Day 6 - A to Z

The alphabet comes up only a couple of times in the Bible. Jesus is described as the Alpha and the Omega - which is the beginning and end of the Greek alphabet, and Jesus speaks of centuries of prophets being slain, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, which wasn’t alphabetical when he said it, but in the Latin/English alphabet it gains a double meaning of slaying all the prophets from A to Z.

I find joy in listing things alphabetically. Its an imperfect and fairly random system, but allows you to stumble on things you might otherwise never mention. So here’s a list I put together before breakfast of the first Biblical names to come to mind for each letter of the alphabet

Abel - the first murder victim. How long did Cain hate his brother? As long as he was Abel.

Bildad the Shuhite - he was one of Job’s friends, by which I mean a frustrating, unhelpful and philosophically meagre guy who hung out with Job and spoke and spoke and spoke.

Cain - He was pre-flood, so it’s not clear whether Cain still has descendants in the world. That is, we’re all descended from his brother Seth, but there are nine generations between him and Noah, so there’s likely to be some interbreeding.

Dorcas - a new testament figure whose name sounds like two mild insults for an uncool fool. I always imagine Dorcas as a Meg Griffin type.

Ehud - Ehud is one of the coolest judges in the book of Judges, a left-handed Benjamite who stabbed an evil king to death. He’d been frisked for a knife, but no-one though to check his left-handed pocket. No-one found the body for ages, because they thought the king wouldn’t want to be disturbed on the toilet. Judges chapter 3 is a treat.

Festus was a Roman governor, and St Paul gave an excellent speech before him while on trial. He’s in Acts 25, ±1, and was either directly before or after governor Felix, who also begins with F

God.

Hosea - a minor prophet and a short book. He was asked by God to lie on his side for a year and/or marry a sex-worker whether he liked to or not. Was it Hosea who was asked to cook over poo? I forget. (Editor's note: two of these things were actually Ezekiel! How embarrassing, Ben)

Iscariot, Judas’s surname. That’s the Judas who isn’t referred to as ‘the other Judas’.

Jesus. Five or six or seven people in the Bible have this name, because it’s the same name as Joshua. There was a man called Jesus a few hundred years BC who came up with a ton of proverbs, told them to his son Sirach, who told them to his son, who was also called Jesus, who wrote them down in a big apocryphal book, which is confusingly called Sirach, named after the member of the family least involved in the book. Admittedly, it would be more confusing to call the book Jesus

Kibrotthhataavah - not a person but a place. The Hebrew word means ‘graves of lust’, but this was non-sexual lust. It was desire for cucumber and other foods that made many Israelites nostalgic about slavery.

Lazarus - who was dead for four days. His resurrection was remarkable, all the more so because by the fourth day the spirit was meant to have vamoosed from the corpse

Midian - someone related to Jacob, I think. His descendants maybe married Moses, who also starts with M, but who I didn’t think of until just now.

Nahum - another minor prophet, about whom I can tell you nothing. I will reread the book and return to you in a few days

Obadiah - the ‘iah’ part of his name pertains to God, yah-weh. You see that in Ahaziah, Jeremiah, and the word ‘Hallelujah’. ‘Hallelu’ means y’all should praise. A group instruction said with gusto.

Pontius Pilate - governor of Judaea - the first Century historian Josephus wrote a non-Biblical account of Pilate which manages to be even more damning. The man was violently Anti-Jewish.

Quirinius - a governor quite a while before Pilate, in whose time the census was taken and Jesus was born

Rahab - a harlot, say most translations. A saviour, a rescuer, a cool cat.

Simon Magus - aka Simon the Sorceror. He wanted to become a Christian and be filled with the Holy Spirit purely so he could impress crowds with miracles in his magic act. Embarrassing, frowned-upon, kind-of relatable

Tamar - the daughter of King David. Like Joseph, Tamar was a favourite with a richly ornamental robe, but with horribly mistreated. She never gets a happy ending, or any ending at all, and I worry for her.

Uriah - there are several Uriahs, in the monarchy era of Israel, but I always mix them up with each other, and Uriah Heep, from David Copperfield.

V - I couldn't think of anyone Biblical beginning with V, but the Internet suggests Vashti, queen of Persia, from the book of Esther. Vashti was either mistreated or terrible or both, but I err towards the former, as marrying a king has historically been no fun.

W - there are no W names in the Bible. Until recently there was also no letter ‘W’ in the French language, which is why the symbol for ‘W’ in Braille doesn’t fit in the alphabet’s logical pattern.

Xerxes - king of Persia, called, in some translations, Ahaseurus, but the spelling with ‘X’ is cooler

Y - Yeshua! It’s Jesus again under a more authentic spelling. Weird how we say his name wrong so much and so often

Zebulun - the tenth son of Jacob, one of Joseph’s brothers, a cast member in the Joseph musical. He doesn’t have any notable solos in the show, but the actor is often cast in the dual role of Zebulun and one of the Egyptians.

And that’s the alphabet! If it has more letters than that, I don’t know them. I may revisit a few of the entries in the coming days - we shall see!