Endnote 12 – What’s in a Name?

For details see Tigay, No Other Gods. These statistics now include the name Baalhanan inscribed on a seal impression (Avigad and Sass, Corpus, no. 297) that I had overlooked in No Other Gods. There are other names that could conceivably refer to other deities, but more likely do not. For those in the inscriptions, see No Other Gods, appendix 3; for those in the Bible, see Pike, “Israelite Theophoric Personal Names.” Since the publication of No Other Gods, numerous other Hebrew inscriptions have been published, and the number of individuals with Yahwistic personal names has increased considerably. I am not aware of any further pagan names that have been discovered, but even if a few have been, if all the new names were factored in, the statistical predominance of Yahwistic names over those mentioning other deities would be even greater today.