There is no other name given – Mosiah 5.8

Names in Antiquity – A Greater Understanding of Mosiah 3.17 and 5.8

In Mosiah 3:17 of the Book of Mormon, King Benjamin emphasizes the singular importance of the name of Christ in the context of salvation, stating, “there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.” This passage highlights a key aspect of many ancient cultures: the deep significance and power attributed to names. In the ancient world, a name was more than a mere identifier; it often embodied the essence, character, or even the destiny of a person or deity. This belief extended to the spiritual arena, where invoking the name of a deity was seen as a means of accessing their power or favor. In the context of King Benjamin’s words, the name of Christ represents not just an identity, but a conduit through which salvation and divine power are made accessible to humanity. It encapsulates the authority, divinity, and redemptive power of Jesus Christ. Thus, the emphasis on Christ’s name in this passage reflects the broader ancient understanding of names as potent and integral to religious and spiritual practice.

In the cultures of the ancient Near East, existence was thought to be dependent upon an identifying word, that word being a “name.” The name of someone (or something) was perceived not as a mere abstraction, but as a real entity, “the audible and spoken image of the person, which was taken to be his spiritual essence.”^[1]W. Brede Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion ,translated by John B. Carman (Hague: Nijhoff, 1971), 416. According to Philo of Alexandria, the name “is like a shadow which accompanies the body.”^[2]Philo, De Decalogo, 82. Similarly, Origen viewed the name as the designation of the individual essence.^[3]Origen, Contra Celsum I, 24, in PG 11:701-3; cf. also Contra Celsum V, 45 in PG 11:1249-53. The phenomenon and religious significance of naming, as well as the practices of renaming and of giving secret or hidden names, are richly attested in the extant sources among the peoples of the ancient Near East, particularly in Israel and Egypt; but they are also found in chronologically and geographically contiguous societies in the ancient world.

Naming and Existence

The intimate connection between naming and existence can be inferred from its role in many ancient Near Eastern creation texts, where the creation of each element of the cosmos was dependent upon the gods naming those things which were to be created. The Enuma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, describes the precreation period as a time when “the heaven had not been named, Firm ground below had not been called by name, . . . when no gods whatever had been brought into being, Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined.”^[4]The Creation Epic (Enuma Elish),” Tablet 1:1-2, 7-8, Ephraim A. Speiser, tr., in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 60-61.

As its name is pronounced, so the thing comes into being. For the name is a reality, the thing itself.”^[5]Alexandre Piankoff, The Litany of Re (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964), 4. In other myths it is Thoth who gives names to things that were previously nameless, cf. E. A. Wallis … Continue reading

Renaming

In many parts of the ancient world there are accounts of men receiving new names in place of their former designations. This act of renaming often occurred at a time of transition in the life of the one renamed and frequently carried with it special privileges and honors for the one receiving the new name. The person who gave the new name was usually in a position of authority and could exercise power and dominion over the individual named.^[6]Otto Eissfeldt, “Renaming in the Old Testament,” in Ackroyd and Barnabas, Words and Their Meanings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 70; Alan H. Gardiner, “A Lawsuit … Continue reading Dependence was sometimes, but not invariably, implied in renaming… since “Renaming can also indicate a kind of adoption into the household which is equivalent to conferring on them a high honor.”^[7]Eissfeldt, “Renaming,” 73. This “adoption” would carry with it the idea of responsibility as well as inheritance.

(This is a short excerpt from a chapter produced by Bruce Porter and Stephen D. Ricks entitled, “Names in Antiquity: Old, New, and Hidden,” in By Study and Also by Faith, Essays in Honor of Hugh Nibley on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, 27 March 1990, edited by John Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks, 2 vols, 1:501, 1990.

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