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Welcome to series three of the Tyndale House podcast.
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Tyndale House is an international centre
for Bible research
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and a community of Bible scholars
in Cambridge, England.
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Whether you're a regular listener
or are joining us for the first time,
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we're really pleased to have you with us.
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And if you've missed
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previous episodes, you can find those
wherever you get your podcasts from.
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This new series that we're starting
today is taking a deep
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dive into names in the Bible
with two members of our Old Testament
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team, Dr Caleb Howard and Dr
George Heath-Whyte.
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So let's start by getting to know
Caleb and George a little bit more first.
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Would you like to introduce yourselves
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Tell us who you are,
what your role is at Tyndale House.
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We'll start with you, Caleb.
C: Okay, so I'm Caleb Howard.
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I am a Research Fellow in Old Testament
and Ancient Near East,
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that's the historical context of the Old
Testament, here at Tyndale House.
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I lead and manage
the Old Testament project at the moment,
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which is focusing on names, as Tony said.
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I am an Assyriologist, which means that
I study ancient Mesopotamia
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and in particular Mesopotamian texts
and languages, and also history.
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I work
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on names, but I also work on the Assyrian empire.
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So if you think Hezekiah
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and the siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC,
it's that empire.
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So that's my specialism.
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G: Yeah, I'm George.
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I am also an Assyriologist
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and I'm a Research Associate
in Old Testament and Ancient Near
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Eastern Studies.
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And I'm also working on the names project.
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And my specialism
is sort of the first half of the first
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millennium BC, the Assyrian Empire,
the Babylonian Empire.
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but for the project I'm working on,
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the period a bit earlier than that,
the late second millennium BC
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and the kingdom of Ugarit
on the Syrian coast.
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T: So we've mentioned the names
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project, an onomastics project,
what does onomastics mean?
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And what is the project?
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What are you trying to do?
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C: Yeah, so onomastics is the study of names.
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and we're looking specifically
at anthroponomastics
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So personal names, people's names.
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we're not looking at place names,
we’re not looking at animal names and so on.
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As Tony said, there are quite a lot of,
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names in, in the Old– personal names
in the Old Testament.
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and we're focusing on them.
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And if we think about the Old Testament,
as running, from sort of well,
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the project is focusing on the Old
Testament, from Abraham to Nehemiah.
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There's more in the Old Testament
than that.
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But, this is what we've chosen to,
to focus on, partly
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because there's just so much extra-
biblical material there
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for those periods.
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so that would be approximately 2000 BC
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down to about 400 BC.
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that's a long time.
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But we also have a lot of texts
from the time
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and place of the Old Testament
between those periods
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which we are using to populate a database.
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T: By texts from that period,
you don't mean biblical texts, you mean
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you're talking about extra-biblical texts
C: I mean extra-biblical texts
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C: Yeah, that's right.
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No, that's all right.
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So, many of these texts are written
on cuneiform tablets.
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So cuneiform is a writing system,
especially used to write
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the language, the main language
of Mesopotamia, Akkadian,
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which is a language
related to Hebrew and Aramaic and so on.
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It's also used to write many other
languages, much like the Latin script.
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Some of the texts that we're looking at
are written on ostraca,
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so little pieces of pottery,
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and also on, on other,
sometimes perishable materials.
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The aim
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is to set the biblical names,
the names we find in the Old Testament,
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in the context of the names that we find
in the text outside the Bible.
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So if you think about, I don't know
if you think about the name James,
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or Violet in our time
in sort of in the West,
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in Britain or in the US or Canada
or somewhere like that,
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these are common names
and we recognise them as such.
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Right.
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If we hear the name James,
we can draw certain conclusions.
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For example,
the person is likely to be a man.
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because we know the names
in our time and place,
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and it stands to reason
that someone like Abraham
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or someone like David, or someone
like Nehemiah would have a sense of the
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onomasticon, the pool of names,
the set of names, in their own time.
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One of our goals in the onomastics
project is to populate the pool of names
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from the Old Testament period,
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and then to think about the biblical names
in that context.
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T: Wow.
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And how long is this
project going to take?
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G: Well, it's a ten year project.
