I. Name

In the Hebrew Bible, Nimrod is the name of a Mesopotamian hero known to have been a famous hunter as well as the founder of major Mesopotamian cities and of the first state in (post-diluvian) primaeval times. The name Nimrod might be interpreted as a 1st pl. qal of the root mrd (‘to rebel’, i.e. ‘we shall rebel’) and has indeed been understood in this sense by Jewish tradition, which considered Nimrod to be a paradigm of god-offending hybris. This distorting negative valu…