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Luther soon continued his pertinent literary activity during the first months of 1543. In preparation for On the Jews he had read, in addition to Margaritha's The Whole Jewish Faith, the Victoria adversus impios Hebraeos (Victory over the godless Hebrews) by Salvagus Porchetus, a Carthusian monk from Genoa, which had been written about 1300, and he had made critical marginal notes in it.42 In both books he found Jewish legends of how Jesus had craftily gotten control of the Schem Hamphoras (the ineffable Name of God, derived from cabalistic speculation about the letters in Exod. 14:19 - 21) and thereby had been able to perform miracles until he was exposed and executed. Luther took issue with this vilification of Jesus and also with a criticism of the differing genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, which was contained in the Jewish response to Against the Sabbatarians, by writing On the Tetragrammaton ... Andreas Osiander in Nuremberg, who was otherwise also favorably disposed toward the Jews, had a different opinion of the cabala and therefore criticized On the Tetragrammaton. Melanchthon made sure that his criticism did not reach Luther for he would presumably have reacted harshly to it. https://books.google.com/books?id=REdhA ... 22&f=false
This consideration, it is apprehended, were alone sufficient to condemn the singular notion of Osiander, that it is derived from JEHow AH, with the first letter of the word Shiloh interposed, in order to render the (nomen tetragrammaton) incommunicable appellation of the Supreme Being effable. Equally inadmissible, on the same account, is the opinion of Castalio, that it is compounded of two Hebrew words which signify “the man Jehovah,” or, the incarnate Deity. (1840) https://books.google.com/books?id=HU1gA ... 22&f=false
The name Jesus, say Castalio and Osiander, Heb. יהשׁוה may possibly signify " the man Jehovah," or Jehovah incarnate, God in human nature. It is compounded of יהוה and אּישׁ : the letter שׁ being interposed from the latter word, the two others י and אּ being rejected as serviles, and therefore added or rejected at pleasure. This name is given at full length by Moses to the Angel Jehovah who condocted the Isnelites through the wilderness, *' The Lord is a man of war," nonbo v*M mrr. The ome name is given likewise at length in the exclamation of Eve, in which she expressed a hope that her son was the promised deliverer mrr mc VTH "mp ... Pfeiffer is of opinion, with the generality of commentators, that the name must be derived from jro*, to save, and he rejects therefore the above derivation, which is given with little variation from Osiander, Reuchlin, and Scbastianus Castalio. See the whole Dissertation de nomine Jesu— l'feifleri dubia vexata, p. 1154, particularly Th. 6 to 18 inclusive. https://books.google.com/books?id=6qkGA ... 22&f=false
Pine's point is most interesting and perhaps closes the circle on our investigation. One of the oldest rabbinic sources - R Eliezar - and his reference to oto ha'ish. It is worth noting that several Jewish studies of the New Testament have applied this allusion to Jesus as 'that man' or 'a man' such as the Good Samaritan story:In other words, if one admits that the long story of the Passion quoted in the Tathbit reflects a Docetic view of the crucifixion of Jesus, another conceivable, though perhaps far-fetched, explanation of the fact that in this story the word al-Rajul, the man, is invariably substituted for the name Jesus might be based on the occasional use in the New Testament of the expressions ho anthropos, ho homos ho anthropos, ho anthropos ekeinos, etc., to denote Jesus. A well known instance of this linguistic usage is Jn. 19:5 idou ho anthropos, ecce homo, cf. W.F. Arndt and F. Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Chicago 1957, s.v. anthropos, 4, b, p. 168. Acts 5, 28 may be added to the examples cited there. However, in my opinion, if it is to be credible, this explanation must be supplemented by the supposition that all mention of the name Jesus was deliberately removed from a story of the Passion in which the above-mentioned linguistic usage may have been much in evidence to start with. This could have been done in order to render the text palatable for cAbd al-Jabbar and other Orthodox Muslims. The connection, if any, of this linguistic usage with the use in Hebrew and other Jewish languages of the expression oto ha-ish (that man), employed by persons who, out of antaganism to Christianity, wish to avoid uttering the name Jesus could be made an object of investigation. As has been pointed out by J. Maier (in Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Oberlieferung, (in Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Oberlieferung, Darmstadt 1978, p. 87ff), a passage in the midrash Yalaut Shim'oni, usually omitted in the printed editions of this work, contains the expression oto ha'ish. The passage is attributed to Eliezer, who lived in the third century, but Maier considers that it is a later interpolation. I believe, pace Maier, that everything points to this expression being used in the passage to H«igim> Jesus. On oto ha-ish see also Y. Liebes, "Jonah as the Messiah ben Joseph" (in Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, m, (1983-1984), p. 300