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We're about halfway through.
Is that right?
C: Thereabouts
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Terrifying.
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Let's get a move on.
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T: Terrifying because there's so little time left?
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C: Yes. Yes.
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It may seem like five years
is a short, a long time, but it isn't
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when we're doing this research.
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T: And you're looking at a couple of particular places
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where the names are from.
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George, do you want to say a little bit about those places?
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G: Well, I suppose we want to look at, names
from, as Caleb said, from 2000 BC
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to 400 BC
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but a lot of projects have already done
really good work in collecting
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names from various different sites
and time periods.
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So we're trying, well at the moment,
our main goal is to fill in the gaps,
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in the data where names, we have
all these texts that have been published,
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or not, but we don't have,
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a good database of the names
from those texts.
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and most of these texts,
are very different to the sorts of texts
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we get in the Bible.
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They're letters or legal documents
or just administrative lists.
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and so we at the moment are focusing on
two sites, from the second millennium BC.
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so Alalakh and Ugarit,
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Alalakh is in southern Turkey, and Ugarit is on the coast of modern day Syria
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and Alalakh
has texts from sort of early second
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millennium BC,
and the late second millennium BC as well.
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And Ugarit has texts from
the late second millennium BC,
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together sort of a couple thousand
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and by getting the names
from these times and places
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we are getting close to,
the period of, well, starting with Abraham
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going up through Judges and the conquest, well the conquest and then Judges.
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and we're not sort of
in the state of Israel,
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but we are in a neighboring state,
around the same time, the same place,
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and Ugarit in particular,
is a very international place.
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People are moving from all over the known world at the time from Egypt,
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from modern day
Turkey, from all over the place
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they're doing trade, they’re moving in and out.
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and so it's a really good place
to look at the sorts of names that were
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and the sorts of people that were
moving around in that time period.
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T: It's all really interesting.
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How will it help us
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in understanding names in the Bible
better?
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C: Yeah,
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so a straightforward way
that this helps us to understand things
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is just to see that
the names in the Bible fit in their time.
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So when we find that a name like Abram,
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is fairly common
really across the biblical period,
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not just in Abraham's own time,
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right
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there's this sense that, well,
this works, this makes sense.
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And, when we sort of populate
the onomasticon
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of the time and place
of the Old Testament,
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we can find exact correspondences
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between the Old Testament names
and the extra-biblical names.
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So there's a kind of,
I don't know, on the face of it
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correspondence there
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that sort of helps us to understand
what's going on in the Bible historically
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it helps us to situate the Bible
in its setting.
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But there are more specific ways
in which this helps us.
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An example
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would be the development
of language change.
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so language,
all languages change through time.
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This is clear.
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So if you studied Middle English or Old
English texts, you will see how English
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has changed over time.
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If you're familiar at all with the King
James Version of the Bible,
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you will recognise that King
James English is not modern English.
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Well, Hebrew in the language family,
the Semitic languages and the
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change through time.
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And you can see that going on in common
texts, but you can also see it going on
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in names.
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Names reflect the change of language through time.
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And it's possible on that basis,
to some degree, to establish
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a kind of relative chronological order
of where we expect names to occur in time
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across the biblical text on the basis
of those names
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occurring or not, or features,
linguistic features in names occurring
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or not across time, outside of the Bible,
in texts outside of the Bible.
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This is also true to some degree
with respect to the kinds of,
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words that we find in names.
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So names outside of the Bible
and inside of the Bible mean
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things, they're translatable.
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So they were probably transparent
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in their meaning to native speakers.
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and so, it's possible over time to see how
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elements of names, words in names
come in and out of names through time.
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Many of them are pretty stable
across time, but some of them occur
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in some periods and not in other periods.
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A good example of
this is the divine element,
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the divine name Yahweh,
which if you look at the Bible,
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is very uncommon in names in early periods
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in the Bible before say, well,
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Judges and certainly
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in, in 1 and 2 Samuel
and following.
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So we have you Jochebed, which has
the Yahwistic name, the name Yahweh in it.
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in, this is Aaron and Moses’s mother.
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And then we have Joshua, Yehoshua,
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whose name has the,
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name Yahweh in it.
