National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kiev

Two of the Bible’s good guys, Joshua (left) and Caleb (right), carry enormous grapes back from the Promised Land in this anonymous 18th-century icon from the National Art Museum in Kiev, Ukraine. Of the twelve men sent by Moses into Canaan to spy out the land, only these two return confident of the Israelites’ ability to settle there, with God’s help, and optimistic about the land’s fruits. It “flows with milk and honey” (Numbers 13:27), they report.

Why, then, does the Bible—a book where personal names are always significant—give Caleb such a bad name? Caleb comes from the Hebrew root for “dog,” and as John Crawford shows in the accompanying article, the Bible condemns dogs as lazy or bloodthirsty mutts.