Jesus's name 

Hi, I appreciate all your questions and wish to understand the matter.  If you really want to know why the article, for most of its life, has not included anything about Jesus' "Hebrew name" or "Aramaic" name in the lead, I encourage you to look at the talk page archives, as we had at least two lengthy discussions when, two times in the past, someone proposed this (what bothers me about the current situation is, someone changed the long-standing consensus version without any such discussion).

Did you know that many Pharisees who lived around the time of Jesus had Greek names or Greek derived names (Greek names spelled out in Hebrew letters)? Tarfon, Antigonus, Abtalion ... These are actually names of Rabbis recorded in the Mishnah, who probably spoke Aramaic on a daily basis, and Hebrew in their studies (the Mishnah is written in Hebrew) - yet they had Greek or "Hellenized" names.  Alexander was a popular name at this time. This of course does not mean that Jesus was given a Greek name rather than a Hebrew name, or a "Hellenized" Hebrew name, when he was born. We have no idea. It probably is not likely, but we have no idea. This is not "my" point, but one brought up by many editors who have made major contributions to the Jesus article. 

I think it is pretty standard practice throughout Wikipedia that, when an article wishes to address a complex issues - perhaps because it is controversial, or there are many diverse views, or it is speculative, or for whatever reason, requires time to explain to readers why there is no certainty, why it is not a "fact" - we do not shy away from such topics but rather address them in the body of the article but not in the lede.  For very obvious reasons, we do not mention in the lede everything that is in the body.  I don't object to including speculation in the article, but until someone added this stuff sometime in the past month, there was a consensus among all the editors who had made major contributions to the article not to put this speculation in the lead.     |  Talk