In 1865 a very useful work was published by the Eev. 
W. F. Wilkinson on Personal Names in the Bible. 
I recommend this little book to the attention of students ; 
but its perusal will show how much ground has been gained 
within the last sixteen years. This will easily appear by 
collating the work with the index of Bible names given by 
the Kev. T. K. Cheyne in the Variorum Teachers^ Bible of 
Messrs. Spottiswoode (1880)_, and there is still much to be 
done in explaining the origin and affinities of Biblical Proper 
Names. 
All kind forbearance I must crave^, for the subject is 
immense and most difficult, and while I have been turning 
it over, new lines have been struck out, as, for instance, by 
Professor Kobertson Smith in his paper on Animal Worshi'p 
and Animal Tribes among the Arabs and in the Old Testa- 
ment ; f and important material has been contributed by 
M. Lenormant in his work Lcs Origines de VHiHoire and by 
Dr. Friedrich Delitzsch in his essay on the Site of Paradise 
which contains a profusion of geographical knowledge far 
beyond the limits suggested by the title. M. Derenbourg has 
also compared the proper names of persons in the Old Testa- 
ment with those of Himyaritic inscriptions, in an interesting 
article in the new Revue des Etudes Juives. 
But for a rash promise I should have shrunk from this 
difficult topic altogether ; but I hope to show how in various 
directions the names of the Bible agree with the assumed 
conditions of the holy writings, and may help us in further 
fruitful studies to the glory of that Name which is above 
every name.^^ 
Names Personal and Local. 
Personal and local names are vitally connected. Men of old 
loved to call their lands after their own names,^^ and were 
called after their native land, and the man gave name to his 
race, which is included in a vivid way in the personal name 
and the territorial. So it is often hard to know whether we 
are reading of men, or tribes, or cities and regions, for all 
have their pedigrees, and the fashion of recording them was 
often similar or the same. 
M. Clermont Ganneau § has noticed, for instance, that the 
modern name of the Belka is the same as that of Balak, king 
of Moab (compare Belkis, queen of Sheba, H.G.T .) ; that 
* Strahan. f Journ. of Philology, ix. 75. 
+ Wo lag das Paradies? Leipzig, 1881. § P.E.F, 1881, 12. 
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