Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity

Part III: The Western Diaspora, 330 BCE - 650 CE

With Thomas Ziem By (author) Tal Ilan

Book cover: Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity

Extent: 796 pages

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Subjects: Ancient Near East, Jewish Studies

Series: Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(February 2009)

ISBN: 9783161496738

6.5 x 9.33 inches

Price: $381.00

In stock

This volume collects all the information on names of Jews in lands west of Palestine, in which Greek and Latin was spoken, and on the people who bore them between 330 BCE, a date which marks the Hellenistic conquest of East, and 650 CE, approximately the date when the Muslim conquest of East and the southern Mediterranean basin was completed.


In this lexicon, Tal Ilan collects all the information on names of Jews in lands west of Palestine, in which Greek and Latin was spoken, and on the people who bore them between 330 BCE and 650 CE. The corpus includes names from literary sources, but those mentioned in epigraphic and papyrological documents form the vast majority of the database. Tal Ilan discusses the provenance of the names and explains them etymologically, given the many possible sources of influence for the names at that time. In addition she shows the division between the use of biblical names and the use of Greek, Latin and other foreign names, and points out the most popular names.The lexicon is accompanied by a lengthy and comprehensive introduction that scrutinizes the main trends in name giving current at the time. A large part of it is devoted to the question of how one can identify a Jew in a mostly non-Jewish society.

  • With Thomas Ziem
  • By (author) Tal Ilan