Nir Cohen:
1. You wrote: “i do not wish to comment on your analysis ofthe name rachel.
as usual, it is based on suppositions. i do not know ofparents who would give
their daughter the name pulverize-god or millstone-god.in fact, theoforic
female names are not that common.”
You make a good point that theophoric names were more commonfor men than for
women in the ancient world. But this is the Bible, so we might expect many
Biblical women’s names tohave a theophoric.
RX/mill-stone would normally be thought to have positiveovertones to Rachel’s
father, Laban [a native west Semitic speaker in easternSyria]. Consider the
name/title of oneof Pharaoh’s top officials at Genesis 40: 5: )PH [“Baker”].
Both RX and )PHrelate to the making of bread, which is a necessity of life, and
which normallyhas positive overtones. Only later do wefind out that the
)PH/Baker is impaled by Pharaoh [Genesis 40: 22], and thatRachel doesn’t even
get the basic honor of being buried at the Patriarchs’Hebron, nor is her heroic
son Joseph named by Jacob/“Israel” to be the nextleader of the early Hebrews.
Since RX/mill-stonewould ordinarily have positive overtones, Laban could easily
have approved ofthe west Semitic/Hebrew meaning of RX-L. [And see the somewhat
related meaning of Laban’s own name at #4 below.] Besides, in order for the
name to also makesense in Hurrian [for the benefit of Rachel’s mother, who
presumably was not anative west Semitic speaker but rather was a local woman
from Bronze Ageeastern Syria], one is limited as to what names might be chosen
for theirnewborn daughter.
2. You wrote: “though i recognize that her name mightsomehow have to do with
the story of laban's teraphim which she stole (arabicRX = gone ??? compare
with TERAX'sname).”
Your comment about the name TRX is fascinating. I see the root of the west
Semitic/Hebrewmeaning of Terah’s names as indeed being RX, as a shortened form
of the Hebrewverb )RX. The Hebrew verb )RX (see forexample Job 34: 8) means
“to journey, to wander, to take a long caravan trip”. “You wander” or “you
will wander” would be T)RX. For a name, the full-form T)RX could beshortened
to just TRX, meaning “You wander, journey, take a long caravan trip”. That west
Semitic meaning perfectly reflectsTerah’s long caravan trip journey from Canaan
way out east to far-away Ur, andthen only making it back as far as eastern
Syria on that long caravan tripjourney. Yet I don’t see how )RX,meaning “to
wander or take a long caravan trip”, fits Rachel, or would havebeen a name that
Rachel’s parents would have chosen for her. [The root of the Hurrian meaning
of TRX isTRX, not RX [or )RX], so that does not apply to the name “Rachel”.]
Rather, the more natural west Semitic/Hebrewmeaning of RX in the name RX -L is
“millstone”, a word which in the ordinary casehas primarily positive overtones,
though it could turn out to be negative.
3. You wrote: “but i tend to assume that the name was therein the first
place, and the "explaining story" came later.”
But there is no “explaining story” for the name “Rachel”. Or for the name
“Leah”. I begin to fear that you may subscribe to thescholarly theory that the
author of Genesis 17: 5-6 allegedly had no idea whatthe real meaning of the
name “Abraham” was, and he allegedly made up a falseetymology and meaning for
that name centuries after the name “Abraham” hadalready come into the Hebrew
tradition of the Patriarchal narratives. But the name “Abraham” is never
attested inthe ancient world outside of the Bible. The name “Abraham” doesn’t
exist outside of the naming story at Genesis17: 5-6, which in my opinion tells
us precisely, and accurately, what the name “Abraham”means.
4. You wrote: “same is, perhaps, לבן ("owner of aheart") and the story about
גנב את לבו.”
If you’re switching now to analyzing the name “Laban”/LBN, I’mafraid I don’t
follow your reference to “owner of a heart”. But note the phrase NLBNH LBNYM
at Genesis11: 3, relating to making bricks to build the Tower of Babel, which
featuresLBN LBN twice in succession. One ofLaban’s most famous actions in the
narrative is that at Genesis 31: 44-46 Labanand Jacob pile up stones, somewhat
akin to making a mini-Tower of Babel as itwere, as a peaceful border of sorts
between their two peoples. If the west Semitic/Hebrew etymology andmeaning of
the name LBN refers to “white bricks”, then perhaps we should not beso
surprised that his younger daughter’s name RX -L refers to a “millstone”. Both
bricks and millstones are hard objectsthat are usually viewed positively, yet
in the Tower of Babel story [which longpost-dates the Patriarchal narratives]
the building of that Tower with bricksturned out to be a negative thing.
