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Among the Hebrews there is one word, iescha, which — Psalm 19, verse 6; 49, verse 23; 131 [132], verse 16; and often elsewhere — signifies “salvation”; and from that word are derived other words of the same signification: ieschovah, heschovah, thebah, theschovath, moscheveth; and finally the verb hoschiah, “to save.” And hence those two [are] proper names: Osee and Iosue — or, to speak more in Hebrew, Hoseah and Iehosuah — each of which (as St. Jerome explains, on Hosea chapter 1, and as the very reasoning of the origin declares) signifies “Saviour.” And therefore Ecclesiasticus 46, verse 1, [says] of Joshua: ἐγένετο… “he was great according to his name, unto the salvation of His elect” — or, “for the salvation of His elect.” But whether, as some say, [it means] “the Saviour of the Lord,” and how the same word may signify [this], will be said below (question 5). And our Joshua is also called Hosee in the Talmud (Tractate Berachoth, chapter 6, folio 63b) — unless someone should wish, without cause, to suspect that in the preceding [word] there is a scribal error in the vau.
But because there have arisen today — not only [young] lads, but also old men — new orators, or rather word-artificers [logodaedali], who, lest they sin against Cicero, make it a [point of] scruple to say “Salvator” [Saviour], so much so that that [saying] of the Apostle (1 Timothy 1, verse 15), “CHRIST JESUS came into the world to save sinners” [salvos facere],
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the Innovator Beza translated, “that he might preserve [servaret] sinners” — I shall set down here, above all, the words of a great Ciceronian, Manutius, I mean, from [his] commentary on the second Verrine book: “Soter is a Greek name, and that it signifies ‘he who has given salvation,’ is established by Cicero himself [as] interpreter; whence appears the common error of those who call JESUS CHRIST — whose immortal merits can be sufficiently expressed by no single Latin word — Servator [Preserver]. For it is one thing to preserve, another to give salvation. He preserves who, by some means, brings it about that safety is not lost; he gives salvation who restores [it when] lost. And so, since a servator is not a soter — because it means less — while salvator [is] as it were unusual, Cicero avoided [it], and preferred to say, ‘he who has given salvation.’ Namely, if we are speaking of Him who did not preserve the afflicted human race in the same state, but led [it] from everlasting destruction to the perpetual goods of life — which the Son of the most high God both did and alone could do — it is necessary either to call [Him] Salvator (which in Greek is sōtēr), a new word being employed for a new thing (which the ancients too approved), or, by Cicero’s example, to use a periphrasis and to say, ‘He who has given salvation.’ Although a periphrasis, as [it is] sometimes not only convenient but even necessary, [yet] thus, [if] repeated too often, both loses [its] dignity and breeds satiety.” Thus that [famous] Ciceronian [Manutius].
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But Abulensis (on Numbers 3, questions 3 & 27) will have [it] that in Joshua the change of the name was not properly made, but rather an addition. Yet this very addition is a kind of change — just as, among the natural philosophers, accretion too is motion and change. If Abulensis were called Stabulensis, would there be only an addition to the name, and not [also] a change?