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September 14, 2007
Names of the Gods in Some Epigraphic Hebrew
John F. Hobbins at Ancient Hebrew Poetry is teaching us the "144 Names of God in the Hebrew Bible." I thought it might be fun to list the ten of so names of gods (it depends on how you count) that were current in Judah before the exile. I take the readings more or less uncritically from Zevit. Many of these names are alternative appellatives for the same god. But many are not.
From a Judean Cave Inscription near Ein Geti (c. 700 BCE)
יהוה (Yahweh)
אדני (Adoni)
אשר (Ashur [cursed])
From Khirbet El-Qôm (c. 725 BCE)
יהוה (Yahweh)
אשרתה (Asheratah or his Asherat)
From Kuntillet 'Ajrud (inscriptions on walls and pithoi) (850-750 BCE)
אל (El)
שם אל (Name of El, in context likely equals Ba'al)
בעל (Ba'al)
יהוה התימן (Yahweh of the Teiman)
יהוה שמרן (Yahweh of Shomron)
אשרת (Asherat)
אשרתה (Asheratah or his Asherat)
From Tomb at Khirbet Beit Lei (8th-7th century BCE)
יהוה (Yahweh)
יה (Yah)
אל (El, equals Yahweh)
אלהי ירשלם (Elohi [god]of Jerusalem)
אל ירשלם (El [god]of Jerusalem)
Of these, only the tomb graffiti from Khirbet Beit Lei and possibly the Judean Cave Inscription, come close to reflecting any of the theologies we see in the Hebrew Bible. I said that many of these names represent the same god, but I do wonder if the people who wrote these various inscriptions saw Yahweh of the Teiman, Yahweh of Shomron and El of Jerusalem as the same god. And is El at Kuntillet 'Ajrud the same god as El at Khirbet Beit Lei? שם אל at Kuntillet 'Ajrud almost certainly stands for Ba'al. I discussed this last issue back in January.
Update: I took a shoot I one of John's suggests in a new post. See John's comment below.
Reference:
Posted by Duane Smith at September 14, 2007 8:45 AM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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Comments
Thanks for this, Duane.
Another set of divine names are known from the Elephantine papyri. Once again there is overlap, but basically they don't match those we find in the biblical documents.
In my series I'm using the term "name" in the sense of the 99 names of Allah. That is, adjectives and participles, plus or minus a complement, qualify as divine names if they are stand-alone descriptors of deity. There might be a few of these in the epigraphic material that would be worth looking at.
Posted by: John Hobbins at September 14, 2007 11:45 AM
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