Susan Ackerman ( Dartmouth). Mothers and Rituals of Child Naming in Ancient Israel

UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies Mothers and Rituals of ChildNaming in Ancient Israel Susan Ackerman(Dartmouth) Moderator: William Schniedewind (UCLA) The Bible and the Ancient World Seminar Series Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages Cultures UCLA Center for the Study of Religion In Hebrew Bible accounts of childnaming, it is a childs mother (or a mothers female surrogate or surrogates; e. g., a midwife) who, somewhat more often than not, bestows a name on a newly delivered infant. This same tradition of mothers or their female surrogates conferring infants names can also be found in Egypt and the Late Bronze Age citystate of Ugarit, but elsewhere in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean the Hittite Empire; classical and Hellenistic Greece), it is a childs father who bestows a newborns name. In the