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But those are the only two
in that early period.
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And increasingly, as time
goes, the name Yahweh appears in names
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more and more, as time goes on.
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So that by the later
period of Israelite history,
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just before the exile
and even during the exile,
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the name Yahweh occurs in people's names
very often, very commonly.
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So you can see how in that case, it's
a matter of a divine name
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appearing or not
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through time.
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So in that later period,
then you've got people like
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Hezekiah, Joshua,
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Jehoiakim and
and all of these are including
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the divine name.
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Yeah, yeah. Yes. Exactly.
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yes. Yeah.
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So Yehoyakin for example,
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means Yeho,
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which is a shortened form of Yahweh.
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‘will establish’ or ‘has established’,
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depending on how you analyse
the verb in Yehoyakin
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and this is a fairly common reality.
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T: Yeah.
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Great.
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So we'll hear more about that
as we go through the series.
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We've already picked up
on the idea that names have meanings.
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And, the meaning of names
seems to be particularly important
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in the Bible in a way
that it doesn't feel like it does to us.
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And yet, when children are given names,
even in our world, we often do
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think about their meanings.
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Tell us about your names.
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What do your names mean?
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G: Well, George is from the Greek word for farmer.
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There you go.
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T: Okay, great. But you’re not a farmer.
G: But I think
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one thing that's interesting about my name
is that I'm not a farmer,
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and the meaning of the name,
I don't think came into the choice
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of the name, but my father was reading
a biography of George Whitefield,
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when him and my mum
were thinking about names
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and apparently decided that sounds like,
that would be a good name.
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So not that I'm necessarily named
after George Whitefield, but,
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sort of, my name was inspired
by a figure in history.
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So that sort of meaning of the name, even
though it's not the sort of translatable
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meaning of the name, was important.
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But that's, yeah, that's my name.
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C: Yours is more interesting than mine
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G: Yours is funnier though
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C: Yeah, yeah. So Caleb means dog
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of course it's a biblical name.
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Or does it mean that?
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So given
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C: the way that George–
G: Trying to prove that it doesn't.
C: No it does
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It does.
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But, the way that George has
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just problematised
the whole notion of names meaning things,
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so my parents, I think, gave me the name
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because, of the biblical character
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and the idea that in Joshua,
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and other books, Caleb is a faithful person.
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He's a person who obeys the Lord,
trusts God.
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And I think the idea is that they gave me
the name in connection with their sense
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that that was an admirable
sort of person to be.
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So does the name to them mean dog,
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or does the name to them mean
the character behind the name
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in the Bible,
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and then
potentially it gets connected to me.
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Maybe I live up to it and maybe I don't.
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Probably not.
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But, anyway, the idea is that I would.
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So etymologically we might say
that is to say in terms of the,
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the original sense of the name,
where it comes from linguistically,
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Caleb comes from the Semitic word
meaning dog.
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It occurs in lots of Semitic languages.
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And it's not clear to me
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whether dog was a good thing
or a bad thing.
00:13:55:41 - 00:13:57:25
Maybe dog is a loyal notion.
00:13:57:25 - 00:14:01:46
Maybe dog is, I don't know, a low notion
of some kind, difficult to know.
00:14:01:46 - 00:14:04:16
G: And we do find lots of people
with that name
00:14:04:16 - 00:14:05:48
outside the Bible as well
00:14:05:48 - 00:14:07:16
from those sorts of times and places.
00:14:07:16 - 00:14:12:09
So obviously, presumably it wasn't an
awful thing to be called Caleb, but–
00:14:12:16 - 00:14:13:02
C: Yeah, maybe.
00:14:13:02 - 00:14:14:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:14:14:27 - 00:14:17:38
So it's worth just thinking about this
notion of a name’s meaning right?
00:14:17:38 - 00:14:20:32
Sort of its etymological sense, its original sense,
00:14:20:32 - 00:14:25:10
we might say its original linguistic
sense, is not necessarily the same thing
00:14:25:10 - 00:14:28:25
as the meaning, the associative
meaning that it has in the minds of its
00:14:29:12 - 00:14:31:43
bearers or bestowers of names.
