Naming one's children: An examination of naming practices through race, class, and gender

Turpin, Joshua Aaron

Item

Naming one's children: An examination of naming practices through race, class, and gender

Turpin, Joshua Aaron

Date

2025-11-27

Abstract

I use a womanist-accomplice lens to examine the historical, economic, and social influences on the post-exilic communities through the lens of four main birth narratives: Hagar and Ishmael, Ruth and Obed, Joseph and Asenath’s children, and Moses and Zipporah’s children. I draw out the complex ideologies at play within the text and its ancient context, in conversation with Ezra and Nehemiah’s exclusion of foreign women. Submerged within these stories is a counter-narrative that breaches the exclusionary borders of the upper class, literate elites, and re-establishes the interdependent nature of the lower classes. At the end of each chapter and in my conclusion, I bring this submerged reading into conversation with the modern world and the current geopolitical landscape. I contend with ongoing ideologies of dehumanization that have developed as a means of establishing who controls the land and draw out the similarities between modern ideologies and the ideologies presented in the text. This monograph contributes to the field of biblical studies in several ways. It is the first book-length study of naming practices in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel, and thus builds on the study of women as ethnic actors, which critically under-developed topic. In addition, this study contributes to the study of the Torah as a post-exilic document and the impact of the Persian Empire on the development of the biblical text and the Second Temple community as the people determined how they defined themselves and the Other. This study also contributes to the project of using biblical studies as a tool for understanding the modern world.