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Welcome to episode 2 of this series of the
Tyndale House podcast.
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So its great to have you with us and
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I’m joined again by Caleb and George, Caleb Howard and George Heath-Whyte
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who are members of our Old Testament team
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Caleb heads up the team
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and George is a research associate?
G: Yep.
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T: And we're talking in this episode
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about the giving of names
at birth in the Bible.
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We often think in our culture
that our names are
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little more than labels.
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And yet when parents give their children
names, they spend quite a bit of time
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thinking about it.
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They may decide on the basis of sound
or whatever,
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but the meaning and the connotations,
the associations of the names,
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are still important.
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We don't get many,
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if any, children called Adolf
since the end of the Second World War.
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because the associations of a name
like that, are pretty unwelcome in
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today's world.
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So, Caleb, how did you go about choosing
the names of your children?
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I liked how they sounded.
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Yeah, that was the same for us as well.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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so my oldest daughter is named Alexis.
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We just liked how that sounded.
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We knew someone whose sister was named
Alexis.
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my middle child is Mariah.
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People often think she's named after
Mariah Carey, the singer.
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She is not.
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And, my youngest child is called Adele.
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People often think that she's named
after the singer Adele.
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Even she kind of thinks that.
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But, she isn't.
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We chose that name slightly
before Adele became very famous.
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But, yeah, we just liked the sound of them.
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Yeah, it was the same for us.
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So, we have Charlie, Oliver,
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and, Philip, who we tend to call Pip.
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and Charlie and Oliver, I suddenly realised that we have both sides
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of the English Civil War covered.
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And then, when we had the youngest, Pip,
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we tend to call him Pip, because
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the landlord of a pub, Jane and I used to like
visiting was known as Pip
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and we thought it was quite fun.
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I then realised
we've got a bit of a Charles
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Dickens connection
because we’ve got, you know, Oliver Twist,
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Pip from Great Expectations, and Dickens himself. All completely incidental.
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We didn't think about any of this,
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but of course,
some people do put a lot of thought
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into the names of their children
and what they mean.
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We had a vistor here
at Tyndale House recently, Adeola,
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and we were talking to Adeola about
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the naming of children in her culture.
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She's from Yoruba background in Nigeria.
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It was quite fascinating, wasn't it?
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I can't remember how many names
she said she had.
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I think it might have been five.
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So if I recall correctly, and from other things
I've picked up,
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so there's, there's a name that's
brought from heaven, which for Christian
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parents often reflects
something to do with
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with their Christian convictions.
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but traditionally it was a name
that was divined
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by the elders of the tribe.
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And then there's a name that relates to the family,
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and there's a name for praising the child,
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and there's a name for,
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that's more descriptive.
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And that happens
in many cultures as well.
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I had a friend from Ghana called Kwadwo
because he was born on Monday.
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If you're born on Monday, you get called Kwadwo.
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So, yeah, it was fascinating.
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It was a very different kind of way of thinking about names from what I'm used to.
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and then the idea of
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of a naming ceremony at seven days,
I think it is,
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and other people
don't even know what the name is to be.
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And then parents, grandparents, elders
all contributing names at that point.
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It's quite fascinating.
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and it feels to us, westerners, modern
westerners, that feels quite strange.
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But I imagine that's much closer
to what was going on in the ancient world.
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How much do we know about
how names were given
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in the ancient world
and in the Bible in particular?
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I mean, we we probably all know
the famous naming scenes
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you get, particularly in Genesis,
but we get them in 1 Samuel,
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and the names of Hosea’s, well, the
unfortunate names of Hosea's children.
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So we have a few scenes
and then we get to the New Testament,
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obviously Jesus and John the Baptist.
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We have those few scenes,
and what they all seem to have in common
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is this idea of a name being given sort of
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at or after the birth of the child,
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and often some sort of association of
the name with the event that takes place.
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We don't have that many references to
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naming events that come from outside the Bible.
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We do have a few, I think, though, Caleb?
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Hmm. We have a few. Yes.
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There are very few,
I wish we had more. Right?
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And we have these stories in the Bible
and the question that might arise
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in our minds is, do they fit
with the kind of Near Eastern context?
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Do these sorts of things
actually occur in extra-biblical texts?
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And the answer,
I think, is similar to a lot of kind of
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everyday realities that ancient people
sort of experienced, lived out.
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They didn't feel the need
to write them down necessarily.
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They were just things they did.
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They knew what they were doing.
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Why would you write them down
for posterity,
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so that we can read them
and find out about them?
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And so these kinds of things
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are inferred by us from texts.
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Often, if you have enough textual sources,
if you have thousands
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and thousands of documents
from the ancient world,
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occasionally someone will sort of slip up
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and talk about a thing
that everyone knows.
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and this does, in fact happen, in a way,
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in a letter from the first half
of the second millennium BC.
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So from the 18th century BC.
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there's a king called Zimri-lim
at a city called Mari, and his daughter
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writes him a letter, knowing that a child
is to be born in the palace.
