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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > August 1995

Naming is Creating

Biblical women hold the power

By Savina J. Teubal

40 In the biblical world, nothing exists unless it is named. The power of naming is linked to the power of creating: In one inseparable motion, God creates, and then immediately names, Day and Night, the Sky, the Earth and the Seas (Genesis 1:1–10). In the same way, when children are born in the Bible, they are immediately given names. Births and naming are recorded consecutively in three generations of the patriarchs: Isaac (Genesis 21:2–3), Jacob (Genesis 25:24–26) and Joseph (Genesis 30:23–24). Naming, then, belongs to the same act of creation as giving birth; and the naming of a […]

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Footnotes

1.

Hirah, sent by Judah to find the woman he had intercourse with, uses the term kedashah (holy woman) in referring to Tamar. The narrator refers to Tamar as a zonah (prostitute), reflecting his own assessment.

2.

Crimson and red suggest roughness and violence; hence Ishmael (Abraham’s firstborn) and Esau (Isaac’s firstborn) are rejected in favor of Isaac and Jacob, who are more passive and “civilized.”

Endnotes

1.

See Ilana Pardes, “Genesis 3, ” in A. Brenner, ed., A Feminist Companion to Genesis (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993).

2.

See Savina J. Teubal, Sarah the Priestess: The First Matriarch of Genesis (Athens, OH: Swallow Press/Ohio Univ. Press, 1984), p. 60.

3.

See Susan Ackerman, “The Queen Mother and the Cult of Ancient Israel,” in the Journal of Biblical Literature (Fall 1993), pp. 385ff.

4.

See E.F. Campbell, Ruth: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible Series (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), p. 166.