Uploaded January 2024 | Updated September 2026, 6 days ago
This is the second video to be released on January 28.
Correction: At about minute 1:30 and following, I incorrectly state that Annas was a much more popular name than Ananias. In fact, Ananias was more popular than Annas. Both were in the top twelve names (Annas is number 12 in Bauckham's Table 6), so Annas is still a Tier B name. Both are therefore examples of titles attached to relatively popular names that might not be there due to a need for disambiguation. An example of evidential "noise" based on titles used with an unpopular name would be the various titles attached to the name "Herod"--e.g., Herod the tetrarch. My point is that titles are attached to both popular and unpopular names for obvious narrative reasons, so they should not be expected to track popularity even in a wholly historical document.
Now that we've talked about unnecessary clumps, what about more unnecessary disambiguations? Like Jesus of Nazareth and Lazarus of Bethany, these are additional places where there's no reason *within the narrative of a particular book* to give an extra qualifier with a name. Even if it's a popular name, if there's only one person in the book by that name, or if his identity is made amply clear by context, there's no need to add another qualifier.
First of all I discuss evidential "noise," where the information in question would likely be given regardless of whether the name was popular or unpopular. This applies for example to titles like "the high priest" that are important to the story. It also applies to obviously interesting pieces of information like the fact that Manaean was brought up with Herod or the fact that Andrew was Simon Peter's brother.
Using fairly stringent standards for "unnecessary," so as to filter out such "noise," I come up with eight narratively unnecessarily qualified names in the Gospels and Acts.
In two cases we do have narratively unnecessary qualifiers for not-very-popular names: Levi son of Alphaeus and Nathanael of Cana. These may just be included as examples of unnecessary details more generally.
But in six out of the eight (3/4), the first names are either Tier A or Tier B popular names, based on Bauckham's Table 6 of name popularity. (I designate Tier A as place 1-9, Tier B as place 10-12, and Tier C as anything lower.)
The list is:
Jesus of Nazareth
Lazarus of Bethany
Levi son of Alphaeus
Nathanael of Cana
John the Baptist
James the Less
Judas the Galilean (in Gamaliel's speech in Acts)
Joseph of Arimathea (in particular in Mark)
For further details, watch the video or listen to the podcast!
This is the second video to be released on January 28.
Correction: At about minute 1:30 and following, I incorrectly state that Annas was a much more popular name than Ananias. In fact, Ananias was more popular than Annas. Both were in the top twelve names (Annas is number 12 in Bauckham's Table 6), so Annas is still a Tier B name. Both are therefore examples of titles attached to relatively popular names that might not be there due to a need for disambiguation. An example of evidential "noise" based on titles used with an unpopular name would be the various titles attached to the name "Herod"--e.g., Herod the tetrarch. My point is that titles are attached to both popular and unpopular names for obvious narrative reasons, so they should not be expected to track popularity even in a wholly historical document.
Now that we've talked about unnecessary clumps, what about more unnecessary disambiguations? Like Jesus of Nazareth and Lazarus of Bethany, these are additional places where there's no reason *within the narrative of a particular book* to give an extra qualifier with a name. Even if it's a popular name, if there's only one person in the book by that name, or if his identity is made amply clear by context, there's no need to add another qualifier.
First of all I discuss evidential "noise," where the information in question would likely be given regardless of whether the name was popular or unpopular. This applies for example to titles like "the high priest" that are important to the story. It also applies to obviously interesting pieces of information like the fact that Manaean was brought up with Herod or the fact that Andrew was Simon Peter's brother.
Using fairly stringent standards for "unnecessary," so as to filter out such "noise," I come up with eight narratively unnecessarily qualified names in the Gospels and Acts.
In two cases we do have narratively unnecessary qualifiers for not-very-popular names: Levi son of Alphaeus and Nathanael of Cana. These may just be included as examples of unnecessary details more generally.
But in six out of the eight (3/4), the first names are either Tier A or Tier B popular names, based on Bauckham's Table 6 of name popularity. (I designate Tier A as place 1-9, Tier B as place 10-12, and Tier C as anything lower.)
The list is:
Jesus of Nazareth
Lazarus of Bethany
Levi son of Alphaeus
Nathanael of Cana
John the Baptist
James the Less
Judas the Galilean (in Gamaliel's speech in Acts)
Joseph of Arimathea (in particular in Mark)
For further details, watch the video or listen to the podcast!
