The Lost Meanings of Biblical Names

The Lost Meanings of Biblical Names - By Aviya Kushner - http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lost-meanings-of-biblical-names-1449245837

 

The festival of Hanukkah, which began December 6th, should remind us that translation can sap the ancient power of religious names

 

The Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which started Sunday night, celebrates the triumph of a small Jewish army over Greek rule in Judea in the second century B.C. The Maccabees, as they are called, were determined to resist Hellenization and worship as they believed.

 

But the struggle was more than local. The Septuagint, the first major translation of the Hebrew Bible, was under way in Egypt. That rendition into Greek, commissioned by the Jewish community of Alexandria, Egypt, helped spark the millennia-long struggle to hold on to the meaning of the Bible, no matter the language. Though the Alexandrians' goal was to preserve the Bible for future generations of Jews, the Septuagint became a foundational text of Christianity.

 

For centuries, the Septuagint was the dominant translation in Western culture, ultimately influencing even the King James Bible. But many Jews weren't keen on translating their holy book: One ancient source calls for a fast on the anniversary of the Septuagint's publication, saying that when it appeared, "darkness descended on the world for three days."

 

They had ample justification for worrying over distortions and omissions. Hebrew names, one of the richest parts of the Bible, were often transliterated instead of being translated into Greek. Meaning-laden names thus lost their meaning.

 

What we call ourselves matters. A name in the Bible is supposed to capture its bearer's essence. God names the first person in the Bible Adam for adama, or earth. In Hebrew, Adam is also the word for human. But an English reader would never know that, in Hebrew, Adam is immediately understood as rooted in the very earth he walks on, labors in and returns to.

 

Or take Eve. Adam chooses for his helpmate the name Chava, the Hebrew Bible tells us, because she is em kol chai-mother of all the living. Chava is taken from the Hebrew word chai, or "alive" ("the living"). The Septuagint translates Chava in two ways: The first, Zoe (or "life"), preserves the Hebrew meaning, but the second, Eue or Euan, makes no such effort. Similarly, the universally used English Eve carries none of the Hebrew's meaning.

 

Names in the Bible can carry the essence of a story. The patriarchs' names often reflect key moments in their lives, like their births or their encounters with God. By naming her son Isaac (in Hebrew Yitzhak, from tzchok, or "laughter"), Sarah memorializes her mirth at the improbable idea of having a son at 90. But in English, Sarah's famous laughter can't be heard in Isaac's name.

 

Jacob, or Ya'akov, is named because he clutched the heel-or akev-of his twin brother Esau during birth. Their sibling rivalry, beginning in utero, is literally his namesake. But after Jacob's encounter with the angel in Genesis 32, he is renamed Israel, Yisrael-one who struggled with God (one of whose names is that final syllable El) and overcame. As he changed, his name had to change too.

 

Sometimes, the most crucial part of a name is what isn't there. Consider Merav, one of King Saul's two daughters. Her name is a Hebrew question: Who is greater? To the ancients, the implied question is, "Who is greater than God?" Both the question and the name are statements of faith.

 

My own name, Aviya, is a similar declaration of belief: It means "God is my father" (from Avi, or "my father," and Ya, another divine name). But in the King James Bible, I couldn't find my own name, which is spelled "Abijah." And in Abijah, it is hard to find God.

 

Whole histories can vanish when we fail to register the resonance of names. The meaning of the term "Maccabee" isn't clear. Some think it is a Hebrew acronym for the biblical phrase, "Who is like you among the gods, O Lord?" Others say it comes from makevet, Hebrew for hammer.

 

It is impossible to know which meaning the Maccabees themselves attached to their name. What we do know is that biblical names carry deep meanings from these past worlds-testaments to the ways our religious forebears defined themselves, and perhaps us.

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