Video Series: Communal Culture Episode 3: Names and Naming

⬤Brian: Des and Jenny were a young couple with Wycliffe Bible Translators. They were sent to a small remote village to translate the gospel of Matthew into the local language. They decided to skip the long boring genealogy that opens the book and come back to it later. With the help of a local, they translated the whole book and finally circled back to those opening verses. When they finished, their helpers said they must share what they had translated that day with the village! The room that night was packed. When they gathered, the people listened intently to the words: “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

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⬤Brian: Shalom! Welcome to Bridges to the Bible! My name is: Brian Johnson.

⬤Marcia: And my name is: Marcia Johnson. So why were the people so excited about this part of the passage?

⬤Brian: We think that it’s kind of boring but to them, it was actually really important. Their interest in Jesus up to this point had been kind of tepid. But when they heard this genealogy, their eyes just lit up! You see, for them they were thinking: well, this Jesus you’ve been talking about, he’s not a real person; it’s just a fictional character. But now seeing a genealogy, where he came from, his background, and how long, how deep of a genealogy, they realized he must be someone really important, and we want to learn more about him.

⬤Marcia: Wow, it’s amazing how God can use a list of names like that.

⬤Brian: Right. This is part three in the communal nature of Biblical culture series. We’re going to look at names. You can go to BridgesToTheBible.com to download the episode guide, which includes notes to follow along, discussion questions, and more.

⬤Marcia: In the first part, we looked at some aspects of eastern versus western culture. Last time we zeroed in on honor versus shame. And today we’re going to look at the significance of names and naming.

⬤Brian: So we’re going to talk about: what are names, in terms of identity; we’re going to look at the meaning of names; we’re going to look at the significance of naming and renaming; we’re going to look at lists of names (i.e. genealogies); and finally we’re going to talk about the most important name: God’s name.

⬤Marcia: So what is a name?

⬤Brian: On a simple level a name is some sort of identifier, a label that we give. Names can be for people but also for objects, organizations, products, whatever, pets. But names are more than just a label; there’s something more behind it. For instance, to give you a couple names: what do you think of, what’s your impression when I say the name Mother Teresa?

⬤Marcia: Ah, yes.

⬤Brian: Or Adolf Hitler?

⬤Marcia: Ooh…

⬤Brian: So names are more than just a label. There’s an impression behind them.

⬤Marcia: So what you’re saying is one’s name is attached to it, their identity, their reputation.

⬤Brian: Exactly. In the Bible they use, instead of reputation, they will use the phrase a “good name”. So if you have a good reputation, you have a “good name”. Think back to what we talked about with honor and shame last time. To have a good name is to be someone who is honored; to have a bad name is someone who is shamed.

⬤Marcia: Let’s look at a couple examples of this.

⬤Brian: Alright.

⬤Marcia: Ecclesiastes 7:1: “A good name is better than precious ointment.”

⬤Brian: Or in Genesis 6:4: “The Nephilim were in the earth in those days. These were the mighty men who were of old the men of renown.” And that phrase “men of renown” is actually in Hebrew literally: “men of the name”; they had made a name for themselves. Not only do names have this impression attached to them, more than that names have meaning. Have you ever looked up the meaning of your name?

⬤Marcia: Yes, I actually have. My name, Marcia, means “of Mars”. And I’m not sure if that’s referring to the planet or the god of war. Either way, I’m hoping that’s not why my parents chose my name.

⬤Brian: Yeah, that’s kind of strange, and in our culture, that’s not something that’s very important. Unless you’ve got a specific name, but most people don’t know or don’t really care what their name means. Not so in the eastern world. In the Biblical world names had meaning, and that was important. Oftentimes, of course, you would have people be named at birth, and sometimes their names are attached to their birth circumstances. Here’s just a few examples: For instance, Jacob (which is Yaakov in Hebrew) means “heel-grabber”, and this is attached to when he was born, he was grasping the heel of his twin brother Esau as they came out. Or Simeon (Shimon in Hebrew): it’s related to the word shema, meaning “hear”.

⬤Marcia: His mother Leah names him this because she feels that God has heard her, blessing her with a son.

⬤Brian: Right. Or another of her sons Judah (Yhudah in Hebrew) means “praise”.

⬤Marcia: She wants to give praise to Yahweh for another son

⬤Brian: Exactly.

⬤Marcia: But a reason isn’t given for everyone’s name; so are names only important when they’re explained?

