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!

The name Boanerges doesn't mean "Sons Of Thunder" at all!

James and John - Boanerges

For the ever-expanding Abarim Publications' Biblical Name Vault we recently had a go at the name Boanerges, which is a nickname that Jesus bestows on the brothers James and John; sons of Zebedee.

The evangelist Mark says, "And He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom He gave the name Peter), and James, the son of Zebedee, and John, the brother of James (to them He gave the name Boanerges, which means, "Sons Of Thunder");..." (Mark 3:16-17)

We had expected to be able to effortlessly relate the name Boanerges to some Aramaic or Hebrew compound but much to our surprise, we couldn't. Some Internet searching revealed that this name has plagued scholars for centuries, and the leading theories on the etymology of this name either take a whole lot of liberties in bending Semitic verbs out of their proper compass of meaning and allowing transliterations from Aramaic to Greek that make not a lick of sense, or else, the rather bold assumptions that either Jesus had no idea what He was saying, or else that Mark was clueless about Semitic languages.

Here at Abarim Publications we rarely get nervous and we love a good challenge, so we sank our teeth in the name Boanerges and came out chewing on the other side. One thing is certain: the name Boanerges doesn't mean "Sons Of Thunder" at all.

Check out our article, and let us know if you have any objections: The amazing name Boanerges, meaning and etymology.