Who’s Who

The people this book names, in one place. If you have forgotten anyone, look here.

The first families

Aaron — the brother of Moses, whom Moses ordains as a priest along with his sons. While Moses is on Mount Sinai, the people demand gods, and Aaron makes them a golden calf.

Abel — the brother whom Cain kills in Genesis, the first death in the scriptures. Jesus named him at the start of the list of righteous blood shed on earth.

Abraham — the father of the people in Genesis. God calls him to leave Mesopotamia for Canaan, and promises him land, children and a blessing for every family on earth.

Adam — the first human being. 1 Chronicles opens its family trees with his name, and Luke traces Jesus’s family back to him.

Balaam — a seer from the east whom the king of Moab hires to curse Israel, but who can only bless it. His donkey sees an angel that he cannot, and speaks to him.

Cain — the son of the first man and woman in Genesis. He kills his brother Abel in a field.

Esau — Jacob’s twin brother, who loses his rights as the firstborn and his father’s blessing to Jacob. The Edomites, the people Obadiah condemns, descend from him.

Isaac — Abraham’s son and Jacob’s father. God tells Abraham to sacrifice him on a mountain, and stops it at the last moment.

Jacob — Isaac’s son, whom God renames Israel. His twelve sons become the twelve tribes.

Job — the hero of the book that bears his name, a good man who loses everything and puts God on trial. The book sets him in a land outside Israel, in a world like Genesis, but it was written much later.

Joseph — Jacob’s son, sold into slavery by his brothers, who rises to run Egypt for Pharaoh. At the end of Genesis he forgives them.

Miriam — Aaron’s sister, who leads the women in dancing after Israel crosses the sea. In Numbers she is struck with a skin disease for a week after she and Aaron challenge Moses, and later she dies.

Moses — the leader who brings Israel out of slavery in Egypt, receives the Law at Mount Sinai, and dies on a mountain looking across the Jordan. Tradition says he wrote the first five books of the Bible.

Noah — the man who survives the flood in a great boat, with his family and the animals. God promises never to flood the earth again.

Phinehas — a priest who kills an Israelite man and a Midianite woman with a spear in Numbers, and whom God praises. The book says he became the model for people who thought killing for God was holy.

Judges and kings

Ahab — Omri’s son and king of Israel, married to Jezebel. The prophet Elijah stood up to him, and an Assyrian record names him at the battle of Qarqar in 853 BC.

Ahaz — a king of Judah in Isaiah’s day. When the kings of Aram and northern Israel marched on Jerusalem, Isaiah gave him the sign of a child named Immanuel, and he sent Assyria silver and gold from the Temple.

Bathsheba — the wife of Uriah, whom David takes as his own. She becomes the mother of Solomon.

Boaz — a wealthy relative of Naomi’s dead husband in the book of Ruth. He lets Ruth gather grain in his fields, buys the family land and marries her.

David — the shepherd from Bethlehem who became Israel’s second king, taking Jerusalem around 1000 BC and making it his capital. People remembered his reign as a golden age and called Jesus the son of David.

Deborah — a prophet and judge who sends Barak against the Canaanite commander Sisera. A woman named Jael kills Sisera, and the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 may be among the oldest Hebrew poetry.

Gideon — the judge who tears down his father’s altar to Baal and beats the Midianites with three hundred men. He refuses to be king, but his son Abimelech murders his brothers and makes himself king.

Goliath — the Philistine giant whom David kills with one stone in 1 Samuel 17. The Hebrew text makes him nearly ten feet tall, while the oldest copy and the Greek make him about six feet nine.

Hezekiah — a king of Judah in the years of Isaiah and Micah. In 701 BC the Assyrian king Sennacherib shut him up in Jerusalem, but the city survived.

Jehoiachin — the young king of Judah whom Nebuchadnezzar carried off to Babylon in 597 BC. Babylonian tablets list oil for him, and the last event told in the books of Kings is his release from prison in 561 BC.

Jehu — the army commander who seized Israel’s throne by killing Ahab’s family and Queen Jezebel. He bows to the Assyrian king on the Black Obelisk in 841 BC, and Hosea says God will punish the bloodshed.

Jephthah — an outcast who became a judge, beat the Ammonites, and sacrificed his daughter to keep a vow. Readers have argued about her story for two thousand years.

Jeroboam — the first king of the northern kingdom, after Solomon’s death around 930 BC. He set up golden calves at Bethel and Dan, and Kings judges every later northern king by his sins.

Jeroboam II — the king of Israel under whom Amos preached, about 760–750 BC. Jonah son of Amittai also prophesied in his reign.

