Bel, Bildad, Eldad, Bar-Jesus and Elymas

We recently posted an article on the name Bel, which is the name of the notorious Babylonian deity. Biblical names often are constructed from divine names, and not only from the name of the Living God. The names Bel and the related name Baal show up quite often as elements of Biblical names (think for instance of Belshazzar). Often these divine names are quite obviously part of Biblical names, but sometimes they aren't. We just posted an article on the etymology of the name Bildad for instance, which also (probably) contains the name Bel. And that lead us to have a look at the name Eldad, which is essentially the same name, except that the Bel-part is now El.

In the New Testament occurs the curious name Bar-Jesus, which literally means Son Of Jesus, but with a lot of footnotes. This fellow also went by the name Elymas, which comes with even more footnotes. Check it out!