In the Ugaritic Aqhat Epic (ca. 14th cent. B.C.E., Syria), Danel laughs with unrestrained joy at El’s promise of a son. Why do Abraham and Sarah respond with nervous, uneasy laughter when YHWH makes the same promise?A question occurs to me.
Isaac's name means "he laughs" (that same root ṣḥq). At first glance it looks like the laughter episodes in his birth story involve a pun on his name. But if the laughing is part of a set epic scene—an ancestor's reaction to divine news of a coming son—it was part of the tradition before the Isaac story. Given the parallel in the Aqhat epic, that looks likely. There are a number of such set epic scenes in the patriarch stories, some with parallels in the Ugaritic texts (quest for a bride, vision in which ancestor requests an heir, etc.).
What, then, is the significance of Isaac's name? Was it generated from the laughter in the epic scene? I would think that a foundational ancestor's name would be a longstanding tradition predating the story. But does that mean that the shared "laughter" root in the name and the story are a coincidence? Seems unlikely. Question asked. I don't know the answer.
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