5. You wrote: “in general i am skeptic about the hiddenassumption you are
making, that biblical names are necessarily"supposed" to reflect a property of
their bearers.”
But based on what the text of the Patriarchal narratives s-a-y-s , look at all
the personal names Ilisted in my response to Chavoux Luyt that are portrayed
asclosely relating to the character’s actions in the narrative: (i) Abraham,
(ii) Sarah, (iii) Ishmael, (iv)Isaac, (v) Esau, (vi) Jacob [not to mention
“Israel”, which Chavoux Luytcharacterizes as being a nickname], and (vi) Reuben
[plus Jacob’s other 11sons]. Why wouldn’t we expect the names “Leah”and
“Rachel” to be the same? You arewell aware of Rachel’s sad fate. Shouldn’twe
then expect to see a premonition of that in her name? By contrast, Leah ends
up, against the odds,winning the grand prize, as her son Judah is named as the
proper successor toJacob/“Israel”. Shouldn’t we thereforeexpect the name
“Leah” to be more positive than the name “Rachel”? [I see the name “Leah”/L)H
as being L -)H : L-)X, and as meaning “Belonging to God”, which is a very
positive meaning.] That’s the way the above 7 names work. Why shouldn’t the
names “Leah” and “Rachel”be expected to work that way as well?
6. You wrote: “they aresupposed to reflect their parents (mostly, mother's)
attitude on, or before,birth. suffice it to bring examples: izchak, or moses,
or the 12 tribes, etcetc.”
As to the name “Isaac”, what the text says is this. At Genesis 17: 17, Abraham
[not Sarah] laughsat God’s notion that old Sarah might still be able to bear a
child. Then just two verses later, at Genesis 17:19, God tells Abraham that
Abraham is to call the son that oldSarah will bear “Isaac”. Thus the name
“Isaac”is portrayed in the text as first and foremost reflecting the divine
attitudetoward the father [Abraham], rather than as primarily reflecting the
mother’sattitude regarding the birth. Yes, Sarahlaughs at Genesis 18: 12-13 at
God’s reiteration that old Sarah will yet bear achild, and Sarah laughs with
delight at Genesis 21: 6 upon Isaac’s actualbirth. Yet the first “laugh”
regarding oldSarah bearing a son, which precipitates God dictating that a son
to be borne bySarah shall be called “Isaac” [which means “he laughs” in
Hebrew], is Abraham’slaugh, not Sarah’s laugh.
7. You wrote: “nor do i seehow isaac ties the name leah to a cow, other than
the fact that in israelichildren books in the 1950s this would be a fit name
for a cow. maybe he read some of those. but even thesebooks are gone now, and
cows are only discussed as food items.”
Isaac Fried’s later post sees the name “Leah” as meaning “heavy(pregnant?)
sheep”. It’s nice to seethat Isaac Fried does not rely on the Assyrian word
letu for “cow”, since suchAssyrian word bears no resemblance to the name
“Leah”, or on the Arabic wordfor “bull”, since (i) Laban wouldn’t call a
newborn daughter a “bull”, forheaven’s sake, and (ii) Arabic isn’t relevant to
Bronze Age eastern Syria inany event. But if I understand IsaacFried’s own
explanation of the name “Leah”, he seems to be trying to tie L)H/“Leah”to (WL,
meaning a “ewe” or “cow” that is nursing. But (WL is not at all like L)H as to
theHebrew letters involved. [But perhaps Ihave completely misunderstood what
Isaac Fried is saying there.]
I myself do not think it makes sense to view the westSemitic/Hebrew meanings of
the names “Leah” and “Rachel” as being “Cow” and “Ewe”. Certainly the names of
the last two HebrewMatriarchs have more significance than that!
JimStinehart
Evanston,Illinois
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