Jezebel — Ahab’s queen, who has Naboth killed so that Ahab can take his vineyard. Elijah confronted her, and Jehu later has her thrown from a window.

Joshua — Moses’s successor, who leads Israel across the Jordan around 1200 BC. His Hebrew name, Yehoshua, is the same name as Jesus.

Josiah — king of Judah from about 640 to 609 BC, in whose reign a scroll of the law was found in the Temple in 622 BC. He used it to purge the land of other gods, and he was killed at Megiddo in 609 BC.

Manasseh — king of Judah for fifty-five years, about 695–640 BC. Kings calls him the worst king of Judah, and Chronicles adds that he was taken captive, humbled himself, and was brought home.

Naomi — the widow from Bethlehem in the book of Ruth, who loses her husband and both sons in Moab. She goes home with her daughter-in-law Ruth.

Omri — the king of Israel who built Samaria, and Ahab’s father. Assyria called Israel the land of Omri, and a Moabite king’s stone names him.

Philistines — a people who settled on the coast of Canaan in the 1100s BC. They fight Samson and Saul, and David kills their giant Goliath.

Rahab — a prostitute of Jericho who hides two Israelite spies and is spared when the walls fall. Matthew lists her in Jesus’s family tree.

Rehoboam — Solomon’s son, who refused to lighten the people’s heavy load. The kingdom split in two around 930 BC.

Ruth — a Moabite widow who stays with Naomi, marries Boaz, and becomes the great-grandmother of King David. Matthew names her in Jesus’s family tree.

Samson — a judge dedicated as a Nazirite before his birth, strong as long as his hair was uncut. Delilah betrays him to the Philistines, and he dies pulling down their temple.

Samuel — the last of the judges, and a prophet. He warns the people what a king will cost, then anoints Saul as the first king, and later David.

Saul — the first king of Israel, a tall young man from the tribe of Benjamin whom Samuel anoints. He grows jealous of David, and he dies after the Philistines defeat Israel on Mount Gilboa.

Solomon — David’s son by Bathsheba, who ruled about 970–930 BC and built the Temple in Jerusalem. The scriptures remember his wisdom and his forced labor, and link Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs to his name.

Uriah — Bathsheba’s husband, a faithful foreign soldier. David has him killed to cover up his adultery.

Prophets

Amos — a herdsman and fig-tree tender from Tekoa in Judah, who went north to preach under Jeroboam II, about 760–750 BC. His is the earliest prophet’s book that survives, and he condemns those who cheat the poor.

Baruch — Jeremiah’s scribe, who wrote down the prophet’s words. He wrote them out a second time after King Jehoiakim burned the first scroll.

Daniel — the young Jewish exile at the courts of Babylon and Persia in the book that bears his name. He keeps praying in spite of a ban and is thrown to the lions, though most scholars think the book was finished about 165 BC.

Elijah — a prophet of the northern kingdom, about 850 BC, who stood up to King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. In 2 Kings he is carried up to heaven in a whirlwind, and Malachi promises that he will return.

Elisha — Elijah’s successor, who takes up his cloak. In 2 Kings he feeds a hundred men with twenty loaves, and heals the Aramean general Naaman of his skin disease.

Ezekiel — a priest carried off to Babylon in 597 BC, whose dated prophecies run from 593 to 571 BC. In exile he sees God’s glory leave the Temple, and a valley of dry bones come back to life.

Habakkuk — a prophet of Judah, about 605–597 BC, who asks why God would use a nation as cruel as Babylon. Nothing else is known about him.

Haggai — the prophet who urged the returned exiles in 520 BC to finish the Temple. His four messages are all dated to the second year of the Persian king Darius I.

Hosea — a prophet in the northern kingdom, about 750–725 BC, in the last years before Assyria destroyed it. His marriage to Gomer becomes a picture of God’s love for unfaithful Israel.

Isaiah — a prophet in Jerusalem from about 740 BC, in the years Assyria threatened Judah. His scroll runs on into the exile and after, and most scholars think later prophets added chapters 40 to 66.

Jeremiah — a priest’s son from Anathoth who prophesied from about 627 BC until after Jerusalem fell in 586 BC. He warned that Babylon would take the city, and he was beaten and imprisoned for saying so.

Joel — the son of Pethuel, a prophet about whom nothing else is known. The book names no king, and many scholars place it after the exile.

Jonah — a prophet from Gath-hepher in Galilee, the son of Amittai, who prophesied under Jeroboam II in the 700s BC. The book that tells how he is sent to Nineveh was written much later, most likely after the exile.

