Baidarka

I posted this awhile ago. It was pointed out that Sephardic Jews sometimes do name sons after their fathers but no one established that this was a first century Jewish practice. Can anyone shed light on this seeming contradiction.

Luke 1

59On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, 60but his mother spoke up and said, "No! He is to be called John."
61They said to her, "There is no one among your relatives who has that name."

According to Jewish custom a son is never named after his father. It is doubtful that anyone has ever met a Jew named Aaron Jr. If Zechariah had named John after himself John would have been known as Zechariah ben Zechariah ( a dubious name).
Does any one have any evidence that this custom was different any where among the Jews of the first century?
Can we safely dismiss this story as a fabrication?
Is this proof that the writer was unfamiliar with the people he was writing about?

post tenebras lux

I thought it was that a child is never named after a living relative. But as he was still alive anyway, that doesn't help'em wriggle out of this one.

Luxie

yummyfur

I believe evidence from Josephus might put this to rest.

from Antiquities of the Jews - Book XX chapter 9
"And now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus."

edited to add more

from The Life Of Flavius Josephus
"This Matthias had a son called Matthias Curtus, and that in the first year of the government of Hyrcanus: his son's name was Joseph, born in the ninth year of the reign of Alexandra: his son Matthias was born in the tenth year of the reign of Archclaus; as was I born to Matthias in the first year of the reign of Caius Caesar."

Baidarka

yummyfur

You have shown that this was not unheard of but the quote from Luke makes this practice sound customary. Why would the people
assume that the child would be named after the father? Was this ever a common Jewish practice?

yummyfur

I see nothing in the text in Luke that says it was customary, merely that Zechariah(and whoever the they were) was going to name his son after himself. When his wife wants John, the objection is not that it is customary to name first born after their father, but that John is not a name of anyone in their family.

The tradition of naming a child after someone in your family is a pretty strong one, and it seems to be the only implied tradition in the text.

Baidarka

There is nothing in the text to indicate that Zechariah planned to name the child after himself. Nor is it common in the long lists of Biblical begots to find sons named after Fathers. So why would the people presume to name John after his father?

"The tradition of naming a child after someone in your family is a pretty strong one, and it seems to be the only implied tradition in the text."

That would not include living relatives in Ashkenazic tradition. Does some one reading this have info about names on 1st century Jewish bone boxes.
Since these names include fathers names (Yeshua bar Yosef would mean Yeshua son of Yosef) it should be fairly easy to determine if many Jewish son's were named after their fathers or if the writer of Luke was ill informed.