one of Moses' companions and his successor as leader of the Israelites. This name is usually considered to be a compound of two parts: Yeho, a theophoric reference to YHWH, the distinctive personal name of the God of Israel, plus a form derived from the Hebrew triconsonantal root y-š-ʕ or י-ש-ע "to liberate, save". There have been various proposals as to how the literal etymological meaning of the name should be translated, including: YHWH saves YHWH (is) salvation YHWH (is) a saving-cry YHWH (is) a cry-for-saving YHWH (is) a cry-for-help YHWH (is) my help This early Biblical Hebrew name (Yehoshua`) underwent a shortening into later biblical (Yeshua`), as found in the Hebrew text of verses Ezra 2:2, 2:6, 2:36, 2:40, 3:2, 3:8, 3:9, 3:10, 3:18, 4:3, 8:33; Nehemiah 3:19, 7:7, 7:11, 7:39, 7:43, 8:7, 8:17, 9:4, 9:5, 11:26, 12:1, 12:7, 12:8, 12:10, 12:24, 12:26; 1 Chronicles 24:11; and 2 Chronicles 31:15—as well as in Biblical Aramaic at verse Ezra 5:2. These Bible verses refer to ten individuals (in Nehemiah 8:17, the name refers to Joshua son of Nun). This historical change may have been due to a phonological shift whereby guttural phonemes weakened, including [h]. Usually, the traditional theophoric element Yahu was shortened at the beginning of a name to [Yo-], and at the end to [-yah]. In the contraction of Yehoshua` to Yeshua`, the vowel is instead fronted (perhaps due to the influence of the y in triliteral root y-š-ʕ). During the post-biblical period, the name was also adopted by Aramaic and Greek-speaking Jews. By the time the New Testament was written, the Septuagint had already transliterated ישוע (Yeshua`) into Koine Greek as closely as possible in the 3rd-century BCE, the result being (Iēsous). Since Greek had no equivalent to the Semitic letter shin [sh], it was replaced with a σ sigma [s], and a masculine singular ending [-s] was added in the nominative case, in order to allow the name to be inflected for case (nominative, accusative, etc.) in the grammar of the Greek language. The diphthongal [a] vowel of Masoretic Yehoshua` or Yeshua` would not have been present in Hebrew/Aramaic pronunciation during this period, and some scholars believe some dialects dropped the pharyngeal sound of the final letter (`ayin) [`], which in any case had no counterpart in ancient Greek. The Greek writings of Philo of Alexandria and Josephus frequently mention this name. It also occurs in