00:14:32:41 - 00:14:35:08
So my name etymologically
00:14:35:08 - 00:14:38:08
means Caleb, but there's a connection
with a biblical character.
00:14:38:24 - 00:14:39:24
No sorry it means, dog,
00:14:39:24 - 00:14:41:20
but there's a connection with the biblical character.
00:14:41:20 - 00:14:45:21
T: Yeah, mine apparently means the smallest of a litter of pigs.
00:14:45:27 - 00:14:48:27
And I have absolutely no idea
why my parents gave me this name.
00:14:48:43 - 00:14:50:39
I think it has no particular significance.
00:14:50:39 - 00:14:52:43
I think they just liked the sound of it.
00:14:52:43 - 00:14:56:05
But I never think about the meaning of it
in normal life.
00:14:56:05 - 00:14:59:42
It's only in these kind of conversations
where it's an even funnier name
00:14:59:42 - 00:15:01:47
than dog.
00:15:01:47 - 00:15:03:45
Yeah.
00:15:03:45 - 00:15:06:28
At least
a dog has connotations of faithfulness.
00:15:06:28 - 00:15:10:07
I'm not sure what the what connotations
a runt has,
00:15:11:37 - 00:15:12:37
but there we are.
00:15:12:37 - 00:15:15:30
I ended up fairly tall,
so it wasn't too bad, but,
00:15:17:03 - 00:15:18:43
in day to day life,
00:15:18:43 - 00:15:22:14
we may know the meaning of our names,
but we don't think about it.
00:15:22:31 - 00:15:25:31
Now, obviously this is speculation, but
00:15:26:05 - 00:15:28:40
to what extent do you think that would
also be true in the ancient world?
00:15:28:40 - 00:15:32:00
Do you think people, Caleb, for instance,
do you think he would have
00:15:34:10 - 00:15:35:36
kind of gone through life with that sense,
00:15:35:36 - 00:15:38:36
maybe that sense of faithfulness or,
00:15:40:28 - 00:15:41:44
or somebody else
00:15:41:44 - 00:15:45:27
with, whose name has a very distinctive
meaning,
00:15:45:39 - 00:15:48:27
Abraham, ‘exalted father’,
00:15:48:27 - 00:15:51:48
maybe he was aware of the meaning
of his name, because it was so ironic
00:15:51:48 - 00:15:54:48
for most of his life
that he wasn't a father at all.
00:15:56:21 - 00:16:00:00
Or do you think people,
as in the modern world, it's a label,
00:16:00:00 - 00:16:01:05
it's part of our identity.
00:16:01:05 - 00:16:05:17
But the meaning is, it's
just it's something in the background?
00:16:06:23 - 00:16:10:14
G: Yeah it’s difficult. There is this concept called
nominative determinism
00:16:11:00 - 00:16:16:05
whereby I, sort of making it up,
but sort of like people with the surname
00:16:16:05 - 00:16:19:43
Judge are statistically more likely
to go into the legal profession
00:16:19:43 - 00:16:22:19
than people with other surnames or that sort of thing.
00:16:22:19 - 00:16:24:49
T: The first marine biologist I ever met
was called Jim Dolphin.
00:16:24:49 - 00:16:26:29
G: There you go. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
00:16:26:29 - 00:16:30:25
So it seems that there is a way that
if people do know the meaning of the word,
00:16:30:36 - 00:16:33:10
their names, or if their names do have obvious meaning,
00:16:33:10 - 00:16:37:28
that maybe somehow it does sort of tend
to influence their decisions as they,
00:16:37:35 - 00:16:40:25
as they’re growing up, perhaps.
00:16:40:25 - 00:16:42:39
It would be interesting to think about how we
00:16:42:39 - 00:16:45:33
how we think of people
we know that do have names
00:16:45:33 - 00:16:50:12
with obvious meaning in our language,
like Hope or Lily or something.
