
The second half of this presentation is a review of Clifton Emahiser's short paper, Just Because the Term “Ya” was Found at Ebla & Ugarit is no Sign that Yahweh is Canaanite in Origin!
From Yahshua to Jesus: the Evolution of a Name
In the early years of my Christian Identity studies, I became acquainted with a plethora of wild ideas, and I actually did evaluate them all as best as I could. Some of these came from British Israel writers, and others from more recent Americans such as Rand, Swift or Comparet, and even more recent writers who are still alive today. So with an open mind and with Scripture as my guide, along with various lexicons and many books of classical history and ancient inscriptions, and even many of the so-called apocryphal or pseudepigraphal books, as I studied I had considered just about everything that an Identity Christian could hear.
Among these were the Ephraim-Scepter heresy, and the Noon-to-Noon calendar day heresy, the No-Devil heresy, and all of these Clifton had written essays about before I ever had a chance, because he was also dealing with them for a long time. Both Clifton and my friend Ralph Daigle would send me all sorts of Christian Identity-related materials, and some of it I read for entertainment purposes, while other things I took more seriously. If I ever unpack the three remaining crates of notes and correspondence I had accumulated throughout those years, perhaps I will address some of the things which have merit, or at least those which seem to need further attention because the things they proposed are still in circulation.
Throughout those years, in my studies I naturally came to many conclusions which I did not have immediately, and which had long been debated in Identity Christian circles. Foremost among these were the debates concerning Two-Seedline, the origin of non-Adamic races, the identity of certain of the trees of Eden, and other important topics. Some of the conclusions which I have arrived at over the years actually took years for me to understand, and then even more years to formulate effective arguments based on the supporting evidence.
One of the “wild ideas” I was often confronted with was the claim that the name Jesus came from that of the pagan Greek deity Zeus, and that concept is still promoted in certain Christian Identity circles today. In fact, I am certain that James Wickstrom perpetuated it throughout the entire time of his ministry, in spite of the fact that he ultimately should have known better.