I. Name

The personal name Bagoas to be found in Judith. 12.11 is undoubtedly an Iranian name, although quite difficult to interpret. The second term oas cannot be explained with any certainty, as was acknowledged by Eilers (1954–56) after a strictly formal attempt and, more recently, by Huyse with even stronger scepticism (1990). The first term baga raises problems of another kind. It is a common dialectal singularity of Iranian languages that they gave the old Indo-European word *deiuó (Sanskrit deva, Lat. deus) a negative value a…