00:16:51:36 - 00:16:54:36
My experience, if I think about it, is I'm
not often
00:16:54:36 - 00:16:57:37
thinking about the meaning of a friend's name,
00:16:58:38 - 00:17:02:15
even if it does have a very obvious
meaning in the language. For me,
00:17:02:17 - 00:17:05:48
when I'm thinking of someone called Hope,
I'm thinking of the person
00:17:05:48 - 00:17:08:48
and not the meaning of the name,
but when it come, when it
00:17:09:04 - 00:17:11:38
in certain instances I might think, oh,
that's funny, she's called Hope
00:17:11:38 - 00:17:14:34
and she's lost
all hope in something or whatever it is.
00:17:14:34 - 00:17:16:47
T: And I guess actually
just on the back of that there,
00:17:16:47 - 00:17:20:41
there are some names that are more likely,
I suppose, because the meaning is so
00:17:21:04 - 00:17:22:46
very obvious, like Hope,
00:17:22:46 - 00:17:25:09
we don't even have to stop
and think about it.
00:17:25:09 - 00:17:28:09
But a name like Grace or Joy,
00:17:28:21 - 00:17:31:43
I think about the meaning of their names
more often than I would
00:17:32:12 - 00:17:34:19
George, George the farmer or whatever.
00:17:34:19 - 00:17:35:10
G: Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:36:23 - 00:17:37:16
C: Yeah.
00:17:37:16 - 00:17:40:16
Well it's worth just thinking about the fact that
00:17:40:41 - 00:17:43:41
in our language, in English,
00:17:44:22 - 00:17:46:41
the meanings of names are more readily
available to us
00:17:46:41 - 00:17:50:08
in common speech
than maybe in other languages.
00:17:50:08 - 00:17:53:08
And I think this is certainly true
for Hebrew in the Bible.
00:17:53:39 - 00:17:57:35
and in related languages
outside of the Bible, we're finding that
00:17:58:26 - 00:18:01:31
names regularly have pretty transparent
meanings to native speakers,
00:18:02:24 - 00:18:05:20
in the sources that we're reading,
which is quite different from
00:18:05:20 - 00:18:08:39
our situation,
which means that we have to sort of
00:18:08:42 - 00:18:11:44
take a step back and think, well,
how would they have been engaging
00:18:11:44 - 00:18:14:10
with names
a bit differently then than we would?
00:18:14:10 - 00:18:17:21
T: So it would be more like the Hope, Joy, Grace,
00:18:17:34 - 00:18:20:29
kind of names than the Caleb, George
G: Yeah, with basically every name
00:18:20:29 - 00:18:21:15
C: Exactly.
00:18:21:15 - 00:18:22:07
Right, right.
00:18:22:07 - 00:18:24:30
G: But we don't translate the names
in our Bible.
00:18:24:30 - 00:18:26:33
So we get these,
you know, when people are doing
00:18:26:33 - 00:18:29:02
their readings on Sunday morning,
they stumble across the names.
00:18:29:02 - 00:18:31:38
Everyone thinks it's quite funny,
but yeah, we don't translate the names,
00:18:31:38 - 00:18:34:31
whereas they would have had obvious meaning
00:18:34:31 - 00:18:39:03
most of them to the original readers
and hearers of the Bible.
00:18:39:04 - 00:18:39:16
T: Yeah.
00:18:40:14 - 00:18:40:46
C: It's clear that when
00:18:40:46 - 00:18:43:46
people engage with names,
00:18:44:41 - 00:18:47:41
the meanings of which are clear to them
00:18:48:03 - 00:18:49:32
that in their minds
00:18:49:32 - 00:18:52:46
and I think in our minds we can engage
with names like Joy and so on
00:18:53:27 - 00:18:58:40
in a purely kind of name
sense, label-for-person sense
00:18:58:40 - 00:19:01:16
and then also in
a kind of lexical sense,
00:19:01:16 - 00:19:02:33
where we're thinking about the meaning of it.
00:19:02:33 - 00:19:06:28
We can move back and forth along
a spectrum between those two extremes
00:19:06:48 - 00:19:12:07
in our minds, and certain situations
can flag up the lexical meaning of a name.
00:19:12:25 - 00:19:15:01
Joy is a joyful notion.
00:19:15:01 - 00:19:18:01
Violet is a flower and also a colour
and so on.
