Channels, Fall 2018

Channels • 2018 • Volume 3 • Number 1 Page 23 Methods Instrument Design Before I could analyze the act of naming in the Old Testament, I first needed to design the schema that I would test. This consisted of an in-depth study of the Hebrew words used in the phenomenon of naming in the original text, which I then used to create an extended definition, identify variables, and formulate a schema to test. Defining Naming To conduct my word studies, I used Accordance software to search for all occurrences of the English word name in the Old Testament, particularly for its use in the act of naming and utilizing a parallel Hebrew text to find the original word. Similarly, I searched the English word call and determined to focus my study on the Hebrew equivalent qārāʾ . Having decided to study the word qārāʾ , I utilized Hebrew concordances, lexicons, and theological dictionaries (see References page) to more fully understand the usage of the word in its original language, specifically the meaning “to name.” The Hebrew word qārāʾ occurs 700-900 1 times in the Old Testament. It occurs in the Qal stem 661 times, at least twice as often in Genesis than nearly any other book of the Old Testament. The next highest stem use is 62 occurrences in the Niphal stem, mostly in the prophets (Labuschagne, 1997). The Qal stem conveys a simple action in the active voice while the Niphal stem conveys a simple action in the passive voice (Van Pelt). Ultimately, qārāʾ is a word of communication that “often precedes a verb of speech” (Labuschagne, 1997, p. 1160). It involves sounds produced by the voice (Coppes, 1980; Labuschagne, 1997) “to draw attention to oneself… in order to establish contact with someone else” (Jonker, 1997, p. 971). Coppes’ definition brings in the additional idea of a carried message (1980). The word qārāʾ is “only rarely used of animals… and almost never in a figurative sense” (Labuschagne, 1997, p. 1159). Additionally, the word is similar to the same verb in other Semitic languages (Jonker, 1997). While qārāʾ is such a basic, foundational word, it has a wide range of meanings in its various usages. The following list demonstrates many of the possible translations, as consolidated from translations given by Brown, Driver, Briggs, Gesenius, & Robinson (1979), Wigram (1984), and Köhler et al. (2001): announce appoint call call on 1 I found conflicting numbers here, hence the range. This is perhaps due to different original manuscripts chosen and counted. call together create crow cry declaim invite invoke mention name preach proclaim pronounce