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And his daughter has had a dream about
this daughter who’s to be born
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and what her name should be.
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And I will quote the letter
because it's very interesting.
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She writes to her father,
‘and concerning the daughter of Tepa’um,’
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who is the mother of the child,
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‘In my dream, a man stood and said,
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“the girl, the daughter of Tepa’um,
should be called Tagid-nawu.”
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He said this to me.
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Now, my Lord, [that is Zimri-lim the king], my
lord, should have a diviner confirm this.
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And if the dream was indeed seen,
my Lord should name the daughter Tagid-nawu.
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Thus she must be named.’
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So Tagid-nawu means ‘the steppe has been good’
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The steppe that is the countryside
where you take your sheep.
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and the assumption is
that these people were connected,
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We know that these people
were quite connected to the pasturage.
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These people were often shepherds.
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And so claims about things around
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shepherding sheep and so on are not uncommon in names.
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And so it seems likely
that this girl's name was connected
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to some reality that occurred
perhaps in Zimri-lim's kingdom, or whatever.
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But here we have some insight
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into a child being born, and we can learn
a number of things from this.
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One is that the name was being chosen,
presumably before the child
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was to be born,
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or at least around the time of the child's
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birth, which is a fairly common theme.
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We also have another document
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where an infant is
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is talked about in a legal text.
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And I'll quote from that.
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It's from the same general period
from Mesopotamia.
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the text reads, ‘In the month
Abum, the eighth day, of the year,
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Samsu-ditana five,
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[That's a particular year, a particular month,
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a particular day
in the Babylonian calendar.]
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Amat-esheshi,
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in a new house of the street Nanaya,
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Amat-Baba,
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her mother bore her.’
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So the idea is that Amat-esheshi is the child, the daughter and
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Amat-Baba is her mother.
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It's telling us that she's been born on this day,
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the month of Abum, the eighth
day, of the year Samsu-ditana five.
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And that matters
as we read through the rest of the text.
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‘She, [that is, Amat-esheshi,
the daughter—
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sorry—(Amat-Baba,)
the mother,] is a female slave to Ruttiya,
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nun of Zababa, her mistress. With respect to Nanaya,
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she will meet her responsibility.
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The heart to Ruttiya, her lady,
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she will not provoke to anger.’
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Now, the likelihood is that Ruttiya,
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was a primary wife in a family,
and she had been devoted to the deity
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Zababa. That's what's meant by her.
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‘she's a nun of Zababa’, and therefore
presumably could not bear children.
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This woman, Amat-Baba, is
probably a secondary wife,
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and she's brought forth Amat-esheshi to this man,
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and this has to be sort of
worked out legally:
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how is this child supposed to be related to the family?
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And the text
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ends with a date, dating the function
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of the legal transaction going on here
as month Abum, eighth day,
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year Samsu-ditana five, the same date
as it says the child was born.
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And this shows us that the child was named
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on the day she was born, at least, if not beforehand.
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So there’s yet another, kind of, point of evidence,
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that children were being named
on the day that they were born.
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In one sense, this seems sort of obvious
to us, I suppose,
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as a kind of practical necessity
of needing a name for a child.
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but it's worth
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just recognising how difficult it is
to come by information like this.
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This is the sort of thing that people
would have just known and done,
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and in this case it rises to the surface
of our evidence and we can see it.
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Yeah.
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It's worth saying as well
that we shouldn't, when we
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have these parallels, we have these few
sources, we shouldn't necessarily infer
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well, this is definitely how it was being done
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in Israel or at every period of Israel's
history as well.
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I mean, in the New Testament,
John, people don't know his name
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until the eighth day
when he's going to be given his name.
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So there is difference.
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There's different things
going on in different times and places.
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And even there we don't know
whether that was a normal thing,
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whether that was the standard expectation
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or whether there was something unusual
about nobody knowing.
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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I mean that would, that would certainly fit
with, with what the Yoruba
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do by the sound of it, from what
I'm understanding. That would be similar.
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But so it may well be, but we just...
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when there's little evidence,
we have to be careful, don’t we,
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that we don’t infer too much from it. Yeah.
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So there's nothing that parallels
that, those things that you've just read,
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there's nothing that parallels
that in the Bible is there?
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Well, I mean, in terms of kids
being named around the birth event,
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there is. I mean,
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it seems that this is normally the case
that kids were named
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somehow in relation to either the
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the conception, gestation or birth
of the child.
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This is suggested
by evidence that I just read;
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We also have stories in the Bible
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which portray kids being named around
that time and names being chosen—
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the case of John and Jesus.
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The names have been chosen
before the name was given,
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And the actual conferring of the name
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was around a key event in the child's
life, namely the circumcision
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on the eighth day.
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And that, presumably, is a kind of context-specific,
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culture-specific phenomenon.
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Not everyone was necessarily
circumcised outside of Israel and so on.
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Right.
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But another evidence that
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names were often related to conception,
gestation, birth of the child
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and around the birth event is there
in the meanings of the names.
