Endnote 5 – What’s in a Name?

These statistics are based on data collected by Dana M. Pike, “Israelite Theophoric Personal Names in the Bible and Their Implications for Religious History” (Univ. of Pennsylvania Ph.D. dissertation, 1990) esp. p. 11, table 10. Pike’s own statistical conclusions differ from those presented in the chart because he does not count names containing ba‘al. While I think it doubtful that the ba‘al names refer to the Canaanite god, I have nevertheless counted them as plausibly pagan in my statistics since many scholars view them that way and I wanted to give the case for pagan names every reasonable benefit of the doubt. After recomputing Pike’s statistics to include ba‘al names, the breakdown of theophoric names in the Bible by period is roughly as appears on my chart.

In the chart, names with the elements ’el or ’eli are disregarded here since they are equivocal: ’el can mean “God” or “the god” (’eli = my god) or can refer to the Canaanite deity El. Even when it has the latter meaning, it is difficult to tell whether the Canaanite deity is meant, or whether it was understood as a synonym of YHWH (there is little evidence that the Israelites worshiped El as a deity distinct from YHWH).