Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Marianne: 
 
That Moshe is a Semitic name is one of the reasons that I say that the 
pharaoh of the Exodus was a Hyksos pharaoh. The Egyptians wouldn't give 
such a name, but the Hyksos were not Egyptian. 
 
As for repeating a name in Tanakh, very few names were reused for two 
or more people, even names that would seem to have been more common. 
Part of the reason is that Tanakh names only a very small number of 
people in the first place, no more than a few hundred, and with the way 
names could be built up means that a few thousand Hebrew names are 
possible, at least. Therefore, to see a name used for two or more 
people in Tanakh is the exception. 
 
Karl W. Randolph. 
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: MarianneLuban AT aol.com 
 
> In a message dated 7/29/2004 1:11:15 PM Pacific Daylight Time,  
> 
>   
> However, there was a very popular name in the 18th and 19th 
Dynasties, written  
> simply "ms".  Since this name constitutes no phrase, no one is quite 
sure what it  
> is all about.  My guess is it just means "man-child", a strange name 
for a  
> person--but there it is.  It doesn't seem to be a truncated version 
of a  
> theophoric name, because those fit to a certain pattern.  In fact, 
the nickname of  
> "ms", itself, seems to be "Maya", actually pronounced "Meeya".  But I 
doubt that  
> the name "Moshe" has anything to do with any of this.  I doubt it's a 
proper  
> name at all, for a number of reasons.  And the explanation in Exodus 
is not a  
> satisfactory one, at all--unless you can believe that an Egyptian 
princess  
> would give her adopted son a Semitic name that was even rather a 
silly one,  
> totally unfitting to his station in life as the son of the princess.  
Egyptians  
> never had names like "drawn out of the water" or "he who dances with 
wolves" like  
> the Amerinds did.  Please note that the names of Moshe and Aharon 
never again  
> appear in the HB--which would be very odd if these were names that 
meant  
> something in Semitic.  They became used in the Diaspora only when 
such distinction  
> were no longer so well-drawn as even before that Jews had begun to be 
called  
> by foreign names quite routinely--mostly Greek or Roman ones.  
However, we  
> know the name "Joseph" was used before the Roman dispersion--because, 
after all,  
> Joseph really is a Semitic name the meaning of which is clear. 
-- 
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