Communications - Letter to the Editor

Judaism, Fall, 2002 by Harriet Lutzky

DEAR EDITOR

In an article entitled "The Engendered Shema: Sarah-Echoes in the Name of Israel" (Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, Summer, 2000), Elizabeth Wyner Mark presented arguments in support of the hypothesis that the name Israel is linked to the name Sarah.

It is of historical interest to note that another version of this hypothesis was advanced in 1895 by the eminent biblical scholar William Robertson Smith. (1)

Smith claimed that the name Sarah/ Sarai has a derived masculine form, Seraiah, and that this name is a variant of the name Israel. As a model of the alternation found in the pair Seraiah/Israel ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], Sraiahu/Yisrael), he cited the pair Hezekiah/Ezekiel ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], Hizkiahu/Yihezkel). Within each pair, the two variants differ in the theophoric element, which is -yahu (Yahweh) in the one case and -el (El) in the other. In both pairs, the -el form has the prefix y- (Y-). Smith thus linked the names Sarah and Israel through the intermediary of the form Seraiah. On the basis of the relations among Sarah/Seraiah/Israel, Smith posited that Sarah is the "eponyma of Israel."

(1.) William Robertson Smith, Kinship & Marriage in Early Arabia (The Netherlands: Oosterhout NB, 1966, 1895, 2nd edition 1907), ch. 1, pp. 34-35 (note 1).

HARRIET LUTZKY

New York