00:19:19:19 - 00:19:21:21
And we can use that,
00:19:21:21 - 00:19:24:21
we can activate that aspect of our brains,
that active,
00:19:24:21 - 00:19:27:21
that aspect of our knowledge of the
onomasticon.
00:19:27:28 - 00:19:30:28
But equally, we can simply refer
to a person who is called Violet
00:19:30:39 - 00:19:33:22
or refer to a person who's called George,
even though we now
00:19:33:22 - 00:19:35:26
we know that his name means
farmer. Maybe I'll never
00:19:36:40 - 00:19:38:26
yeah, maybe always think of that now.
00:19:38:26 - 00:19:39:48
But George is not a farmer he’s
00:19:39:48 - 00:19:42:13
an academic Assyriologist.
00:19:42:13 - 00:19:44:48
Yes, but we can move back and forth
between these senses.
00:19:44:48 - 00:19:45:13
Right.
00:19:45:13 - 00:19:48:49
Name is a label for a person
versus name being
00:19:49:28 - 00:19:52:17
a word in the language.
00:19:52:17 - 00:19:55:14
And it seems likely that there was this
00:19:55:14 - 00:19:59:11
kind of moving back and forth
going on in the ancient world.
00:19:59:11 - 00:20:03:16
We find this in the Bible, for example,
when children are named
00:20:03:16 - 00:20:06:42
and some connection is drawn
between the circumstances of birth
00:20:07:25 - 00:20:10:25
and the meaning of the name
or the sounds of the name.
00:20:11:17 - 00:20:14:45
and this is, you’ll recognise
this is a common theme, particularly
00:20:14:45 - 00:20:18:03
in the book of Genesis, but also to
some degree in other books as well.
00:20:18:46 - 00:20:21:40
T: And we'll talk particularly
about that in our next episode.
00:20:23:21 - 00:20:25:44
Just going back to the nominative determinism thing
00:20:25:44 - 00:20:29:00
there’s a—and maybe we'll talk
about this next episode as well—
00:20:29:00 - 00:20:32:00
but let's just briefly look at it now.
00:20:32:21 - 00:20:34:43
There is the sense
00:20:34:43 - 00:20:39:07
of some people in the Bible
having names that are almost prophetic
00:20:39:46 - 00:20:43:32
for them, maybe is the best way of putting it so
00:20:44:00 - 00:20:46:16
so Caleb,
00:20:46:16 - 00:20:49:03
you know, he's called Caleb as a young kid
00:20:49:03 - 00:20:51:48
and did his parents
have a connotation of faithfulness there?
00:20:51:48 - 00:20:54:48
But he grows up to be a faithful man.
00:20:55:44 - 00:20:58:44
Abraham, ‘exalted father’,
00:20:58:46 - 00:21:00:36
the Lord says your name is going to be
00:21:00:36 - 00:21:03:03
Abraham,
00:21:03:03 - 00:21:05:29
which is ‘father of many’
00:21:05:29 - 00:21:08:12
I think. Okay.
00:21:08:12 - 00:21:09:42
That's how it's often, often said.
00:21:09:42 - 00:21:11:35
We'll come back to that.
00:21:11:35 - 00:21:14:00
and then eventually
he does become a father, but,
00:21:14:00 - 00:21:16:49
maybe he's a bit of a special case,
but there are,
00:21:16:49 - 00:21:19:07
so there are people who
seem to live out their name,
00:21:20:20 - 00:21:22:19
and other people who don't.
00:21:22:19 - 00:21:25:38
So when we're reading Scripture,
should we be
00:21:26:06 - 00:21:30:18
should we be always reading with an eye
to the meaning of their name
00:21:30:40 - 00:21:35:18
or is it okay
just to be thinking of them as labels?
00:21:37:26 - 00:21:39:00
how does all of that work?
00:21:39:00 - 00:21:39:42
C: that's very helpful.
00:21:39:42 - 00:21:41:29
T: Maybe that's an over-complicated question.
00:21:41:29 - 00:21:42:21
C: No, no, it's very helpful.
00:21:42:21 - 00:21:43:14
I think a good guide to
00:21:43:14 - 00:21:46:38
this is just whether the text is already
making something of the name.
