Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Ian, does your method allow you to pin any name, Yahwistic or 
otherwise, on to a Jewish woman, or for that matter a Jewish man, from 
the first temple era? I ask in case the unwary may take a possible 
lack of convincing evidence for Yahwistic names for women as more 
significant than it actually would be. So, perhaps you could list some 
Jewish names, especially women's names, from the first temple era for 
which you have evidence which you consider good.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
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Subject: Re: Theophoric names for women?
Author:  <mc2499 AT mclink.it> at Internet 
Date:    19/12/1999 01:36


Thanks to Todd and Baruch for their indications of female theophoric names.

Stig's opinion was that it is questionable that there are any theophoric 
women names in the OT. What do you think with regard to the names that Todd 
and Baruch uncovered?

And Niels Peter wrote:

>Then the next question must be: What about theophoric names of women in 
>inscriptions from Palestine in the Iron Age?

This is getting a little ahead of me, but yes that's basically what 
interests me, any examples of anything, given Chronicles' late writing and 
probable relatively late writing of Kings, that can pin a yahwistic name 
for a woman to the first temple era?

The best I can find are the papyri from Elephantine circa 420 BCE, which 
seem to contain theophoric names only with a yahwistic or an elohistic 
component, notwithstanding the presence of female deity names, Anath-Yahu 
and Anath-Bethel (perhaps the same deity) and a possible son of Yahweh, 
'Ashim-Bethel. This last, when read in conjunction with Amos 8:14 might 
suggest that the Yahwistic people of Elephantine had connections with 
Samaria. This is by no means clear, but when Yedoniah sought help from both 
Jerusalem and Samaria, it was Samaria that supplied the help and there 
seems to have only been silence from Jerusalem.


Ian