Genesis 46:11 names Gershon as a son of Levi. Exodus 2:22 and 18:3 name Gershom as a son of Mosheh and Tsiporah. Two different names then - so why are they on the same page?
Exodus 6:17 gives the family of Gershon ben Levi. His brothers were Kehat (קהת) and Merari (מררי). His sons were Livni (לבני) - which name means white, like Lavan, Ya'akov's father-in-law, and is connected to the moon - and Shim'i (שמעי). The Levites would become the priestly tribe, and all these names appear to connect to the rites, ceremonies and rituals, and may therefore not be "sons" in the biological sense at all, but in the way that a mediaeval monk would call his Abbot "father", and he would bless him as "my son".
Numbers 3:17 ff repeats the detail.
Judges 18:30 refers to Yehohonatan (יהוֹנָתָן), or perhaps Yahu-Natan, Jonathan in English, likewise a priest, though of which religion is not obvious from the tale; but definitely a "son of Gershom, son of Menasheh".
In 1 Kings 1:42 the name is spelled Yonatan (יוֹנָתָן) for the son of Avi-Atar, another priest with the word "father" in his name (the English "Abbot" is derived from this), whereas the Book of Samuel, in reference to Sha'ul's son, spells him as Yehonatan, or possibly Yeho-Natan, throughout. Why the variation? In all probability the name was Yah-Natan (יה-נתן), meaning "gift of the goddess", but changed to these variations by the Redactor of Judges and Kings, in order to masculinise the deity, and then changed to Yonatan by the Redactor of Samuel, in order to remove the deity altogether.
Ezra 8:2, to return to Gershon, names him as a member of the family of Pinchas, which was among those who accompanied Ezra back to Yehudah from Bavel (Babylon), and on this occasion I really do think it is pure coincidence that the other Pinchas in the Tanach was the son of the high priest Eli at the opening of the Book of Samuel.
But not that this Pinchas was among those etc, or my deliberate use of the word "return" in the previous paragraph. Both names, Gershom and Gershon, mean "expulsion", from the root Garash (גרש), which is also used for "divorce" and "to drive cattle to pasture", as well as for trees putting out fruit, and for produce in general.
The unanswered question then is: given that both come from the same root, and are traditional Levite names, are they in fact the same name with either dialect or time variations (in the sense that spellings change over time as well as place)? The answer is probably yes, and for those readers who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with this principle, take a look at Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", where he sometimes use the northern, Viking spelling "plough", and at others the southern, Saxon "plow", both describing the means of furrowing a field; or think of American "kerb", which might be the point at which the sidewalk drops down to the road, or the verb for stifling one's emotions - in English English, the latter would be spelled "curb", especially in houses with more than one storey - that's storey, with an "e", as opposed to the American which spells the levels of a building and the tales in a collection identically. So langage (that's the Norman French for language), grammaire (ditto) and speling (mediaeval post-Norman Aenglisch) vary with time and place in the world of the Bible too.
But if this is the case, you are entirely right to ask, could the variations on Jonathan, above, not also be matters of time and dialect, rather than ideological interference by the Redactor? To which the answer is: that we cannot know, and so, perhaps, yes.
But not that this Pinchas was among those etc, or my deliberate use of the word "return" in the previous paragraph. Both names, Gershom and Gershon, mean "expulsion", from the root Garash (גרש), which is also used for "divorce" and "to drive cattle to pasture", as well as for trees putting out fruit, and for produce in general.
The unanswered question then is: given that both come from the same root, and are traditional Levite names, are they in fact the same name with either dialect or time variations (in the sense that spellings change over time as well as place)? The answer is probably yes, and for those readers who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with this principle, take a look at Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", where he sometimes use the northern, Viking spelling "plough", and at others the southern, Saxon "plow", both describing the means of furrowing a field; or think of American "kerb", which might be the point at which the sidewalk drops down to the road, or the verb for stifling one's emotions - in English English, the latter would be spelled "curb", especially in houses with more than one storey - that's storey, with an "e", as opposed to the American which spells the levels of a building and the tales in a collection identically. So langage (that's the Norman French for language), grammaire (ditto) and speling (mediaeval post-Norman Aenglisch) vary with time and place in the world of the Bible too.
But if this is the case, you are entirely right to ask, could the variations on Jonathan, above, not also be matters of time and dialect, rather than ideological interference by the Redactor? To which the answer is: that we cannot know, and so, perhaps, yes.
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