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So a very common
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semantic category of name
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occurs when a name is a sentence:
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a divine name—a god or a goddess—
is the subject of a verb,
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and the verb is to do with creating
or birthing or providing and so on.
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So ‘deity created’ or ‘deity
provided,’ ‘deity nourished,’ and so on.
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T: Can you give us some examples of that?
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C: And it seems...
T: No, finish what you were saying first.
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C: Well, it seems likely that, you know,
this kind of, notion is, is kind of,
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yeah, related to the birth event.
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So, I don't know, a name
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like Ibni-ili, for example—
‘my God built’, ‘my God
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created’— is a fairly common
kind of type of name
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in Akkadian,
which is the language of Mesopotamia.
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But it's also kind of there
all over the place in the Near East,
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this use of the verb ‘make for’
a verb for ‘make’ or ‘create’
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along with a name for a deity.
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There are sort of giving names:
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‘Marduk has given a brother’
or something like that.
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Okay.
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And have we got biblical examples of those?
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I mean, yes, I mean like,
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yeah, most names
that we find are sort of short sentences.
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‘Yahweh has done this’
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or ‘Yahweh has given’
or that sort of thing.
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Yeah.
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So, you were saying in episode
one that there's a,
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there's a shift in the pattern of names
over time, so that,
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so that the divine name is brought in
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increasingly by the time we get to the
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to the later kings, it becomes
a very standard thing, very common thing,
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and it's unusual early on.
00:14:35:34 - 00:14:41:37
But is that same pattern of naming,
but maybe without the divine name,
00:14:41:37 - 00:14:45:14
is that same pattern seen earlier on,
or is it a different pattern of
00:14:45:40 - 00:14:48:40
of naming in the early part of the Old Testament?
00:14:49:20 - 00:14:49:33
Yeah.
00:14:49:33 - 00:14:52:33
So a number of patterns
are there throughout the entire
00:14:53:19 - 00:14:56:36
the entire Bible and throughout
the entirety of extra-biblical—
00:14:57:26 - 00:15:00:17
within the whole scope
of extra-biblical texts through time.
00:15:02:12 - 00:15:03:26
so a pattern of
00:15:03:26 - 00:15:07:47
name with a verb with a divine
name is very common throughout
00:15:08:16 - 00:15:12:08
throughout the biblical history and also
inside the Bible and outside the Bible.
00:15:13:41 - 00:15:16:23
What, there are ones that, that
00:15:16:23 - 00:15:19:42
come in and go out of use.
00:15:20:18 - 00:15:23:18
And they can correspond
to the development of language,
00:15:23:36 - 00:15:27:11
but they can also correspond
to kind of other features as well.
00:15:29:10 - 00:15:32:10
So I’m thinking of names that
00:15:33:11 - 00:15:36:08
that contain particular forms of verbs
that mean
00:15:36:08 - 00:15:39:20
one thing in earlier periods,
but a different thing in later periods.
00:15:39:37 - 00:15:45:08
And so in names, in an earlier period
will have the earlier-period verb form,
00:15:45:20 - 00:15:48:02
and in a later period,
will have a later-period verb form.
00:15:48:02 - 00:15:48:16
Okay.
00:15:48:16 - 00:15:51:16
That's a development
in kind of how this,
00:15:51:47 - 00:15:54:32
how names reflect language through time.
00:15:54:32 - 00:15:58:13
T: So the same meaning, but just, just...yeah,
00:15:58:16 - 00:16:00:01
it shows the development of the language.
00:16:00:01 - 00:16:02:34
C: Yeah, yeah.
T: Okay. Right. I was reading about,
00:16:03:34 - 00:16:06:40
Moses this morning and,
00:16:07:20 - 00:16:10:44
Moses and Aaron and their genealogy.
00:16:12:08 - 00:16:14:19
and one of
00:16:14:19 - 00:16:17:06
Aaron’s children is Eliezer.
00:16:17:06 - 00:16:19:12
‘God helps’
00:16:19:12 - 00:16:22:12
or ‘God is my helper’
00:16:23:02 - 00:16:26:04
and so that's an example
of the kind of thing that you're,
00:16:26:06 - 00:16:30:16
you're talking about—the divine
or a god and or—
00:16:30:35 - 00:16:33:01
yeah, a god and a verb?
00:16:33:01 - 00:16:33:41
C: Yeah, yeah.
00:16:33:41 - 00:16:35:33
I mean, that's not a verb.
00:16:35:33 - 00:16:36:08
it's a noun
00:16:36:08 - 00:16:38:04
T: Ah no, that's a noun. Yeah, yeah.
00:16:38:04 - 00:16:40:11
C: So Eliezer right
00:16:40:11 - 00:16:40:38
T: Thank you for correcting my grammar
00:16:40:38 - 00:16:41:30
C: No, that's all right.
00:16:41:30 - 00:16:44:30
It's my god is a help or something like that, a helper.
