Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 20/08/2004 12:38, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:

> ...
>
> > 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.


Furthermore, the Septuagint translators may have identified the Hebrew 
names with an Egyptian name familiar to them from their own time and 
location, and written the common Greek spelling of that name. But the 
Hebrew name may actually correspond to a very different Egyptian name, 
transliterated according to a very different set of conventions, from 
the Middle Kingdom.

Alternatively, we might consider the opinion of Kenneth Kitchen writing 
in the New Bible Dictionary (s.v. Potipherah): "Potiphera/P'-di-P'R` may 
be simply a modernization in Moses' time of the older form Didi-R`, with 
the same meaning, of a name-pattern (Didi-X) which is particularly 
common in the Middle Kingdom and Hyksos periods."

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/