The Names of the Savior

When Jacob taught his people, he told them how he learned about one of the names of the Savior: “Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that Christ—for in the last night the angel spake unto me that this should be his name—should come among the Jews” (2 Nephi 10:3).  This is the first appearance of the world Christ in the Book of Mormon, but it is used frequently thereafter.  Prior to this Nephi used the names of Messiah, Lamb of God, Son of God, Savior, Redeemer, and others to speak about Christ (see, for example, 1 Nephi 10:4, 10:10, 10:17, 22:12).  After Jacob’s revelation about the name Christ, Nephi used it extensively, such as in his famous declaration, “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ” (2 Nephi 25:26).  He even used the full name that we most commonly used today, saying, “according to the words of the prophets, and also the word of the angel of God, his name shall be Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (2 Nephi 25:19).  This is the first usage of the name Jesus in the Book of Mormon, and presumably Nephi was referring here to the same angel that revealed the name of Christ to Jacob.  After this point the Book of Mormon uses the name of Jesus as well as Jesus Christ frequently, with declarations such as “I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell,” and “the gate of heaven is open unto all, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God” (2 Nephi 33:6, Helaman 3:28).  The prophets of the Book of Mormon knew of the Savior and His numerous titles, and the testimonies we have of Him span its pages with no apparent division in testimony before and after His mortal ministry. 

               While specific, easily recognizable references to the Savior in the Old Testament are somewhat limited (of course, every reference to LORD is really a reference to Jehovah who is the Savior, and those are all over its pages), the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price show that the prophets did indeed have specific knowledge of Jesus Christ as His name.  We learn that God spoke to Adam in these words, “If thou wilt turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, and believe, and repent of all thy transgressions, and be baptized, even in water, in the name of mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth, which is Jesus Christ, the only name which shall be given under heaven, whereby salvation shall come unto the children of men” (Moses 6:52).  Adam had as clear a knowledge of Jesus as any prophet ever did.  The Pearl of Christ teaches us that Enoch (who gave us the above words of Adam) and Noah (who taught the people: “Believe and repent of your sins and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, even as our fathers”) also had the same knowledge of the Savior and His name. 

               Given all of these that knew the name of Jesus Christ well before the time of His coming, it may seem odd to consider the origin of the names as we know them.  Messiah comes from the Hebrew language and means “Anointed One”.  The name Christ is the Greek equivalent.  The work Jesus is a Greek word, with Joshua being the Hebrew equivalent.  The meaning of those words is “Savior”.  So the terms Jesus Christ is a Greek name, and so the usage of it in the Book of Mormon before the word would have even existed in Greek might seem odd, but one could say the same about the use of Messiah (a word from Hebrew) in the time of Enoch (see Moses 7:53).  In either case, the words we have today are translations using the English that is available to us, and the Nephites and Adam and people of Enoch surely had their own terms for these names of the Savior in their languages that were best translated as Jesus, Christ, Messiah, etc. in our own tongue.  The important fact is that the role of the Savior was known from the beginning and that man’s path to salvation through Him has never changed.