In the Neo-Babylonian empire it was the policy to give foreigners who got a permanent function in public or economic life a new Babylonian name symbolising their loyalty to their new masters.
Daniel and his friends got Babylonian names when they became officers in the Neo-Babylonian empire (Dan. 1:7). Even if this is pure fiction, it does reflect the custom of the time accurately.38
When the Persians conquered the ancient Near East, many of their subjects took over the Neo-Babylonian system of renaming.
As long as Babylonian was still the lingua franca for international contacts they opted for Babylonian names, later on when Ara-maic became the official language of the Persian empire AraAra-maic names became increasingly popular. Apparently many Jews had successfully adapted to the Babylonian way of life, as Jeremiah had encouraged them to do (Jer. 29:4-7). It was one of the reas-ons why the prophetic admonitireas-ons to leave Babylonia had little effect (Isa. 48:20; 52:11; Jer. 51:6, 45; Zech. 2:10-11 [tr. 2:6-7]).
The Book of Second Isaiah (Isa. 40–55) contains scarcely veiled criticism of apostates who are said to have served Baby-lonian ‘idols’ and resisted the prophet’s call to return to Zion.39
des Sanballat und der Bau des Heiligtums auf dem Garizim’, in: F. Dexinger, R. Pummer (eds), Die Samaritaner (WdF, 604), Darmstadt 1992, 198-219.
37Later on others who opposed the priesthood in Jerusalem also felt free to build temples elsewhere. Cf. Cross, ‘Aspects of Samaritan and Jewish History’, 207.
38M.D. Coogan, West Semitic Personal Names in the Muraˇsˆu Documents (HSM, 7), Missoula 1976, 124-5; Zadok, The Jews in Babylonia in the Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods, 41-78, 85-6.
39I cannot accept the thesis that Deutero-Isaiah would be another product of the elite in Persian Yehud; cf. P.R. Davies, In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’
(JSOT.S,148), Sheffield 1992, 118-9. But for my argument here it makes no difference where the author and/or the Jewish apostates lived.
Disillusion among Jews in the Postexilic Period 145
From the fact that some of them were buried in graveyards next to pagan wealthy people (Isa. 53:9) it may be inferred that at least some of them became fairly rich in their new surround-ings.40Moreover, Ezra 1 creates the impression that many exiles in Persian Babylonia had become men of substance (Ezra 1:4, 6).
Three wealthy Jews from Babylonia are mentioned in Zech. 6:9-15. Daniel (Dan. 8:2) and Nehemiah (Neh. 1:1) were among those who purportedly served at the Persian court in Susa in fairly high positions. Mordecai and Esther are credible representations of the type of successful Jewish exiles in Persia.
The Murashˆu archives, dating from 455/54 and 404/03 bce, prove that these Israelites also had to conform, to some extent at least, to Babylonian religious practice.41 Next to a Jewish name they often bore a Babylonian or Persian name, in several cases a name honouring a pagan deity.42 How many of them gradually allowed their Jewish name to fall into disuse, as Esther and Mordecai apparently did, cannot be established any more.
The name of Mordecai contains the name of the Babylonian national god Marduk. It occurs frequently as Mar-duk-a in the Murashˆu archives, although it is unlikely that one of these per-sons is identical to the biblical Mordecai.43 The name of Esther too was a non-Jewish name (cf. Est. 2:7). It might be derived from the name of Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love and war.44 So both of them seem to have belonged to the group of
40Cf. Barstad, The Myth of the Empty Land, 75-6. This is not contradicted by the relatively low position of most Jews in the Nippur region; cf. R. Zadok, On West Semites in Babylonia During the Chaldean and Achaemenian Peri-ods: An Onomastic Study, Jerusalem 1978, 86-7.
41In accordance with their general policy of leaving as much as possible of the local cultures of subjected nations intact, the Persians, the new mas-ters of Mesopotamia, had allowed the Babylonians to continue their cul-ture and religion. Cf. M.W. Stolper, Entrepreneurs and Empire: The Muraˇsˆu Archive, the Muraˇsˆu Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia, Istanbul 1985.
So Cyrus’s lenient treatment of the Jews was in no way exceptional. Cf. P.
Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, tr. P.T.
Daniels, Winona Lake 2002, 47-8.
42Coogan, West Semitic Personal Names in the Muraˇsˆu Documents, 124-5;
Zadok, The Jews in Babylonia, 41-78, 85-6. In one case a Jewish father gave his son a name praying Yhwh to protect the (Persian) king,dIa-hu-´u-ˇsarra (lugal)-us.ur (ur`u). Cf. Zadok, ‘The Representation of Foreigners’, 487.
43Coogan, West Semitic Personal Names, 125; Zadok, On West Semites in Babylonia, 70.
44M. Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der
gemein-Jewish exiles who had adapted to their pagan surroundings, even accepting Babylonian theophoric names.
The Hermopolis papyri from the late 6th – early 5th century bce(TAD, A2.1-7, pp. 9-23) show that under Persian rule Baby-lonian theophoric personal names continued to be in use even in Egypt. TAD, A6.9, p. 114, from the late 5th century bce, shows that this was also the case in Syria and Palestine. This is confirmed by archaeological finds. A seal from the 6th cen-tury is inscribed with the Yahwistic name Yehoshima (yhwˇsm ), daughter of a father bearing the Babylonian name ˇswˇsˇsr’s.r which means ‘may (the Sun god) Shamash protect’.45 Either he him-self or his wife must have been Jewish. The name Sanballat, or rather Sin’uballit., ‘May (the Moon god) Sin keep alive’ (sn blt.), is known from the Old Testament as that of an opponent of Ne-hemiah (Neh. 2; 13:28) and occurs in a letter from Elephantine (TAD A4.7, pp. 68-71). It is now also attested by a bulla seal-ing one of the Samaria papyri from Wadi Daliyeh.46 All these documents contain evidence that the governors of Samaria called Sanballat were servants of Yhwh.47 So they must have felt it expedient to exchange their Jewish name for a Babylonian one honouring a Babylonian god.