⬤Brian: No, there’s actually a lot more that can be behind names. For instance, one popular way people can be named is by including God’s name in their name, whether, really, in Israelite culture or in other cultures as well: their gods from their cultures. So there’s the generic god el; el is kind of the generic word for God. Or connecting to their God, the LORD, they have what we call Yahwistic names, which when it comes through in English translations, you’ll see as “-j-a-h” or “-i-a-h”.

⬤Marcia: Well, can you give some examples of those?

⬤Brian: Yeah, so here we go: we’ve got Dani-el (Daniel), so the el. You’ve got Jerem-iah, that “-iah” there (Yiremeyahu). Oftentimes the “-iah” in English is either yah or yahu in Hebrew, which so it’s the beginning of God’s name. Or we’ve got a combination with Elijah: Eliyahu, “the LORD is God”. So he’s got both of them in it.

⬤Marcia: He’s got that el for God and then the yah.

⬤Brian: Yup.

⬤Marcia: Not everybody though has a name with God’s name in it or a name related to the birth circumstance, right?

⬤Brian: Yeah, but even then names can still have meanings that are important to the story, that tell us something about the story. For instance, Adam: we’ve got his name there, pronounced Ad-am in Hebrew, and Adam means “man” or “mankind” or “human”, so kind of a generic sort of term. But in Genesis 2:7 it says that God formed the Adam from the adamah; he formed the Ad-am from the ad-am-ah, adamah being dirt.

⬤Marcia: Dirt boy! Or better yet maybe “earthling”!

⬤Brian: Yeah, something like that! Or, another example: King Saul (Shaul in Hebrew) sounds like the word sha’al. You see, the people of Israel asked for a king. They sha’al (asked) for a king, and they got Sha’ul.

⬤Marcia: They got what they asked for!

⬤Brian: Right. Or, we saw the name Daniel before, and Dan means “judge”, so “God is my judge” could be the meaning of his name. And you think about all the times when Daniel is being judged by the Babylonians. Particularly think about in the lion’s den: he’s condemned with the lions, but you could say God judges him and finds him innocent, and so he’s saved from the lions.

⬤Marcia: Wow! Understanding the meaning of names can really add a lot, but I think one thing that’s kind of confusing in the New Testament is those names are translated from the Greek, so then we miss some of that Hebrew name connection, and that kind of conceals what their original meanings were in the Hebrew and the connections with other people in the Older Testament. For example, we’ve looked at Jacob, Simeon, and Judah; well, those names are used in the New Testament: there they’re called James, Simon, and either Jude or Judas. Or in the Older Testament, we hear about Miriam, Moses’ sister; in the New Testament we hear about a whole lot of Mary’s, and that is the most popular female name in the New Testament.

⬤Brian: So not only are names and their meanings important, but the one doing the naming is important because naming something or somebody is exercising authority or responsibility over them. For instance, simple example in Genesis 2: God creates Adam, and then he brings all the animals before Adam. And what does Adam do? He names them! This is Adam taking responsibility for them, for their well-being. It wasn’t just because he thought hippopotamus was a fun name? Well, maybe that a bit too. But this is why parents name their children, not just because they need names, but because parents are taking responsibility. They have authority over their children.

⬤Marcia: So a name gives an identity. Somebody giving the name has authority over them. Sometimes people are renamed, so that means their identity is being changed by somebody in authority over them. We have one example of God doing that in the Bible in Genesis 17, where Abram (which means “exalted father”) God changes the name to Abraham (“father of many”).

⬤Brian: So in this case God is now changing his identity, changing some of his mission, but also God is taking responsibility for Abraham’s future and his descendants.

⬤Marcia: If giving a name or renaming someone is significant, is it possible to take away a name, or have someone lose their name?

⬤Brian: Actually, it is! Here’s kind of a nice example: you can see some Greek writing, but then in here it’s chiseled out. It’s a list of names of some community or group or so, and what you’ve got going on here is someone’s been removed from the community. This isn’t as simple as a pencil and paper; you can’t just erase it. So you chisel them out, and you get this pattern then as a result; they have been blotted out.

⬤Marcia: But are there any Biblical references to names being lost or erased?

