Monday, May 06, 2013

Names again

From the very beginning of a child’s life, his or her identity and self-perceptions were imposed based on the religious experiences and beliefs of the parents. But these considerations reveal the social reasons rather than the religious. The religious foundation underlying the personal relationship with the divine is illustrated more directly by the formal analogy between the names that express lifelong personal relationships to a deity (such as והידבע ʿAbdiyāhû ‘servant of Yhwh’) and equivalent names of creation (such as והישׂעמ Maʿaśēyāhû ‘work of Yhwh’ or והינקמ Miqnēyāhû ‘creature of Yhwh’). The former formulate from a human perspective what is conceived by the latter from a divine perspective: one is related to god for one’s entire life because god has created every individual and thus has entered into a relationship with each one.—Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant, page 333

<idle musing>
The Hebrew is backwards! I haven't been able to figure out why. When I copy it from the PDF, it is correct, but when I paste it in here it reverses : ( I suspect it is because there is a buried command in the PDF that doesn't get transferred...
</idle musing>

1 comment:

James Dowden said...

Might inserting Unicode character U+200F before the Hebrew (and U+200E after) work?

‏הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים אָמַר קֹהֶלֶת, הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים הַכֹּל הָבֶל.‎
(testing, testing...)