Wednesday, January 8, 2020

A possible meaning of the name, Zenos

I have hade some interest in the prophet, Zenos, from the brass plates lately. Trying to figure out what his name means, I looked at this web page containing known or assumed Hebrew meaning for Book of Mormon names. Unfortunately, the entry on Zenos, has not been completed there. Although I'm far from an expert, I had this idea that Zenos contains the same prefix as e.g. Zeezrom and Zenephi. On the Book of Mormon onomasticon page, it says that the prefix 'Ze' used in these names means "he of" or "the one of", which in turn can imply "son/descendent of". Consequently, Zenephi can mean descendent of Nephi and Zeezrom can mean "he of silver" creating the pun addressed by Lord Wilmore in this post.

If Zenos is based on the same prefix, it could actually be a contracted form of Ze'enos. Enos or 'Enosh' as they would pronounce it in Hebrew, is another Book of Mormon name and means 'man' or 'mankind', synonymous with 'Adam'. As a side note, Enos opens his account by saying "I, Enos, knowing my father that he was a just man" (Enos 1:1), which is another of many examples of word-plays in the Book of Mormon when someone is introduced.

So Zenos could then mean "he of mankind". It might even imply "son of man", although this expression in the Bible uses the literal word for 'son', which is 'ben' in Hebrew. In any case, it could work as some sort of allusion to the "son of man", the Savior of the world who Zenos testified of (see e.g. 1 Nephi 19:12-15). In the Book of Moses in tPofGP "the son of man" is used several times as a name of the Savior, so it's not a New Testament invention.

Anyway, I need to re-emphazise that I am no expert and may be way off. If any Hebrew expert reads this, I would very much appreciate comments.