00:21:47:05 - 00:21:47:29
Right.
00:21:47:29 - 00:21:50:00
If that's already
a live issue in the text
00:21:50:00 - 00:21:52:43
then, and I think actually Abraham is a good example,
00:21:52:43 - 00:21:57:09
however you analyse that name
etymologically, the text does
00:21:57:09 - 00:22:02:49
make a connection between Avram ‘exalted
father’ and Avraham, ‘father of-’
00:22:03:15 - 00:22:07:24
well, I think it's still ‘exalted father’,
but with an added ‘h’
00:22:07:38 - 00:22:10:41
which is very interesting,
but it sounds like hamon,
00:22:11:05 - 00:22:14:38
which is this word from multitude
which also occurs in the context.
00:22:14:38 - 00:22:18:07
you will be a father of a multitude
of peoples, of nations.
00:22:19:01 - 00:22:20:27
And so there's a sound connection.
00:22:20:27 - 00:22:23:30
So it's important to recognise that
the connections made in the Bible between
00:22:23:30 - 00:22:26:36
names and circumstances around birth
and the person's life
00:22:26:36 - 00:22:29:44
and so on, are not merely around
the meaning of the name,
00:22:30:03 - 00:22:33:48
but also around the sounds in connection
with other words in the context.
00:22:34:26 - 00:22:38:02
So this is a I think this is a fairly common reality.
00:22:38:02 - 00:22:41:08
So you can see it in the case of Samuel,
and I think you can see it also
00:22:41:08 - 00:22:44:08
in the shift from Avram to Avraham.
00:22:44:11 - 00:22:47:31
The etymological meaning between Avram
and Avraham, I think, is
00:22:47:33 - 00:22:49:01
I think they're identical.
00:22:49:01 - 00:22:51:33
And in some Semitic languages
we have the addition of an ‘h’
00:22:51:33 - 00:22:55:05
in a word like
this raham versus ram
00:22:55:31 - 00:22:59:20
ram is this exalted
word with the ‘h’ added raham.
00:23:00:30 - 00:23:01:17
this is
00:23:01:17 - 00:23:04:26
not doesn't change
the meaning of the word etymologically,
00:23:04:32 - 00:23:07:26
but it does draw a connection
then between another,
00:23:07:26 - 00:23:11:20
between the name and another term
in the context in which it's explained.
00:23:11:42 - 00:23:13:34
And so there's a sound connection.
00:23:13:34 - 00:23:17:26
So it's worth thinking, sort
of broadening our scope of understanding
00:23:17:38 - 00:23:20:38
of the relationship
between names and the reasons
00:23:20:38 - 00:23:24:26
for which they're given to include
not just etymology or lexemes
00:23:24:27 - 00:23:28:46
and meaning,
but also sounds. Broadly correspondence
00:23:28:46 - 00:23:32:06
is the order of the day rather
than a particular type of correspondence.
00:23:32:06 - 00:23:33:33
T: Yeah. Right.
00:23:33:33 - 00:23:36:22
So that's very interesting about Abraham
00:23:36:22 - 00:23:39:22
because that makes me wonder if
00:23:39:25 - 00:23:43:01
if Avram and Avraham
really mean the same thing
00:23:44:07 - 00:23:46:28
and yet the Lord wants him
00:23:46:28 - 00:23:49:28
to think of himself as Avraham.
00:23:50:24 - 00:23:53:48
Is that hearing of
00:23:53:48 - 00:23:58:08
of the sound
therefore going to more remind him of
00:23:58:28 - 00:24:01:44
what the Lord is going to do for him
than his original name did?
00:24:01:44 - 00:24:03:43
I don't know,
I mean, this is complete speculation
00:24:03:43 - 00:24:07:07
about what's going on in Abraham's mind
a long time ago.
00:24:07:13 - 00:24:09:28
but yeah, that's very interesting.
00:24:09:28 - 00:24:12:28
C: There's a very interesting case
in Samuel,
00:24:13:02 - 00:24:15:27
whose name means, ‘name of God’,
00:24:15:27 - 00:24:16:22
Shmuel,
00:24:18:21 - 00:24:19:31
it means ‘name of God.’