00:16:45:28 - 00:16:47:48
So, yeah, I mean,
I think that's an interesting case
00:16:47:48 - 00:16:51:05
because Eli, ‘my God’, uses
00:16:51:05 - 00:16:54:19
the common Semitic root for deity,
00:16:54:44 - 00:16:57:44
but it's a term that can also
00:16:58:15 - 00:17:02:01
refer to a specific deity
in the Levant, in kind of
00:17:03:11 - 00:17:05:34
Syria, Palestine.
00:17:05:34 - 00:17:08:15
It can...So there's a deity called El,
00:17:08:15 - 00:17:11:30
and he's kind of the head
of the Canaanite, Levantine pantheon.
00:17:13:42 - 00:17:14:45
And so whenever you see
00:17:14:45 - 00:17:17:49
El in a name, it's difficult to know
00:17:17:49 - 00:17:21:47
whether a particular deity
is in view or deity in general,
00:17:21:47 - 00:17:23:07
God in general.
00:17:23:07 - 00:17:24:43
In the case of Eliezer,
00:17:24:43 - 00:17:27:19
well, that's an interesting question, but
00:17:27:19 - 00:17:30:28
it's just worth recognising
that there's a kind of ambiguity in that.
00:17:31:41 - 00:17:32:07
Yeah.
00:17:32:07 - 00:17:35:25
So often, often names
contain a specific deity.
00:17:35:25 - 00:17:39:05
So Yahweh or Baal or Asherah
or something like that,
00:17:39:23 - 00:17:41:18
where it's much more clear.
00:17:41:18 - 00:17:43:08
But this is, this is a debate actually
00:17:43:08 - 00:17:44:46
in kind of name studies, right?
00:17:44:46 - 00:17:49:03
When we have have the name El,
do we have generic deity
00:17:49:18 - 00:17:52:00
and can that be interpreted
as a particular deity
00:17:52:00 - 00:17:55:47
in the mind of the name bearer
or the name user, name bestower,
00:17:56:13 - 00:18:00:23
or does it need to be specifically the deity El?
00:18:01:21 - 00:18:02:09
Is it–
00:18:02:09 - 00:18:05:15
presumably it is not possible
to resolve a question like that.
00:18:05:15 - 00:18:10:29
We can speculate that Aaron may have
00:18:10:29 - 00:18:15:05
had a more generic sense
of El rather than invoking this
00:18:16:18 - 00:18:20:24
Canaanite god, but—
C: Well, yeah, we can speculate.
00:18:20:24 - 00:18:21:47
That's about all we can do.
00:18:21:47 - 00:18:22:14
Right?
00:18:22:14 - 00:18:27:25
So, I think it's worth just recognising
that names and the meanings of names
00:18:27:25 - 00:18:30:49
sort of are there in the minds
of, of people who use them,
00:18:31:23 - 00:18:34:15
and so it can be very difficult to access
sort of what
00:18:34:15 - 00:18:37:44
people thought about it, what people think
about the meanings of names.
00:18:38:12 - 00:18:41:16
We can sort of do our work and think
about the etymologies of the names,
00:18:41:36 - 00:18:45:02
but it's another matter to ask,
what did this name mean to that person?
00:18:46:02 - 00:18:46:20
Yeah.
00:18:46:20 - 00:18:50:16
And it's possible that through time, over
time, names develop
00:18:50:16 - 00:18:54:08
in kind of how they meant,
what they meant to people.
00:18:55:15 - 00:18:56:31
Yeah.
00:18:56:31 - 00:18:59:28
When, when we read the Old Testament
00:18:59:28 - 00:19:03:03
and we, we see somebody’s being given a name
00:19:03:19 - 00:19:06:27
because of all circumstances or—
00:19:08:06 - 00:19:10:06
I can't think of an example
off the top of my head now
00:19:10:06 - 00:19:13:06
and we're talking about names and
I should be able to think of lots of them—
00:19:14:07 - 00:19:16:15
but somebody gives a name
00:19:16:15 - 00:19:19:15
and then a reason is given,
some of those reasons feel,
00:19:20:24 - 00:19:22:14
well, frankly, a bit spurious.
00:19:22:14 - 00:19:26:43
So...to an English reader.
What's going on there?
00:19:26:43 - 00:19:32:00
Clearly there are deeper meanings for,
00:19:33:01 - 00:19:35:45
within the mind of a Hebrew speaker.
00:19:35:45 - 00:19:38:17
and maybe sometimes it's to do
with the sound.
00:19:38:17 - 00:19:42:14
But why is it that some of these naming
00:19:42:14 - 00:19:45:08
things just feel a little bit random to us?
00:19:47:09 - 00:19:50:18
I think part of the reason is,
like what we were saying last time,
00:19:50:18 - 00:19:54:43
that we don't get the translations of
of the names in our English Bibles.
00:19:55:03 - 00:19:57:43
So if there is an obvious meaning,
we're not given it.
