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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ark of the Covenant
  • Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 06:38:56 -0500

Dear Marianne,

Thanks for your reply.

What about Poti-phera, the priest of On, whose daughter Joseph married? It
is obviously the same name.

HH: I read the article on Potiphar in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, and the author, Gary Pratico, says that the name "is probably an abbreviated form of Potiphera with the loss of the final 'ayin.'" So he essentially agrees with you. The names are quite similar, but in Hebrew Potiphera has an extra consonant and is divided into two words. So there is a clear difference. Since the two names are in the same book, they most probably reflect some sort of difference in the original Egyptian words.

> > As it happens, such a name was not used in Egypt until the latter
> >part of the Late Period of Egyptian history (1070-378 BCE).

HH: Pratico agrees with you about this too, as he accepts the current scholarly reconstruction of the name, giving the meaning for Potiphera as "he whom Re has given." However, he states that "one cannot rule out earlier use, since many inscriptions from the time of the Hyksos (approximately Joseph's time) were destroyed."

> HH: First, you are forming the name in Egyptian
on the basis of the Hebrew.

Why blame me? The consensus is that the name is "P'di-Pre", going by the
Petepres of the Septuagint.

HH: Right, but the Septuagint was translated from the Hebrew over a thousand years after the original Hebrew was written, and was translated by Jews living in Egypt. If they were not familiar with the language used over a thousand years earlier, they may not have transcribed the Hebrew reflection of two ancient Egyptian names correctly into Greek.

So there is some room > for error there, isn't there? Second, it would be
hard for me to say that a name had not been used
in the United States for a two hundred year
period. So to say that a name that appeared in
Egypt at a late date could not have been used at
any time prior to that, a period of thousands of
years, seems a stretch.

Have you studied Egyptian prosopographia? I have. Until you do, just trust
me. Any Egyptologist would tell you the same.

HH: I have not studied Egyptian prosopography. However, I am used to the claims of academics, who sometimes claim to know things they don't know. While the scholarly reconstruction of the name might be true, the claim that the name could not have been used before the late period certainly is questionable.

Fine with me. Believe as you like. I say the names are one and the same. But how does one being Poti-phera and the other something else make any
difference to what I said about the name not being in vogue until the Late Period?

HH: The two forms are alike in the Septuagint, but they are not alike in the Hebrew, which is the original. There was some distinction, so that means that you are ruling out two names, even if one is only an abbreviation of the other. I far prefer Pratico's conclusion that a record of the name might have been lost due to an eradication of the records of the Hyksos.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard






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