Malachi — the name on the last book of the Twelve, which means “my messenger” and may be a title and not a name. The book scolds the priests of the rebuilt Temple, probably about 500–450 BC.

Micah — a prophet from the farming village of Moresheth in Judah, who preached about 740–700 BC in the same years as Isaiah. His book names Bethlehem as the birthplace of a coming ruler.

Nahum — a prophet from Elkosh, whose poem cheers the fall of Nineveh. His book dates between 663 BC, when Assyria sacked Thebes, and 612 BC, when Nineveh fell.

Nathan — the prophet who confronts David over Bathsheba with a parable about a rich man and a poor man’s one little ewe. He later helps put Solomon on the throne.

Obadiah — the prophet of the shortest book in the Old Testament, one chapter against Edom for joining in the looting after Jerusalem fell in 586 BC. Nothing else is known about him.

Zechariah — the son of Berechiah, a prophet in Jerusalem in 520–518 BC alongside Haggai, while the Temple was rebuilt. Most scholars think chapters 9 to 14 of his book come from later prophets.

Zechariah son of Jehoiada — the priest’s son stoned in the Temple courtyard by order of King Joash, told in 2 Chronicles 24. Jesus named him with Abel as the last of the righteous blood shed, though Matthew’s gospel calls him son of Barachiah.

Zephaniah — a prophet in the reign of King Josiah, about 640–609 BC, whose family goes back four generations to a Hezekiah, perhaps the king. Many scholars think he spoke before Josiah’s reform of 622 BC.

After the exile

Esther — a Jewish orphan raised by her cousin Mordecai, who becomes queen of Persia and saves her people from Haman. The book never mentions God, and most scholars read it as a historical novel.

Ezra — a priest and scribe who came from Persia to Jerusalem in the 400s BC to teach the Law of Moses. King Artaxerxes sent him.

Haman — the villain of Esther, a Persian official and a descendant of Agag, who plots to destroy the Jews. He is hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai.

Judah Maccabee — the most famous son of Mattathias, nicknamed Maccabee, which probably means the Hammer. In 164 BC he and his family took back the Temple and dedicated it again.

Maccabees — the family of the priest Mattathias, who revolted against Antiochus IV in 167 BC and won back the Temple in 164 BC. Their descendants, the Hasmoneans, ruled as kings and high priests for about eighty years.

Mattathias — the priest who began the revolt against Antiochus IV in 167 BC, with his sons.

Mordecai — Esther’s cousin, who raised her and uncovered a plot against the king. The book ends with him second only to the king.

Nehemiah — a Jew who served the Persian king as cupbearer, and came to Jerusalem as governor in 445 BC. He rebuilt the city’s walls in fifty-two days and cancelled the debts of the poor.

Sanballat — the governor of Samaria, who with Tobiah and Geshem mocked and plotted against Nehemiah’s builders. A letter of 407 BC from the Jews of Elephantine in Egypt mentions his sons.

Vashti — the Persian queen who refuses to show herself to King Ahasuerus’s guests, and is removed. The king then chooses Esther.

Zerubbabel — the governor named in Haggai, whom Haggai hoped would rule as a king of David’s line. He vanishes from history, but both gospels list him in Jesus’s family tree.

Rulers of the empires

Ahasuerus — the Persian king in the book of Esther, usually identified with Xerxes I, who ruled 486–465 BC. He removes Queen Vashti and makes Esther queen.

Alexander the Great — the Greek conqueror who swept through the land in 332 BC on his way to Egypt, so that it passed from the Persians to the Greeks. When he died young, his generals divided his empire.

Antiochus IV — the Greek king of Syria who in 167 BC banned circumcision and the Sabbath and set up an altar to a Greek god in the Temple. The Maccabees revolted against him, and the book of Daniel was finished during his persecution.

Artaxerxes — the Persian king who sent Ezra to Jerusalem to teach the Law. Nehemiah served him as cupbearer.

Belshazzar — the king in Daniel 5 whose feast ends with a hand writing on the wall. Babylonian records show he was the son of Nabonidus and ruled for his father, but was never king himself.

Cyrus — the Persian king who took Babylon in 539 BC and let the exiles go home to rebuild the Temple the next year. Isaiah even gives this foreign king the title messiah.

Darius I — the Persian king in whose second year, 520 BC, Haggai gave his messages. When the Temple work was challenged, he had the archives searched, found Cyrus’s decree, and ordered the work to go on.

