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I. Name In Deuteronomistic religious polemics and related texts, ‘vanities’ ( hebelîm) indicate images of non-Yahwistic deities. It is impossible to establish the identity of the deities involved (Preuss 1971:160–164). Etymologically, …

I. Name The Hebrew noun šilluḥîm, ‘marriage gift’ (1 Kgs. 9.6), has been related etymologically with an alleged Ugaritic goddess Thillaḫuha. She is supposed to be one of the Kosharoth (de Moor 1970:200). II. Identity The Ugaritic myth which relates how the moon-god Yariḫu obtained his bride Nikkal ( KTU 1.24) is concluded by a hymn to the Kosharoth, the goddesses supervising delivery. This hymn is concluded by a list of seven words. This list is interpreted either as a list of seven nouns related to the process of marriage and parturition (Caqout et al. 1974:396–397) or as a list of seven deities (de Moor 1970:200; del Olmo Lete 1991:74–75). The latter interpretation is the more plausible. An argument for the interpretation as goddesses might be the fact that, like the seven Babylonian šassurātu ( Atr. S iii:9), there were seven Kosharoth. …

I. Name The name of the matriarch Sarah śārâ ( Gen. 12–15; Gen. 49.31; Isa. 51.2), alternatively spelled śārāy ( Gen. 11–17), is derived from a noun * śarr- ‘sovereign; prince’, the name meaning ‘princess’ or the like (Zadok 1988:148; pace HALAT 1262). The Book of Tobit relates about another Sarah, daughter of Raguel destined to become the wife of Tobias ( Tob. 2.8–9). Several proposals have been made to connect Sarah with a goddess. II. Identity Sarah has been interpreted as the goddess of Machpelah (Cybele; Meyer 1906:270; Gressmann 1910:5). Gunkel connected the …

The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (henceforth DDD) is in some ways unlike any other dictionary in the field of biblical studies. This is the first catalogue of its kind, one which discusses all the gods and demons whose names are found in the Bible. Complementing the usual surveys and histories of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Ugaritic, Syro-Palestinian, Persian, Greek, and Roman religion, DDD assesses the impact of contemporary religions on Israel and the Early Church by focusing on those gods that actually left traces in the Bible. The deities and demons dealt with in th…

I. Name A deity Yaʿûq was worshipped by pre-Islamic Arabs. The personal names Yaʿăqān ( Num. 33.31, Num. 32; Deut. 10.6; 1 Chr. 1.42) and ʿăqān ( Gen. 36.27) have been interpreted as containing a reference to an animal deity worshipped by the Edomites (Roberston Smith 1912:455–483). II. Identity Islamic traditions refer to the cult of a deity Yaʿûq among the pre-islamic tribe of the Hamdān In the Yemenite village Ḫaiwān (North of Ṣan̂ā), there was a cult-centre. The Qurʾan Sure 71:20–25 and Ibn al-Kalbi’s Book of Idols (Klinke-Rosenberger 1942:35, 61) interpret the deity…

I. Name The Hebrew noun yôm, ‘day’, frequently occurs in the OT (2304 times; the Aram. cognate yôm occurs 16 times in Dan and Ezra). The noun has a common Semitic background and is not derived from a verb (von Soden, Bergman & Saebø 1982:561–562). At some instances in the OT ‘day’ is personified. This use of ‘day’ indicating a malevolent being construed as acting in history has some parallels in Mesopotamian texts. In Ugaritic, …

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I. Name The name of Shem, one of the three sons of Noah, literally means ‘name’ ( Gen. 5.32; Gen. 6.10; Gen. 7.13; Gen. 9; Gen. 10; 1 Chron. 1; Sir. 49.16; HALAT 1435). šm occurs as a theophoric element in personal names from Ebla (Gordon 1988:153–154). A deity Shem is probably present as theophoric element in names like šĕmîdāʿ, Shemida ( Josh. 17.2; 1 Chron. 7.19), and šĕmûʾēl, Samuel (Jirku 1927). The name of this deity should be distinguished from the use of the noun šem as an hypostatical indication of Yahweh; Name. II. Identity In Mesopotamian personal names—mostly in Amori…

I. Name The name of the city of Shunem, šûnēm, is attested in Josh. 18.19; 1 Sam. 28.4; 2 Kgs. 4.8 (see also the indication for inhabitants of that city * šûnammî, 1 Kgs. 1.3, 1 Kgs. 15; 1 Kgs. 2.17, 1 Kg…

I. Name Although nowhere deified, blood, Hebr dām, is seen in the OT as a liquid essential for animal and human life. In Ugaritic and Mesopotamian texts, mention is made of divine blood. In personal names from Ebla and Emar the theophoric element …

I. Name The name of the river of Jordan, ( hay) yardēn, occurs 177 times in the OT. In the NT Ἰορδάνης is attested 15 times. The etymology of the name is debated. A derivation from the root yrd, ‘to descend’, implying an interpretat…

