medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 11:35 AM +0000 1/14/03, Jones, Dr G.R. wrote:
>Sava (the Serbian form of Saba) was his name in religion, and it is
>said he adopted it in commemoration of Saba/s, abbot of the
>monastery on Mount Sinai. Some Balkan scholars have claimed that in
>folklore he became conflated with a Slavonic deity called Sabaoth.
>Since this looks suspiciously like appropiation of the Hebrew
>epithet Sabaoth, and the supposed conflation crops up in a
>contribution to a book that I'm editing, I should be grateful for
>any guidance from fellow list-members who can explain the
>relationship between the name Saba/s (carried by thirteen saints at
>my last count) and the word Sabaoth. Perhaps 'Sabbath' is
>interposed; I ought to know this, so please forgive my ignorance.
Hebrew onomastics is not something I know anything about (except
second-hand), but here and there I run across attempts to trace a
connection between supposed pagan deities and modern concepts. The
closest I can think of are attempts to (mis-)interpret the Gaelic
holiday "Samhain" as the name of a pagan "lord of the dead" [1]. Such
attempts seem to come about equally from modern pagans searching for
god-names and modern Christians looking for devil-names (to warn us
against them, of course!).
But I haven't heard of anyone attempting to pin god-hood on the word
"Sabaoth". My Biblical concordance relates it to the Hebrew [ts{a^} -
b {a^}'] or [ts(e) - b {a^} ' {a^}h], meaning "a mass of persons,
especially an army, by implication a campaign, literal or
figurative." (Hebrew entry 6635, Greek entry 4519 if anyone else has
Strong's "Exhausting" Concordance).
I'll ask my onomastic sources if any of them can shed any light on "Sabaoth."
--
_________________________________________________________
O Chris Laning
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+ Davis, California
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[1] W.J. Betancourt's page on that one is at
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hallo_sa.htm
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