Hammurabi — a king of Babylon, about 1792–1750 BC, whose laws are carved on a black stone pillar. They contain the same limit on revenge, an eye for an eye, that Exodus does.

Herod the Great — the king of Judea whom the Roman Senate named in 40 BC. He ruled by fear, rebuilt the Temple on a vast scale, and died in 4 BC. Jesus was born near the end of his reign.

Merneptah — an Egyptian king whose stone monument, set up about 1208 BC, is the earliest mention of Israel outside the Bible. It speaks of Israel as a people already living in Canaan.

Nabonidus — the last king of Babylon, who left the capital for about ten years and lived at Tayma in Arabia while his son ruled. Cyrus says he had offended the gods.

Nebuchadnezzar — the Babylonian king who took Jerusalem in 597 BC and carried off King Jehoiachin and thousands of leaders, among them the priest Ezekiel. He is also the king in the early stories of Daniel.

Neco — the Pharaoh who killed King Josiah at Megiddo in 609 BC.

Pompey — the Roman general who took Jerusalem in 63 BC and walked into the Holy of Holies. From then on, the Jews lived under Rome.

Sargon II — the Assyrian king the Bible names only once, in Isaiah 20:1. His own records boast that he conquered Samaria and carried off 27,290 of its people, and his palace at Khorsabad was dug up in 1843.

Sennacherib — the Assyrian king who invaded Judah in 701 BC and shut King Hezekiah up in Jerusalem. His own record boasts that he trapped Hezekiah like a bird in a cage, but never claims he took the city.

Shalmaneser III — the Assyrian king whose monument names Ahab at the battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. The Black Obelisk shows Jehu bowing before him in 841 BC.

Tiglath-pileser III — the Assyrian king from 745 to 727 BC, called Pul in 2 Kings. He crushed Damascus and attacked Israel, and King Ahaz of Judah sent him silver and gold from the Temple.

Writers, scholars and finders

Akiva — a great Jewish teacher in the generations after Jesus, who defended the Song of Songs as holy. He also hailed the rebel Simon, called Bar Kokhba, who led a war against Rome about a hundred years after Jesus.

Avraham Biran — the archaeologist whose team at Tel Dan found, in 1993, a broken stone that names the house of David.

Baruch Spinoza — the philosopher who argued openly, in 1670, that Moses did not write the five books of the Law.

Chronicler — the unknown writer of 1 and 2 Chronicles, probably connected with the Temple and perhaps a Levite. He wrote, probably in the 300s BC, for the people who had come home from exile.

Flinders Petrie — the British archaeologist who found the Merneptah stone, the earliest mention of Israel outside the Bible, at Thebes in 1896.

George Smith — a young engraver turned scholar at the British Museum, who in 1872 found a broken tablet from Nineveh with a flood story. It was the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Hillel — a famous Jewish teacher who lived shortly before Jesus’s time. He approved the prosbul, a legal device that let lenders keep lending as the seventh year of release came near.

Israel Finkelstein — an Israeli archaeologist who argued in 1996 that the gates once called Solomon’s belong to the 800s BC, about a century later. The book also cites his estimate that only 400 to 500 people lived in Jerusalem after the exile.

Jerome — the scholar who translated the Bible into Latin around the year 400. He said that seven or eight hundred lines were missing from the Greek book of Job.

Josephus — a Jewish historian of the first century, from a priestly family. The book draws on his histories for the Temple, Herod and the war with Rome.

Julius Wellhausen — the German scholar who by 1878 had set out the theory of four sources, called J, E, D and P, woven together in the first five books. Universities taught it for the next hundred years.

Martin Luther — the monk whose new understanding of a line from Habakkuk, as Paul quotes it in Romans, became the heart of the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Noth — the German scholar who argued in 1943 that Deuteronomy through 2 Kings is one long history, written by someone steeped in Deuteronomy to explain why Israel lost its land.

Origen — a Christian scholar of the 200s, who preached a series of sermons on Joshua and filled gaps in the Greek book of Job from other Greek translations.

Porphyry — a pagan philosopher of the 200s AD who argued that Daniel 11 was written after the events it describes. Most modern scholars agree with him.

Qohelet — the name the writer of Ecclesiastes gives himself, which means something like the one who gathers an assembly. He speaks as if he were Solomon, but lived long after him.

Robert Estienne — a French printer working in Geneva, who added the verse numbers to the Bible in the 1550s.

Stephen Langton — an English churchman who added the chapter numbers to the Bible around the year 1200, and later became archbishop of Canterbury.

William Tyndale — the English translator who spread the form Jehovah in the 1500s, and who coined the word scapegoat in 1530.