaching:
"When did Jesus get the name Yeshua? Only here, (in the New Testament) when He comes into the world. So what was His name before that? And it is interesting even discussing that. The word name appears 800 times in the Old Testament. It is the word shem. Remember that Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japhath. Shem is the line of the Messiah—the line of the Jews and the Semites. The word shem means "name." Therefore the Semites are the People of the name.
The word name appears 800 times in the Old Testament. It is the word shem. Remember that Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japhath. Shem is the line of the Messiah—the line of the Jews and the Semites. The word shem means "name." Therefore the Semites are the People of the name.
In Jerusalem there is a memorial to the Holocaust when six million Jews were killed by Hitler and his troops. The name of it is Yod ha Shem. Yod, meaning "monument" or "pillar." So it is a monument to ha Shem, "the name." It is really a monument to God and the survival of the Jewish people which He promised in His Word. There is quite a story behind that.
In the New Testament the word "name" is onoma and is used 200 times in the Bible. Now here is something interesting: not once does the word name, in reference to God or Jesus, ever appear in the plural. It is always in the singular, even when it mentions all three persons of the Godhead, like Matthew 28:19 which states, "Go and teach all nations in the name (singular) of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." There it mentions all three persons but they only have one name.
Now we are told in the New Testament as well as the Old, that our Lord has a name that is above every name. There is no name of anybody worth mentioning in the same sentence. His name is above every name. The Bible says in Acts 4:12, "Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved."
So the name Yehoshua, when did that come? When was that given to Him? At His birth. Well, then what was His name previous? Isaiah says that His name was Wonderful. You call Him wonderful in the Old Testament. But the Hebrew word Wonderful, means "difficult to understand" or "incomprehensible." So what are we talking about when we discuss the preexistence of Jesus Christ? We are talking about someone who has not yet received His name, Yehoshua, and whose name is beyond our ability to understand. That is really something important, yet we sometimes miss it.
Why is His name beyond our ability to understand? Now if you need to know the meaning of wonderful, you can check Psalm 139:1-6, where it speaks of God’s knowledge being so great that before there is a word on our tongue, He knows it altogether. Before we say anything, He knows exactly what we were going to say. He knows the end from the beginning. And the Bible says in Psalm 139:6, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it." There is a clear definition of the word wonderful. It is greater than your ability to understand it. When it says in Isaiah 28:29, "His counsel is wonderful," and in Isaiah 9:6, "He is the wonderful counselor," it means that it is "too difficult to understand." He is the incomprehensible Christ!"
