Wordplay in Genesis - The BAS Library

Home > Magazines > BAR > Summer 2020

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.

You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

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.