Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Stephen Shead:
 
 
You wrote:  “Thought I'd step in with one objection, concerning your argument 
about Akhenaten's and Abraham's "obsession" to sire a son by their beloved 
main wife #1.  …Factor in the very striking non-correspondence that Abraham 
and 
Sarah had no daughters (why make Sarah entirely barren?), and the comparison 
is hardly convincing.”
 
In the first half of the Patriarchal narratives, two couples are always 
contrasted.  Although one couple is usually front and center (Abraham and 
Sarah), 
the other couple is always there, in the background:  Lot and Lot’s wife.  
The 
author of the Patriarchal narratives approves of Abraham, Sarah, Lot’s 
daughters, and, after a fashion, Lot, but not Lot’s wife.
 
Lot’s wife bore Lot four daughters who grew up to be teenagers.  Ditto for 
Nefertiti, who was Akhenaten’s Queen/main wife #1.  Lot’s two oldest 
daughters 
marry men of Sodom (hence the references to “sons-in-law” in chapter 19 of 
Genesis), and Lot’s two youngest daughters are virgins, who are just old 
enough 
to bear a child.
 
Lot’s wife never bore Lot a son.  Ditto for Nefertiti.
 
Lot’s wife, though younger than Sarah, appears to give up trying to bear Lot 
a son.  Ditto for Nefertiti.  Today, we would not criticize Lot’s wife or 
Nefertiti for that choice, because those two women were in middle age, and 
trying 
to bear another child could well have been very hazardous to their health.  
But that was not the view of Akhenaten or of the author of the Patriarchal 
narratives.  So you see, the old age of Sarah is in fact very, very relevant 
to 
Akhenaten’s family situation, as Nefertiti had become too old to bear another 
child safely, though Nefertiti may not have been too old to get pregnant 
again.
 
Lot’s wife is righteously turned into a type of statue.  Ditto for Nefertiti, 
all of whose iconography remains intact, but who is never seen alive again 
(though she has not literally died, as there is no funeral or mourning).
 
Lot then impregnates his 14- and 12-year-old virgin daughters, which may 
result in siring a male heir on behalf of his main wife #1, with such heir to 
be a 
son/grandson.  Akhenaten did exactly the same thing.
 
But unlike Lot, Akhenaten did not sire a son/grandson as an heir.  So at the 
end of the day, you see, Akhenaten was in Abraham’s situation.  There was no 
son, and no son/grandson either.  Sarah is praised for not complaining about 
spending one night in princeling Abimelech’s household, and for being willing 
to 
try to bear a son in advanced middle age (the equivalent of age 45 regular 
years, as her stated age of 90 “years” is set forth in terms of 6-month 
“years”
).  Abraham is praised for accepting Isaac as his son and heir, even though 
YHWH never is reported in the text as telling Abraham that Isaac was 
Abraham’s 
blood son, rather than being Abraham’s adopted son.
 
Akhenaten, you see, ended up having to adopt his heir.  Smenkhkare was, in 
effect, Akhenaten’s adopted “son”, and was certainly a close male relative 
who 
was Akhenaten’s sole heir.  The Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives 
was unwilling to portray Isaac as necessarily being Abraham’s adopted son.  
So 
the text leaves that issue eternally ambiguous.  In fact, at the end of the 
day, it seems almost certain that Isaac is to be viewed as being Abraham’s 
blood 
son, not Abraham’s adopted son.  But the central point of the Patriarchal 
narratives remains intact:  the first historical monotheist should consider 
himself divinely blessed under either of the following two circumstances:
 
(1)  After trying for years, his main wife #1 bears him a son.  (Abraham’s 
situation.)
 
(2)  After trying for years, and with his main wife #1 unable to bear him a 
son, he has a close male relative whom he can adopt as his son and heir, and 
who will marry a close female blood relative.  (Akhenaten’s situation.  It is 
possible, though unlikely, that that is Abraham’s situation as well.)
 
So you see, if you look at Abraham, Sarah, Lot, Lot’s wife, and Lot’s 
daughters, you see brilliant variations on Akhenaten’s terrible 
fertility/succession 
problem.  Note that in every case, Akhenaten’s very controversial actions, 
which were silently condemned by Egyptians at the time, and which are loudly 
condemned by modern historians, are nevertheless always approved of by the 
author 
of the Patriarchal narratives.  The reason for that is that the author of the 
Patriarchal narratives was, in my controversial view, the first historical 
Hebrew, who desperately wanted to get Akhenaten out of his funk about his 
disastrous family situation, so that Akhenaten could focus on keeping the 
dreaded 
Hittites from invading Canaan and wiping out the new Hebrews.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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