00:19:57:43 - 00:20:01:11
And part of the reason is because,
when we are given the explanation,
00:20:01:11 - 00:20:04:12
even if we were to have them translated,
it doesn't actually always fit
00:20:04:12 - 00:20:05:42
exactly. I think that's what you mean when
00:20:05:42 - 00:20:09:16
say it’s spurious. There's...the connection
between the explanation given
00:20:09:16 - 00:20:13:45
and the meaning of the Hebrew name
is not always quite there.
00:20:14:48 - 00:20:16:11
It's not apparent.
00:20:16:11 - 00:20:18:11
I don't mean it is spurious. It just...
00:20:18:11 - 00:20:20:10
it just, it feels it.
00:20:20:10 - 00:20:21:40
Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:21:40 - 00:20:25:11
Yeah, maybe a way to think about this is that
we need to be careful
00:20:25:11 - 00:20:28:35
about the expectations
we carry with us when we read the Bible
00:20:29:04 - 00:20:31:33
and its claims about these name connections.
00:20:31:33 - 00:20:36:14
So we have very specific ideas
about what we mean—
00:20:36:14 - 00:20:38:34
or maybe we don't, but often we do—
00:20:38:34 - 00:20:41:25
by what a name means. When we say,
‘What does this name mean?’
00:20:41:25 - 00:20:43:00
we usually mean sort of
00:20:43:00 - 00:20:47:01
what is its etymology, which is to say,
if we kind of trace the meaning
00:20:47:01 - 00:20:51:22
of the word back to its original form
or its original meaning, what was that?
00:20:53:36 - 00:20:54:43
And that's there
00:20:54:43 - 00:20:57:04
that does matter for the Bible.
00:20:57:04 - 00:21:01:12
Sometimes the Bible's naming scenes
draw on that very clearly. So,
00:21:03:04 - 00:21:04:14
a good example of this
00:21:04:14 - 00:21:07:14
is the naming of Manasseh.
00:21:07:23 - 00:21:10:31
So Joseph, his father, names him Manasseh—
00:21:10:32 - 00:21:13:11
Manasseh,
00:21:13:11 - 00:21:14:39
which is a Piel participle.
00:21:14:39 - 00:21:17:22
It means ‘one who makes forget.’
00:21:17:22 - 00:21:20:19
And he explains that by saying,
00:21:20:19 - 00:21:25:06
‘Because God has made me forget
all my trouble.’ And he uses a slightly
00:21:25:06 - 00:21:29:39
different form of the same verb
to mean essentially the same thing, right?
00:21:29:39 - 00:21:32:39
So we have the same verb form,
the same basic meaning,
00:21:33:05 - 00:21:36:23
and the name means ‘one who made forget’.
00:21:36:47 - 00:21:38:16
So it all sort of works.
00:21:38:16 - 00:21:40:21
It's very nice. It's simple.
00:21:40:21 - 00:21:43:02
And it is the sort of thing
that we expect.
00:21:43:02 - 00:21:45:28
But there are other names for which it's
00:21:45:28 - 00:21:48:35
not so obvious
that there's an etymological connection.
00:21:49:07 - 00:21:52:35
And so this becomes more difficult
for us and more complicated.
00:21:53:39 - 00:21:56:42
but it seems that it wasn't necessarily
more complicated for them.
00:21:56:42 - 00:21:58:32
They were fine with it.
00:21:58:32 - 00:22:03:19
And so I think, I think, you know, you
yourself said that spurious is
00:22:03:19 - 00:22:07:23
maybe isn't the best way to put it,
but I think that's a helpful corrective.
00:22:07:24 - 00:22:09:47
We need to all be careful
00:22:09:47 - 00:22:12:26
in assuming that we know how this should be,
00:22:12:26 - 00:22:15:29
and if the text doesn't do that,
then it's doing it in the wrong way.
00:22:15:29 - 00:22:19:45
Probably we need to reverse that and
assume the text is telling us something.
00:22:19:45 - 00:22:22:45
We should try to pick that up
G: To give a,
00:22:22:48 - 00:22:25:38
to give a, perhaps, well, and example:
00:22:25:38 - 00:22:30:07
this is not how my name was chosen,
but you could imagine a situation today
00:22:30:07 - 00:22:33:23
where someone has a baby and says,
‘Oh, that baby's gorgeous;
00:22:33:23 - 00:22:35:18
I'll call him George.’
00:22:35:18 - 00:22:38:04
And like, well, you could say, well,
what's the connection there?
00:22:38:04 - 00:22:39:17
George doesn't mean ‘gorgeous’.
00:22:39:17 - 00:22:41:30
George means ‘farmer’,
but they sound sort of vaguely
00:22:41:30 - 00:22:44:30
similar. So, ‘Oh, I have a gorgeous child, George’.
00:22:44:45 - 00:22:47:36
And so there's a connection being drawn
between ‘Oh, they’re gorgeous,
00:22:47:36 - 00:22:48:22
I'll call them George’
00:22:49:36 - 00:22:50:42
but there's no actual
00:22:50:42 - 00:22:54:49
etymological connection
between the meaning of the name and why
00:22:54:49 - 00:22:58:38
they've given the name. That’s a random example
that just popped in my mind.