⬤Brian: Yes, actually, there are! For instance, in Exodus 32 the people are at Mount Sinai; they’ve created the golden calf (that was bad), and so Moses is trying to intercede for the people and ask for God’s forgiveness. And he says in verse 32: “But now, if you will forgive their sin (please forgive their sin) but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” So Moses is putting himself on the line and saying, God, if you won’t forgive, take me instead and blot me out. In terms of that inscription, this is remove me from this group, this community; to remove from God’s list of people, means being removed from eternity, being removed from existence. Can you think of any other places where something like this is mentioned?

⬤Marcia: Actually, there is a New Testament reference to the book of life. If we look in Revelation 20:15: “And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

⬤Brian: So just like these books have lists of names, so our Bibles have lists of names. We call them genealogies.

⬤Marcia: [Yawn] I think those are some of the most boring parts of the Bible. I’m sorry but I kind of tend to skim them or probably more likely just skip right over them.

⬤Brian: Well, have you ever researched your genealogical record?

⬤Marcia: Actually, I do have some family members who have done that, and they’ve found some really fascinating information. One of them shared with me a family list of people that go back to the 18th century, and when I see these names I’m like: these are my family! Look at these names!

⬤Brian: So just like that, people in the Bible, when they’re reading a list of names: this is their family! Now maybe going back more than even a couple hundred years, but it’s still family; it’s telling something about their heritage. Now, we ask questions like “who are you?” and we’re looking for an individual identity, but a question they would probably be more likely to ask would be “whose are you?”, “to what group do you belong?”

⬤Marcia: No one in the Biblical world would be anonymous; each one would have their own address, their “genealogical address.” In fact, we can look at one example of that of King Saul in 1 Samuel 9:1-2: “There was a man of Benjamin, whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of… Becorath (see, I don’t like this), son of (keeps getting worse) Aphiah, a Benjamin, a man of wealth. And he had a son whose name was Saul.”

⬤Brian: So here we’ve got Saul being introduced. Before we get to Saul himself, we go through this long list of his genealogical record, down to then which tribe he came from. If you think about it, are they just kind of throwing this on, just because? The Biblical writers did not waste words; writing materials were expensive, and so anything they put in is because they felt like it was important. Think back to our opening story when we talked about the genealogy in the opening of Matthew: of Jesus and how there was that tribe. When they then heard about Jesus’ genealogy, this long genealogy, they became very excited because they share a similar value of genealogies. That, wow, this must be someone really important!

⬤Marcia: We’ve been talking about all different kinds of names in the Bible, but we even talked about the most important one: God’s name! God’s personal name is Y-H-V-H; oftentimes, we pronounce it as Yahweh. This is his personal name, his covenantal name, that he revealed to Moses at the burning bush.

⬤Brian: I don’t see Y-H-V-H anywhere in my English Bibles. How is that translated?

⬤Marcia: Often when you look in the Older Testament, you will see “lord” in two different ways: if it’s “LORD” with all of the letters as uppercase, that’s their clue from the translator that they are translating God’s personal name (this is that Y-H-V-H, Yahweh). But if the letter “L” is capitalized and the rest are lowercase, then they’re translating a word that means master, which sometimes refers to God, but it can refer to human masters also. I think God’s name is so important to him that he put a command about it in the “top ten”, in the Ten Commandments. From Exodus 20:7: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”

⬤Brian: Oftentimes, when I’m taught about this commandment, I’m told don’t swear by God’s name or something.

⬤Marcia: Well, that’s good, but that’s only a tiny piece of it. When we look at the concept of taking it in vain, that means regarding as it worthless or futile, or using it even in a magical way. And when it talks about taking, the actual literal in the Hebrew behind there is carrying. So if we’ve talked about we are image bearers of God and names are linked with identity and reputation, how do we carry God’s reputation as we live?

⬤Brian: Yeah, that’s something really good to think about as we go throughout our days. So, what we’ve looked at today: we looked at names as identity and reputation; we talked about meanings of names; we talked about the naming process or renaming process and what’s behind that; we’ve looked at genealogies; and finally God’s name.

⬤Marcia: So, pay attention to names and meanings of names. Understanding the meanings can be significant and that they’re given for a reason. And sometimes you find out somebody isn’t given a name; maybe there’s something going on there. At least look up the meaning of the names of some of the key characters. In your handout, we’ve given a helpful reference for that.

⬤Brian: Continue the conversation at BridgesToTheBible.com. The episode guide contains discussion questions that we’d encourage you to discuss with a group. Coming up next time, we’re going to discuss patriarchal culture in the Bible. Until next time, SHALOM!

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