Bible Question: Why are last names of people in the Bible generally not used? |
Bible Answer: Just thought I'd share as I just head this lecture just a few months ago and it made a lot of sense. In the growth of our world from the Biblical perspective of about six thousand years, we must remember large cities like you and I are used to did not exist. For a very long time, practically no one lived in cities; almost everyone lived on a farm where almost every residence and every person was self-sufficient so there wasn't a lot of visiting, just a lot of work to get by. Then the age of tools came along and specialists were needed to maintain them, refine them and make them better. Now we're talking about cities maybe consisting of a couple hundred people. It was not practical to have more than maybe two blacksmiths or more than two stores with special wares to support such a small number of people. The total number of farmers in the surrounding areas couldn't support a bunch of toolmakers so the other sons of the blacksmith would move on to another town. Now as technology grew and more and more moved to town, it would grow in diversity, goods and services, ie banks and specialty shops, etc. In the small towns the two blacksmiths would be known as Mike and Joe. The shopowners Jeff and John. They were all known by the first name and then "of Town X." This worked for quite a while. But when there's so many of a given profession, it becomes a little more difficult to keep up with them, then another name becomes practical. Now when did this become the norm? Who knows but it seems to have taken a long while. Another factor keeping the growth slow. Very few could afford a horse with which to go to town. Fewer still could afford enough to own their own tools and quite possibly, the land owner might go out and hire his own blacksmith for tool maintenance. The point is the growth of towns and the use of multiple names was a very slow process. There's probably many other unknown factors keeping this growth slow, ie fear of towns or dislike by the landowners, lust for maintaining power. Hope this helps; Go with God in all His Ways, Bill |