Jonathan is a figure appearing in the account of
Micah's Idol in the
Book of Judges
The Book of Judges (, ') is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom ...
, in which he is appointed as the priest of a shrine; since the shrine contained an
ephod and
teraphim, Jonathan is referred to as an
idol-worshipper by traditional Judaism. The text identifies Jonathan as the son of
Gershom, son of ''Manasseh'', but there is a scribal oddity in that the verse presents the name of ''Manasseh'' as מ
נשה, with the "נ"
superscripted, which does not occur elsewhere in the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts o ...
; the correct reading may be ''
Moses'' (
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
: משה, ''Moshe''), and
Rashi
Shlomo Yitzchaki ( he, רבי שלמה יצחקי; la, Salomon Isaacides; french: Salomon de Troyes, 22 February 1040 – 13 July 1105), today generally known by the acronym Rashi (see below), was a medieval French rabbi and author of a compr ...
and other sages suspected as much, arguing that the name was changed to Manasseh to avoid scandalising Moses.
Kol Chovevei Torah: Moshe's Unique Prophesy by Rabbi David Almog and Lisa Bennett Almog
Indeed, Gershom, Jonathan's father's name, was also the name of a son of Moses.
References
Hebrew Bible people
{{Hebrew-Bible-stub