00:22:58:45 - 00:23:00:11
Very nice.
00:23:00:11 - 00:23:03:20
Yeah, I think I mean, as I've looked over kind of the different
00:23:03:20 - 00:23:05:33
naming scenes in the Bible,
00:23:05:33 - 00:23:07:39
I think it's better to talk
about the relationship
00:23:07:39 - 00:23:12:14
between the naming circumstances—
so that I've said it's the,
00:23:13:21 - 00:23:15:28
conception, gestation
or birth of the child, some
00:23:15:28 - 00:23:18:01
something around the circumstances
of the child—
00:23:18:01 - 00:23:19:27
I think it's better to characterise
00:23:19:27 - 00:23:22:27
the relationship
as a matter of correspondence between
00:23:23:03 - 00:23:26:03
the name and the circumstances.
00:23:26:39 - 00:23:28:39
And then within that,
to sort of further define
00:23:28:39 - 00:23:31:38
what sort of correspondence is in view.
00:23:31:38 - 00:23:35:25
So Manasseh is a good example
where the sound of the name,
00:23:35:37 - 00:23:37:41
the lexeme, the particular word used,
00:23:37:41 - 00:23:41:31
and also the meaning of the word
are all nicely in correspondence.
00:23:41:42 - 00:23:43:11
across the board.
00:23:44:13 - 00:23:47:13
Maybe a good kind of example where—
00:23:48:13 - 00:23:50:34
which is slightly different,
but is still sort of within the bounds
00:23:50:34 - 00:23:55:05
of what the Bible does, let's say—
is the naming of Noah.
00:23:55:05 - 00:24:00:17
So, when Noah is named at the end of Genesis 5, Lamech,
00:24:00:17 - 00:24:04:36
his father, says that his name is Noah,
because this one will bring,
00:24:06:07 - 00:24:09:07
will bring, bring us rest from the ground
that the Lord has cursed.
00:24:09:35 - 00:24:11:31
Noah is
00:24:11:31 - 00:24:14:31
it's related to a root nuakh ‘to rest’
00:24:15:13 - 00:24:16:17
in Hebrew.
00:24:16:17 - 00:24:19:11
But the word nuakh isn't used
in the explanation;
00:24:19:11 - 00:24:22:12
It's a different term for bringing rest: nakham.
00:24:22:12 - 00:24:25:32
But you can still hear similar sounds.
00:24:25:36 - 00:24:28:36
There's a still a semantic connection.
00:24:28:41 - 00:24:32:25
And if you read enough of these,
you get the sense that they don’t feel
00:24:32:25 - 00:24:36:14
the need to have
this kind of neat set of correspondences,
00:24:36:14 - 00:24:38:00
but one or two will do.
T: Right..
00:24:38:00 - 00:24:41:22
C: In other cases, it's a matter of, maybe,
sound connections as George has said.
00:24:41:45 - 00:24:45:26
So if we open our view
of what sort of might be there,
00:24:46:27 - 00:24:47:30
in terms of the types of
00:24:47:30 - 00:24:53:05
correspondences, I think will be better
suited to read the text well.
00:24:53:05 - 00:24:53:43
Yeah,
00:24:53:43 - 00:24:54:32
okay.
00:24:54:32 - 00:24:57:28
That's very helpful.
00:24:57:28 - 00:25:00:28
Can you give us some more concrete
examples, talk us through
00:25:01:26 - 00:25:05:43
a few Old Testament names and show
how these kinds of things are working out?
00:25:05:43 - 00:25:08:13
I think I introduced in the last episode,
00:25:08:13 - 00:25:10:08
we talked about the name Samuel.
00:25:10:08 - 00:25:13:08
So this is a good example
of a number of things.
00:25:13:26 - 00:25:17:03
So I mentioned the fact,
I think that the name Samuel, Shmuel,
00:25:18:22 - 00:25:20:24
means ‘name of God’.
00:25:20:24 - 00:25:23:16
So we can talk a bit more about
that, and it would be worth it.
00:25:23:16 - 00:25:27:22
the thing I observed is that
shmuel isn't related to the reason
00:25:27:22 - 00:25:32:22
given for the naming,
which turns on the term sha’al ‘to ask’
00:25:32:22 - 00:25:35:13
in Hannah's explanation
in 1 Samuel 1.
00:25:35:37 - 00:25:39:23
Sha’al ‘to ask’ is repeated
five times in the context
00:25:40:00 - 00:25:42:49
as an explanation for the giving of the name.
00:25:42:49 - 00:25:43:38
And what we said is that
00:25:43:38 - 00:25:46:38
there are sound correspondences,
not meaning correspondences.
