Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

There are problems with your assumptions, where you are using your assumptions as proof.

In Tanakh there are stories of non-Israelites who believed and followed YHWH, and so would have no problem naming their children in honor of YHWH. One of the most famous was Caleb, a contemporary of Joshua, whose family settled around Hebron. His nephew (TNY)L was the first judge who saved Israel from a foreign oppressor (Judges 3:10). Therefore, without any proof, you cannot claim that )WRYH, David’s soldier, was not from one such family, therefore was not named in honor of YHWH.

You have absolutely no evidence about the background of %RYH, David’s scribe. Therefore your assumptions can be considered as off-the-wall. Do you have evidence that %RYH was not one of the 400–600 men who joined David while he was fleeing Saul? Or that he wasn’t David’s scribe when David ruled in Hebron, before taking Jerusalem?

You ignore that the endings -YH and -YHW were used interchangeably, both referring to YHWH, so that MYKYHW in Judges 17:1, 4 is the same as if he had spelled it MYKYH, so that name fits your criteria.

You do sample biasing, ruling out earlier evidence just because its record survives only in a book that was written later. That book was written when the Israelite genealogy tables were still extant (burned in 70 AD when the temple was burned) so there’s no reason to assume that (ZRYH 1 Chronicles 2:8 is not an accurate record of someone who preceded David.

And now someone has pointed out that )BYH was one of the sons of Saul.

It’s true that names change in popularity, but you have no evidence that David invented a whole class of names.

Repeatedly you’ve been told not to treat your assumptions and opinions as evidence, and this is another example. Without evidence, your assumptions and opinions are just hot air.

And as you pointed out, I need to be more careful in vetting my evidence before posting it here.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 11:11 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

Someone sent me off-list a Biblical name that precedes II Samuel, and that is a west Semitic name that ends in -YH and honors YHWH:  )BYH at I Samuel 8: 2.  It is the name of one of Saul's sons.

 

 

To the best of my knowledge, that is the only name of that particular type from Genesis through II Samuel other than the names of several of King David’s sons.

 

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois