Contributors: Professor emeritus Mats Eskhult, Uppsala universitet, Uppsala, Sweden; Professor Antti Laato, Åbo Akademi University; University lecturer Pekka Lindqvist, Åbo Akademi University; Faculty of Arts, Psychology and Theology; Fakulteten för humaniora, psykologi och teologi; Humanististen tieteiden, psykologian ja teologian tiedekunta
Abstract: Personal names of the Old Testament have been more widely treated scientifically already approximately 100 years (since Martin Noth 1928). Usually scholars have been concentrated on internal structures of names, such as theophoric elements, and on semantic questions. Especially, since the last part of 1980’s several studies on personal names of the Old Testament have seen daylight. The present dissertation consists of four peer reviewed articles, which have been published in publications of theological or oriental research. In addition, the dissertation consists of a so called kappa-section containing goals of the study, methods, earlier research and summary. The present dissertation treats its subject largely. Compared with several other explorations the aspect is different, too. The essential method concentrates on the comparison between extra biblical epigraphic onomasticon and biblical data of names. One of the goals has been to clarify to which era the personal names of the selected biblical books belong. The selected books are the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–2 Samuel and Ezra–Nehamiah. One of the articles treats toponyms of the Southern Levant which can be dated to the second millennium BC. The goal has been to find out areal concentrations of different toponymic types. This, in turn, illustrates linguistic distributions in the ancient Southern Levant. These toponyms have also been compared with names outside of the studied region. Through the comparison the direction and dating of possible migrations has been possible to define. The article in question combines archaeology and onomastics. Finally, we can briefly state that the fashion of given names has varied sometimes slowly and gradually, but sometimes even suddenly. The anthroponyms of the patriarchal narratives in Genesis resemble closely epigraphic Canaano-Amorite personal names from the Middle Bronze Age (ca 1950–1550 BC), which are found for example in the Mari archives or Egyptian execration texts. The onomasticon of the rest of the ...
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