00:25:47:07 - 00:25:51:01
But it's also an interesting name for
for another reason, namely that,
00:25:52:06 - 00:25:55:32
the form of the name is actually quite old
00:25:55:32 - 00:26:01:08
from a grammatical point of view,
shmu contains a case ending.
00:26:01:08 - 00:26:05:18
The ‘u’, shmu, ‘u’ is a nominative case ending.
00:26:06:04 - 00:26:08:43
So it contains this
nominative case ending,
00:26:08:43 - 00:26:12:10
which was something that was used
in Hebrew, in the kind of
00:26:13:06 - 00:26:15:48
family that Hebrew language is related to,
00:26:15:48 - 00:26:18:49
much earlier than the language
that we have in the Bible.
00:26:18:49 - 00:26:22:03
So in the Bible
we don't normally find nominative case
00:26:22:03 - 00:26:25:12
endings on nouns, and we don't have
any case endings normally.
00:26:26:07 - 00:26:29:48
But the name has preserved
this really old feature.
00:26:30:31 - 00:26:33:17
And so that's an example
of how names can often preserve
00:26:33:17 - 00:26:36:17
stages of a language like a time capsule,
00:26:36:46 - 00:26:41:19
and features of a language that have,
have sort of, worked themselves out.
00:26:42:47 - 00:26:43:45
I also drew attention to
00:26:43:45 - 00:26:46:45
the fact that, that the term
00:26:47:01 - 00:26:51:32
too for the sha’al for ‘ask,’
shaul is connected to the name of Saul,
00:26:51:32 - 00:26:56:42
‘the asked one’, which is very interesting
because Saul is the asked one by Israel;
00:26:56:49 - 00:26:58:38
he's not the one asked for by God.
00:26:58:38 - 00:27:02:40
Samuel is the one asked for by God, which
is a very interesting connection to make.
00:27:03:20 - 00:27:04:48
So what...
00:27:04:48 - 00:27:07:35
How do we understand
00:27:07:35 - 00:27:09:14
how these things come together then?
00:27:09:14 - 00:27:11:31
Because
00:27:11:31 - 00:27:14:19
when you read through
00:27:14:19 - 00:27:17:00
the Books of Samuel and you've got this
00:27:17:00 - 00:27:22:08
an irony there with Shaul, Saul,
being the first king that the people
00:27:22:08 - 00:27:26:43
are asking for and, oh, this all fits
together in a remarkable way.
00:27:26:45 - 00:27:29:43
What...
00:27:29:43 - 00:27:32:07
Is, is this
00:27:32:07 - 00:27:35:24
is this the writer of Samuel reading back
00:27:35:24 - 00:27:39:32
into the naming of Samuel to
to make that connection with Saul
00:27:39:32 - 00:27:40:17
who's coming?
00:27:42:11 - 00:27:46:05
Or is it...What else is going on?
00:27:46:05 - 00:27:49:05
How, why do these things work this way?
00:27:49:05 - 00:27:50:43
Well,
00:27:50:43 - 00:27:53:43
I've served this up
in a very interesting way.
00:27:54:17 - 00:27:58:17
The way you answer that question
will depend very much on whether you think
00:27:58:17 - 00:28:02:31
there is a God and whether you think
that he is involved in the universe.
00:28:02:31 - 00:28:03:37
It just might, mightn’t it?
00:28:03:37 - 00:28:05:15
And the biblical writers
00:28:05:15 - 00:28:08:27
think very, very much
that God is involved in the universe.
00:28:09:22 - 00:28:12:20
and I think that because,
00:28:12:20 - 00:28:15:14
what we would call the providence of God,
that is the active
00:28:15:14 - 00:28:20:25
involvement of God in history,
is a fronted theme in the Bible.
00:28:20:25 - 00:28:23:25
It's a very central theme in the Bible.
00:28:23:39 - 00:28:26:39
So, for example, when in the Joseph story,
00:28:27:02 - 00:28:29:22
Joseph's brothers come to him
and they're afraid that he's going
00:28:29:22 - 00:28:32:36
to turn against them after dad has died, Joseph says to them,
00:28:33:40 - 00:28:35:31
‘What you meant for evil, God meant for good.’
00:28:35:31 - 00:28:40:20
So there's this notion, very clearly
in Joseph's mind, according to the story,
00:28:40:20 - 00:28:43:20
that the development of the story
is according to plan.
00:28:44:15 - 00:28:47:24
And so I think that we can view names
and naming
00:28:47:24 - 00:28:51:23
as part of the writer's view
of how the world normally works,
00:28:52:11 - 00:28:55:45
that God is actually involved
in the goings on of history
00:28:56:13 - 00:28:59:40
and that the naming of figures like Samuel or like Saul
00:28:59:40 - 00:29:04:17
and so on fit into that, and that what
they are writing reflects that reality.
00:29:04:48 - 00:29:05:49
You may discount that.
00:29:05:49 - 00:29:06:41
You may say that that's
00:29:06:41 - 00:29:09:43
that's all nonsense,
but the fact is, it's there in the text
00:29:09:47 - 00:29:13:05
T: Sure.
