Roland

I was just reading Peter Kirby's excellent section in "The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave" in which he brings up the point that Joseph of Arimathea's name is a good clue that the character may be fictional. He quotes Richard Carrier as making the argument that the word "Arimathea" may actually mean something close to "best disciple town" in Greek ("ari" meaning best and "matheia" meaning "disciple town"). (My apologies, Peter, if I didn't get this right.)

That got me to thinking about other names in the Bible that might have an obvious double meaning. The ones I've heard about are as follows:

Sodom = scorched

Ai = ruin

Barabbas = son of the father

Are there any others that you know about that could be added to my list? Much appreciated.

Amaleq13

Jesus = God's Salvation/God Saves

offa

Joseph means Jr. When Jesus was eliminated (not rigor dead but spiritually dead because of his excommunication through crucifixion) James became the Joseph (Jr.). James is under the rule (thumb) of Agrippa because he will eventually pay taxes to Agrippa. James becomes "Joseph of Arithmathea" or, servant of Agrippa.

offa

Chili

All or most names are metaphors. Is-ra-el is something like one with God. Galilee has a meaning of its own as a place of purification. Bethlehem means house of bread, Eu=phrates means bright mind, Nazareth is the city of God, Jerusalem is conscious mind, Bethany is a suburb of Nazareth. The Jordan is the river that divides Bethany from Jerusalem where Jesus and John were baptizing from opposite sides. Netherworld is subconscious mind, sun stopped is beyond reason where sun rays are translated into light, etc.

I like how Offa made the connection between Luke and John in Yuri's post as the Zebedee brothers (funny). In my view the Gospels are a continuum rather than synoptic. They compliment each other by their difference in perspective. In this view Matthew presents the prophetic event, Mark removes Judaism to leave the bare naked motion to which Luke adds the metaphysics to create emotion (drama) while John reduces this to a working Gospel for adults in comedy.

Simon the Cyrene who helped Jesus carry the cross is another one offa identified but I forgot exactly how.

Naphtali Jones

Back in my old fundie days, when we were having children, my wife and I decided to give our kids good bible names. We decided that if our third child was a girl we would name her Bethany until we looked it up and found out it meant "house of poverty". We decided to go with Bethlehem instead: "house of bread".

In the end we had a boy!

~Nap

Roland

I agree that most names have a symbolic meaning. I guess what I'm looking for are names of people and places that somehow delineate the role those people and places play in a particular story. If Sodom means "scorched" and the city burns down; if Ai means "ruin" and the city is reduced to rubble; if Barabbas means "son of the father" and he is pardoned while the real Son of the Father is executed; and if Arimathea means "best disciple town" and Joseph of Arimathea stays true to Jesus while all his real disciples flee the scene, then one can legitimately question whether the stories associated with those names are real or fictitious.

The list you've provided is a very interesting one, particularly Galilee and Nazareth.

Chili

But you can lean on them to go into the deep structure theme of the story.

For example, if bar-abbas is set free and Jesus the Jew is crucified by Jewish law and Jewish law only -- of which Pilate had no knowledge -- you can be sure that they crucified the ego of bar-abbas and not the son of man here called Barabbas.

If Joseph of Arimathea returned for this 'body' while not having any foreknowledge of their actions it suggests that the ego of Joseph was crucified who now returned to get his 'face back,' so to speak, since he just happened to have a tomb ready for it that he had hewn as if with his own hands just for that occasion. The no foreknowdge (Lk.24:50, Mk.15:42 and Mt.27:57) means that it is a non-conventional event for which metaphors must be used to present it.

. . . and there is no end to such reductions if you allow metaphors to speak as part of the story. But now we get into eisigesis and that is not allowed by the pharisees who must continue to crucify the real Jesus just in case you are one of them.

Vorkosigan

the stone that became the cornerstone. "Stone" = eben, son = ben in Hebrew. Looks like a pun.

The parable of the sower, the rocky ground is where the word takes hold, but does not take root and gets blown away when bad times come. peter's name = rock, it's a play on words.

Anat

Start from the beginning: Adam=human, Eve can be derived either from life (as Genesis does) or from snake (hiwya in Aramaic and Arabic), Cain is related to weapon and Abel is something worthless, like exhaled breath. The symbolism is obvious.

There are also plenty of examples of folk etymology of names of people and places - Abraham=father of many nations, Ber-sheba = the well of the oath, Gilead = the stone monument of witness, Bethel = house of God. In all these cases the etymology fits the role of the person/place in the story. It isn't clear to me which came first.

Chili

But Bethany is a nice name for poverty if it is located next to the city of God. Bethany is where enrichment takes place after enlightenment that took place in Bethlehem, to which Joseph returned to give an account of himself while in the depths of despair. Somewhere in "the Wake" Joyce called this pregnant with despair.

Bethlehem is Corioli in Coriolanus which is a village near Rome where the first battle takes place here now in the mind of Joseph the upright Jew. It is like a first date with God in the Sacre Coeur for which we must cross the river Seine and assent Mont Martre on its barren boulevard that leads you there.