Indeed in Jewish writings generally - as we read in a scholarly discussion of a work of a famous 19th century Hasidic rabbi - references to 'Jesus' per se are:Jesus as a man Gr. anthropos tis, lit. "a certain man," possibly Jesus himself. The use of the third person here might reflect Heb./Aram. hahugavra; oto ha. ish used euphemistically by a speaker or writer when telling of a misfortune. https://books.google.com/books?id=_qSWL ... 22&f=false
In this literature associated with https://books.google.com/books?id=BKaQB ... 22&f=false. More on the history of this phenomenonUncharacteristic of Hasidic literature more generally, Bornstein mentions Jesus (never by name, only by the traditional code name 'oto ha-ish, or that man), sometimes under the veil of referring to 'oto ha-ish as Esau (Esau is traditionally understood to be the patriarch of Edom, the empire of Christendom) and offers some novel interpretations of his life and role in the ultimate redemption.17 Bornstein was no free-thinker. As a Hasidic master, he was fully absorbed in the traditional depiction of Jesus as “the defiled one,” even a demonic figure, as portrayed in the anonymous Toldot Yeshu and later literature. The biblical Esau, sometimes the biblical occasion for the biblical occasion for Bornstein's comments about 'oto ha-ish, is a clear reference to Christianity which had, from the rabbinic period onward, been linked to the empire of Esau / Edom. https://books.google.com/books?id=6zokB ... 22&f=false
So Bloch claims that oto ha'ish is post-Talmudic resulting from people copying the epithet in Gittin 56b. But how does he explain the reference to Jesus in this way ascribed to R Eliezar in the Yalaut Shim'oni? The collection was thirteenth century but certainly draws upon older material.A parallel equation is expressed in another talmudic passage (Gittin 56b), in which three enemies of Judaism are listed: Titus, Balaam, and a "Jewish transgressor" (poshea yisrael). The three were asked by a prospective proselyte to give him their opinions of the Jewish people. Titus, a personifier of pagan hostility, expressed opposition to the Torah as a burdensome theology. He also offered pragmatic information about the expediency of anti-Semitism as a vehicle to political power. Balaam, in this passage, is cast in the role of the early Gentile church, which openly expressed its anti-Jewish enmity. The "Hebrew transgressor" is the code name for the typical Hebrew Christian, who professes friendship to Jews but ridicules rabbinic Judaism. He, too, is labeled a rasha (Sanhedrin 105a). The so-called Letter of Rabban Yochanan b. Zaccai refers to Jesus as a rasha meisit ("inciter") and to Paul as a rasha uposhea ("transgressor"). This letter, allegedly written by Rabban Yochanan b. Zaccai, is dated Kislev 6, 3813 (52 C.E.). The reference to historical events of the post-Temple era makes it clear that the letter in its present form is of later origin. An examination of the letter reveals that it originally based all its contentions solely on biblical verses, without resorting to reveals that it originally based all its contentions solely on biblical verses, without resorting to rabbinic quotations. This points to the antiquity of the original document. This part of the letter was written in a lucid biblical style. We may assume that it was published by the end of the first century to counteract an intensive Christian proselytizing campaign. At a later period, possibly in the third century, numerous Cabalist passages were interpolated to lend greater emphasis to the author's admonitions. Such expression as nachash ha kadmoni ("the primeval serpent") and zuhamo shel nachash ("the impurity of the serpent"), which appear in this letter, were introduced into the Talmud by third-century Amoraim (Sanhedrin 29a, Avoda Zara 22b). The expanded letter could have been republished in the third century, due to the continued spread of Christianity in Palestine and the diaspora. With the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fourth century, the circulation of such a letter would have been too risky an undertaking. It is possible, of course, that the letter was first republished in the Islamic era, in the seventh century or later, when it was safe for Jews in Moslem countries to urge their fellow Jews in Christian countries to resist missionary blandishments and threats. original part of the letter and dates the application of this term to the early part of the Christian era. In the post-talmudic literature a new name for the founder of Christianity was widely adopted — oto ha-ish ("that man"). This name was popularized by a book entitled Maase shel Oto ha-Ish . The book is assumed to have been written in the tenth century. The origin of the name may possibly be traced to the passage in Gittin (56b) which was quoted above. [Bloch The Biblical and Historical Background of the Jewish Holy Days p. 34]
So the 'switch' occurred according to gematria. But was it 'ha-ish' for yeshu or yeshu for ha-ish? Outside of the rabbinic tradition the specific form yeshu is unknown. The Marcionite identification of him as 'the stranger' might well be related to 'that man' or better yet 'a man.' We shouldn't be so quick to assume that yeshu is the original form.Samson of Ostropol,Sefer ha-Karnayyim, 1702, 2v.Ha-ish (the man) has the numerical value 316, which equals the numerical value of the name Yeshu, Jesus. Moreover, ha-ish is a clear allusion to the common Jewish designation of Jesus as oto ha-ish.