The Haxe language targets Lua now [1], and some recent commits I've made enabled 5.1/LuaJIT support. Haxe syntax is significantly different than Lua syntax, but it's closer to ECMAscript, and most likely more familiar to the folks here. If the language syntax quirks are a barrier towards targeting LuaJIT, then check out Haxe.
[1]: https://haxe.org/blog/hello-lua