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

UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies Mothers and Rituals of Child-Naming 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 child-naming, it is a child’s mother (or a mother’s 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 city-state of Ugarit, but elsewhere in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean (e.g., the Hittite Empire; classical and Hellenistic Greece), it is a child’s father who bestows a newborn’s name. In the