Wordplay in Genesis - The BAS Library

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It is no secret to students of the Bible that the ancient Hebrews loved plays on words. And nowhere in the Hebrew Bible are there more plays on words in relation to names than in the Book of Genesis.

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Footnotes

1. Ziony Zevit translates tsela‘ as “baculum” in his article “Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum?” BAR, September/October 2015.

Endnotes

1.
Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1995–1956).

2. Nahum Sarna, Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the new JPS Translation, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), p. 47.

3.
The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, vol. 11.1 (1980).

4.
Gary A. Rendsburg, “Alliteration in the Book of Genesis,” in Elizabeth R. Hayes Karolien Vermeulen, eds., Doubling and Duplicating in the Book of Genesis: Literary and Stylistic Approaches to the Text (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), p. 85.