00:24:19:31 - 00:24:22:35
And in the context
of the giving of the name Samuel
00:24:24:15 - 00:24:27:10
there’s not so much being made
in the name of God.
00:24:27:10 - 00:24:30:48
rather, when Hannah names him,
she uses the Hebrew word
00:24:30:48 - 00:24:33:48
for ask repeatedly, sha’al.
00:24:35:36 - 00:24:39:24
In fact, five times
in the context of Samuel's naming,
00:24:39:46 - 00:24:45:03
sha’al is used to explain the circumstances
of Samuel being born,
00:24:45:16 - 00:24:48:15
and even to explain the giving of the name.
Sha’al,
00:24:48:15 - 00:24:51:49
‘to ask’, she says, I asked him from God,
and the Lord is given him.
00:24:52:23 - 00:24:55:23
And so she's called his name Shmuel,
‘name of God’.
00:24:55:49 - 00:24:57:45
Now, of course,
there are theological connections
00:24:57:45 - 00:25:00:18
and etymological connections
between name of God
00:25:00:18 - 00:25:03:04
and the circumstances
of God's work in Samuel's life,
00:25:03:04 - 00:25:04:34
naturally.
00:25:04:34 - 00:25:08:34
but she makes this connection and I think
on the basis of sound similarities,
00:25:08:45 - 00:25:12:49
sha’al and the forms
in which it occurs in 1 Samuel 1
00:25:13:40 - 00:25:18:16
sounds similar to Shmuel, they share
all of the same sounds.
00:25:18:16 - 00:25:19:26
T: Apart from the ‘m’ sound
00:25:19:26 - 00:25:20:02
C: Yeah
00:25:20:02 - 00:25:22:28
C: The ‘m’ sound
T: Which is quite an introduction into his name.
00:25:22:28 - 00:25:25:47
C: Yeah, it is,
but there's an interesting thing here
00:25:25:47 - 00:25:31:01
that, the last instance of
of the word sha’al ‘to ask’ in 1 Samuel
00:25:31:01 - 00:25:34:16
1 is a passive participle sha’ul,
00:25:34:16 - 00:25:37:46
which means ‘asked one’, ‘one asked for’.
00:25:37:46 - 00:25:40:46
And she refers to him
as one asked for from God.
00:25:41:00 - 00:25:44:20
But sha’ul sounds exactly like Saul.
00:25:44:27 - 00:25:48:09
King Saul, who,
as we keep reading in 1 Samuel,
00:25:48:10 - 00:25:51:49
becomes a major figure in relation
to Samuel himself.
00:25:51:49 - 00:25:56:03
And so there's this flagging literarily
in the text of a major character
00:25:56:03 - 00:25:56:41
that will come up.
00:25:56:41 - 00:25:58:34
And if you can think about this sort of
00:25:58:34 - 00:26:01:34
from the point of view
of having never read that story before,
00:26:01:49 - 00:26:06:15
it's a sort of latent notion that arises
again further along in the story
00:26:06:25 - 00:26:09:25
and you may recognise it
if you've read from beginning to end,
00:26:09:30 - 00:26:12:33
or if you read it already
before you see it and you think,
00:26:12:33 - 00:26:16:27
‘Ah Saul is coming up,’ and there's
this connection already between Samuel and Saul
00:26:16:27 - 00:26:18:48
so this is part of the literary
brilliance of the biblical text.
00:26:18:48 - 00:26:19:49
T: Yeah.
00:26:19:49 - 00:26:20:39
Brilliant.
00:26:20:39 - 00:26:22:38
Well, that's a great start to this series
00:26:22:38 - 00:26:24:37
I think, we've got a lot more
to talk about.
00:26:24:37 - 00:26:29:30
And next time we'll be talking about
the giving of names more specifically
00:26:29:41 - 00:26:33:39
at birth, why people are given
the names they are, what those names mean.
00:26:34:04 - 00:26:35:32
Maybe some of the changing patterns.
00:26:35:32 - 00:26:37:41
But for now, great, thank you very much.