C: for us to sort of observe.
T: Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:13:20 - 00:29:17:07
And that explains why some people's names
seem to fit them so well.
00:29:18:07 - 00:29:21:05
Joseph, since we've
00:29:21:05 - 00:29:24:25
mentioned his naming his son Manasseh,
00:29:24:25 - 00:29:27:08
but ‘he adds’:
00:29:27:08 - 00:29:30:10
Joseph does quite a bit of adding,
as well as adding to
00:29:30:11 - 00:29:33:11
to his father's family
at the beginning.
00:29:34:00 - 00:29:36:14
So, yeah, we'll come in the next episode
00:29:36:14 - 00:29:39:34
we'll talk about Jacob and his children and naming them.
00:29:39:43 - 00:29:40:33
Right. Yeah.
00:29:40:33 - 00:29:41:24
If I can just say there's a
00:29:41:24 - 00:29:44:39
there's a really nice example
that I think pulls all of this together,
00:29:45:20 - 00:29:48:20
in the name of Nabal. Right?
00:29:48:29 - 00:29:51:29
The husband of Abigail.
00:29:52:20 - 00:29:54:40
You remember the story that
00:29:54:40 - 00:30:00:22
that David initiates a conversation
with Nabal who owns lots of flocks,
00:30:00:22 - 00:30:02:22
he's a wealthy guy,
00:30:02:22 - 00:30:05:18
and Nabal turns against David,
00:30:05:18 - 00:30:08:25
and David gets really hacked off at him
and wants to kill him.
00:30:09:34 - 00:30:12:19
And Nabal is
00:30:12:19 - 00:30:13:42
is, is well, in danger.
00:30:13:42 - 00:30:17:42
So Abigail, his wife, recognises this,
and she comes out with gifts
00:30:17:42 - 00:30:20:42
and meets David and urges him
not to do anything foolish.
00:30:21:01 - 00:30:24:14
Which is a very interesting thing,
because Nabal means ‘foolish’.
00:30:25:12 - 00:30:28:48
And when, if you read the story
of her explanation
00:30:28:48 - 00:30:33:11
for all of this, she points out that Nabal,
her husband, is as his name.
00:30:33:11 - 00:30:34:12
He is foolish.
00:30:34:12 - 00:30:36:25
He is Nabal. He’s a foolish man.
00:30:36:25 - 00:30:39:33
Interestingly, David is potentially
about to do something foolish.
00:30:39:33 - 00:30:42:37
She staves that off,
she's a remarkable woman.
00:30:42:37 - 00:30:46:17
David recognises
this, and eventually Nabal dies
00:30:46:44 - 00:30:50:22
separately from David’s agency, according to the text.
00:30:51:13 - 00:30:52:35
What's interesting is the question,
00:30:52:35 - 00:30:58:45
so was... were Nabal's
family aware of the fact that this name
00:30:58:45 - 00:31:02:22
meant ‘foolish’ when they named him?
And did they name him in light of that?
00:31:02:22 - 00:31:04:38
And does this sort of determine
his character?
00:31:04:38 - 00:31:06:16
I don't think so.
00:31:06:16 - 00:31:11:12
Nabal, as a root in Semitic,
not only has the sense ‘foolish’ in Hebrew,
00:31:11:12 - 00:31:15:17
but it also has the sense,
in some quarters, ‘noble’.
00:31:16:14 - 00:31:19:00
So we have this we have this attested
in other Semitic languages.
00:31:19:00 - 00:31:20:04
And it’s entirely possible.
00:31:20:04 - 00:31:26:20
—and scholars have suggested this—
that the name, to the name bestowers, Nabal's
00:31:26:21 - 00:31:30:16
parents, meant something like ‘noble’
when it was named,
00:31:30:16 - 00:31:34:45
but it has this nice correspondence
with the current name ‘foolish’ in
00:31:35:43 - 00:31:37:32
in Hebrew.
00:31:37:47 - 00:31:40:47
And what's interesting for your question
about the kind of God's
00:31:40:47 - 00:31:44:36
role in all of this is what Abigail makes of it.
00:31:45:08 - 00:31:48:22
She draws this correspondence,
but she observes this correspondence
00:31:48:35 - 00:31:52:33
and how this has all come together
in this expression of Nabal's character
00:31:52:33 - 00:31:53:43
as foolish.
00:31:53:43 - 00:31:58:26
She pulls it together in her explanation
to David, and she says ‘he is as his name’.
00:31:58:26 - 00:32:00:46
He is foolish.
00:32:00:46 - 00:32:04:08
So I think she's probably a well aware
that the name can also mean ‘noble’
00:32:04:08 - 00:32:06:05
and has that kind of significance,
00:32:06:05 - 00:32:08:24
but she's also aware that there's
this other connection
00:32:08:24 - 00:32:11:27
and she's happy to play with it,
and I suspect others are as well.
00:32:11:48 - 00:32:13:39
Brilliant. Thank you so much, guys.