viii. 31, from because names which mean gave,' `gift,"memory,' do not by themselves produce a suitable sense, and because they never are found with Abi-, Add-, and such additions, nor can be traced back into the primitive times. We are therefore obliged, in this case, to assume that these names have been designedly shortened, in the effort to make as many different names as possible ; and, as it is not uncommon for two brothers to receive similar names, this may be the immediate cause for the formation of a name Nathan beside Nethanjah.T. Secondly, whenever a derivative in -f is formed, the addition -jah, or even Yo- at the beginning, disappears ; and in this case also we find +nn (although it is equivalent to the patronymic Chananiades), beside as the name of his brother ; r Chron. xxv. 4, 23, 25.
III. This is the type and fashion of the names as late as the times after the first destruction of Jerusalem. The influence of the dispersion among foreign nations may, indeed, be immediately traced in the new names which allude to the captivity, as the name of Zerubbabel himself, which is a con traction of 533 ;ir, means scattered to Babylon.' Yet this foreign influence is but transient ; and in the centuries immediately succeeding the Exile, in which the last books of the O. T. were written, we find, on the contrary, that the ancient mode of giving names is preserved almost unchanged.
In this respect, however, there is a total differ ence in the times between the close of the Old and the beginning of the N. T. For after a
purely learned study of the O. T. had sprung up, and the whole nation only continued to exist in its sacred books, they delighted to give their children the ancient Scriptural names ; nay, they sought out such names as had only been com mon in the times before Moses, and had become obsolete in the long interval : names like Jacob, Yoseph, Maria. But while these dead names were revived and zealously sought out, the capability for forming new names became gradually weaker. And, as the love of novelty still operated, and as the people lost their independence more and more, many foreign names became favourites, and were used equally with the old Biblical names. In this manner the form of names had, by the time of the N. T., reached a state of development which nearly resembles that prevalent among ourselves.
Lastly, with regard to the Biblical names of in dividuals belonging to the less eminent nations with which the Israelites were surrounded—such as the Edomites, Phoenicians, Damascenes, etc.—their formation indeed is generally very like that of the Hebrew names, inasmuch as all mese nations spoke a Semitic language ; but the materials of which they are formed are so different, that one can almost recognise these foreign nations by their mere names. Thus names like Hadaa', Ben-hadad, Hadad-ezer, are quite strange to the Israelites, and refer to the tribes to the east of Palestine, where a god named Hadad was worshipped.—H. v. E.