The papyri and ostraca from Elephantine prove that it is often difficult to distinguish Jews from foreigners, as the following tables demonstrate:48
Jewish names of offspring of foreigners
TAD A3.3; B2.2 Hosea/Osea, son of Pet.ekhnum (Egypt.).
TAD B3.10; 3.11; 3.13 H. aggai, son of Mardu (Babyl. or Aram.).
semitischen Namengebung, Stuttgart 1928, 11. Compare the name of the Jewish womanfT. ¯abat-dIˇstar at Sippar; cf. Zadok, On West Semites in Baby-lonia, 44. Others prefer a derivation from a Persian or Greek word meaning
‘star’; cf. HAHAT, 86.
45J. Renz, W. R¨ollig, Handbuch der althebr¨aischen Epigraphik, Bd. 2/2, Darmstadt 2003, 239, No. 10.30.
46N. Avigad, B. Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals, Jerusalem 1997, No. 419 (p. 176; for other Babylonian PNN in Palestine, see 539-43); Renz, R¨ollig, Handbuch der althebr¨aischen Epigraphik, Bd. 2/2, 262 (No. 10.100).
47See also Cross, ‘Aspects of Samaritan and Jewish History’, 204-6.
48I exclude TAD B6.4 Bethelnathan, son of Jehonathan, and TAD C3.15 Hosea, son of Bethelnuri. Porten regards names containing the element
‘Bethel’ as Aramaic, but it is possible that (some) Jews at Elephantine iden-tified Yhw with the god Bethel.
Disillusion among Jews in the Postexilic Period 147
TAD B5.3 Zekaryah, son of Psami (Egypt.).
TAD C3.15 Miptah., daughter of T.isati (Egypt.).
TAD D3.17 Mauzziyah, son of Pawosi (Egypt.).
TAD D3.17 Menah.em, son of Pawosi (Egypt.).
TAD D8.7 Berukhah, daughter of Pasi (Egypt.).
Foreign names of offspring of Jews
TAD A3.9; C4.6 ˇSewa (Aram.), son of Zechariah.
TAD B5.5 Eswere (Egypt.), daughter of Gemariah.
TAD C3.15 Syamaka (Pers.), son of Meˇsullam.
TAD C3.28 Tasi (Egypt.), daughter of H. anniyah.
TAD C4.6 H. or (Egypt.), son of Pedayah.
The case of Ash.ur (Egyptian) who appears to be identical with the Jew Nathan renders it likely that, also, in Persian Egypt at least some Jews bore two names, a Hebrew one and an Egyptian one.49 The name of Pet.ekhnum indicates that even the Egyptian god Khnum could be honoured in the personal name of a Jew.
In some cases intermarriage may have been an incentive to adopt such a foreign name,50though endogamy was the rule among the Jews of Elephantine.51 Unfortunately, however, we shall never know how many Jews gave up their Hebrew name permanently to further their career in Egypt.52
Most Jewish personal names on Neo-Babylonian tablets,53as well as in the Elephantine and Samaria papyri,54 prove that it
49Cf. B. Porten, Archives from Elephantine: The Life of an Ancient Jewish Military Colony, Berkeley 1968, 252. Attestations: B. Porten, J.A. Lund, Ara-maic Documents from Egypt: A Keyword-in-Context Concordance, Winona Lake 2002, 323-4.
50The Egyptian woman Tapmet, for example, was married to Ananyah, son of Azaryah. Attestations: Porten, Lund, Aramaic Documents from Egypt: A Keyword-in-Context Concordance, 420.
51Porten, Archives from Elephantine, 133-50.
52The process of exchanging Jewish names for foreign ones continued under the Ptolemies; cf. J.M. Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian, tr. R. Cornman, Princeton 1997, 83-7.
53Cf. D. Vanderhooft, ‘New Evidence Pertaining to the transition from Neo-Babylonian to Achaemenid Administration in Palestine’, in: Albertz, Becking (eds), Yahwism after the Exile, 219-35 (223-4, 226).
54The Samaria papyri from the 4th century bce contain mostly Yahwistic personal names. Cf. J. Zsengell´er, ‘Personal Names in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh Papyri’, ZAH 9 (1996), 182-9; D.M. Gropp, Wadi Daliyeh II: The Samaria Papyri from Wadi Daliyeh (DJD, 28), Oxford 2001. Twice the name of the Edomite god Qaus occurs in PNN (Nos. 2 and 9), and one slave bearing a
was certainly possible to keep a Yahwistic personal name in the Persian empire.55 Next to the governors of Persian Yehud with Babylonian names like Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel and Sanballat, a governor called Yeho‘ezer is known.56 Nehemiah, too, kept his Yahwistic name when Artaxerxes appointed him governor of Ye-hud (Neh. 5:14). So it was not absolutely necessary to adopt a foreign name to please the Persians. Those who adopted a for-eign theophoric name must have done so deliberately and ipso facto distanced themselves more or less from the religion of their ancestors.