I. Name In 2 Sam. 21.16, 2 Sam. 18, 2 Sam. 20, 2 Sam. 22 (// 1 Chron. 20.4, 1 Chron. 6, 1 Chron. 8) mention is made of rāpâ, ‘Rapha’, the ancestor of various warriors who battled with David. Rapha has been connected to the Rephaim and interpreted as a deity whose cult centre was in Gath (L’Heureux 1974; McCarter 1983:449–450; HALAT 1191). II. Identity 2 Sam. 21.15–22 relates quarrels between David and a group of Philistine warriors: Jisni-Benob; Saph and an anonymous giant with six fingers on each hand. They are presented as yĕlîdê hārāpâ, ‘descendants of Rapha’. Willeson (1958) interpreted hārāpâ as the rendition of a Greek word ἁρπή, ‘scimitar’, supposing that the Philistines were via the Sea Peoples related to the Greek world. The expression then would refer to a distinguished guild of Philistine soldiers. With L’Heureux and McCarter the word hārāpâ can better be seen as a variant to …

I. Name The name Judah, yĕhûdâ, occurs over 800 times in the OT and indicates (1) a person, e.g. the fourth son of Jacob; (2) the tribe Judah; (3) the kingdom governed by the dynasty of David; (4) a province in the Persian empire. The etymology of the name is still unsettled. The name has been construed as containing a theophoric element: e.g. J. Hempel ( BHH II, 898) interprets the name as a hypocoristicon of yĕhûd-ʾēl, ‘Praised be El’. A. Alt (Der Gott der Väter, KS I [München 1953] 5 n.1) suggested that Judah originally was a place name. The general tendency in OT studie…

I. Name The expression bĕqereb šānîm, occurring twice in Hab. 3.2 and traditionally rendered as ‘within years; in the midst of the years’ or the like ( …

I. Name The identity of ‘the Girl’ in the phrase “A man and his father go to the girl” ( Amos 2.7) is most probably solved when interpreted as a depreciative designation of a female deity, perhaps Ashima (Andersen & Freedman 1989:318–319) or Ashera. II. Identity The identity of the deity being unknown, it is impossible to provide information about her. In the ancient Near East comparable words can be used when referring to the feminine deity: in Mesopotamian hymns related to marriage between Ishtar and Dumuzi (Tammuz) the goddess is presented as a young nubile woman (…

I. Name The personal name Yepet/Japheth ( Gen. 5.32; Gen. 6.10; Gen. 7.13; Gen. 9.18–27; Gen. 10.1, Gen. 2, Gen. 21; 1 Chron. 1.4, 1 Chron. 5; Jdt. 2.25 refers to a place name Japheth), does not have a clear Semitic etymology, except for the popular interpretation found in Gen. 9.27: yapt ʾĕlōhîm lĕyepet, “May God enlarge Japheth”, suggesting a connection between the name and I pth ‘to enlarge’ ( HALAT 405–406; Layton 1990: 90). A relation with II pth ‘to be youthful’ or with yph, ‘to be beautiful’, is also possible, though (Isaac 1992:641). Japheth has been compared with the Greek …

I. Name The name of the Ugaritic deity Thukamuna, occurring as element in the binomial divine name Ṯkmn-w-Šnm, has etymologically been related to the Hebrew noun šĕkem (Ginsberg 1936:92; Wyatt 1990:446–449). šĕkem occurs in the OT as a noun meaning ‘shoulder; back’ (22 times; cf. Ug. škm, ‘shoulder’ e.g. KTU 1.14 ii:11; iii:54; 1.22 i:5); as a toponym Shechem located in the high…

I. Name As used in Deuteronomistic polemics, Hebrew הבל, vocalized hebel, has been interpreted as a divine name. Identified as a putative Canaanite fertility god *Hubal, he has been equated with the pre-Islamic central-Arabian deity Hubal (Barstad 1978). II. Identity Hubal was a central-Arabian deity. His cult has endured until today. A statue of Hubal is still standing near the Kaʿba in Mecca. He has been related to divination. An arrow oracle of Hubal has been famous (Fahd 1958:54–79; Höfner, WbMyth. 1/I 447–448). In a Nabataean inscription a deity hblw occurs between Dusares and Manā…

I. Name The expression šādayim wārāḥam, ‘Breasts and Womb’, ( Gen. 49.25) has been interpreted as an epithet echoing Ugaritic titles of the goddesses Anat and Asherah (Vawter 1955; M. O’ Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure [Winona Lake 1980] 178; Smith 1990:17). II. Identity In a para-mythological text from Ugarit, it is said that the deities Shahar and Shalim are to be seen as those ‘sucking the nipple ( ap; lit. ‘nose’) of the breast ( ḏd// zd) of Athiratu’ ( KTU 1.23:24, 59, 61). In the epic of Keret, Ilu promises Keret that his future son will ‘suck the breast ( ṯd) of Virgin Anat’ ( KTU 1.15 …