Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Yigal Levin:
 
1.       You wrote:  “[Y]ou're wrong about Amon, Ra and Aten. Amon/Amun and 
Re/Ra were the two often-identified sun-gods, long considered the patron 
deity of the kings.”
 
For once, I fear you have made a mistake here.  Amen is not a sun-god.  In 
fact, Amen was a dark, mysterious god, having nothing to do with the sun at 
all.  (There was a short time when the Egyptians experimented with putting 
two very different gods together, and came up with Amen-Ra, which is perhaps 
what you are remembering.  But that was a short-lived, unsuccessful 
experiment.)
 
2.       You wrote:  “Aten was also a son-god, but he was claimed to be 
different. Re/Ra was NOT used for Aten.”
 
That simply is not true.  Akhenaten’s two youngest daughters have Re in 
their names, but not Aten.  That makes no sense if Re was not considered by 
Akhenaten to be on some level equivalent to Aten.
 
To further prove the point, here are the first several lines of Akhenaten’s 
world-famous Great Hymn to the Aten (copied from the touregypt website).  
Note that Akhenaten explicitly identifies Aten with Re in the last line cited:
 
Thou appearest beautifully on the horizon of heaven, 
 Thou living Aton, the beginning of life! 
 When thou art risen on the eastern horizon, 
 Thou hast filled every land with thy beauty. 
 Thou art gracious, great, glistening, and high over every land;
 Thy rays encompass the lands to the limit of all that thou hast made: 
 As thou art Re, thou reachest to the end of them; 
 
3.              You wrote:  “So any references to Re actually point AWAY 
from the rule of Akhenaten.”
 
The references in the Patriarchal narratives to Re are directly comparable 
to the references to Re in the names of Akhenaten’s two youngest daughters.  
It’s hard to imagine stronger evidence than the names of Akhenaten’s own 
children.
 
The name of Joseph’s father-in-law, the priest from On, is PW+Y PR(.  I see 
each P as meaning “the” in Egyptian.  Per the Amarna Letters (e.g. Amarna 
Letter EA 289: 31), the west Semitic rendering of the Egyptian sun-god Re 
might be expected to be R(.  So P-R( in the text of Genesis may well mean 
“the 
Re”.  That would be a blatantly monotheistic name!  If that name is coming 
out of the 2nd millennium BCE, that would be a shockingly monotheistic name, 
which would not be possible except at Amarna.  (On the other hand, 
centuries later the Egyptian definite article eventually lost its force from 
overuse, and eventually became like the English word “the”, often not having 
much 
meaning.)  Akhenaten was the first pharaoh to use “the”, instead of the 
more formal “that”.  Akhenaten took “the” from street language and made it 
into formal Egyptian.  But even Akhenaten, the religious zealot, only put P/“
the” in the name of one of his 6 daughters, being daughter #3.  The evidence 
from these names is very powerful.
 
4.       You wrote:  “Besides which, the whole Akhenaten – monotheism idea 
is highly exaggerated.  Amenhotep IV, AKA Akhenaten, was not a monotheist. 
He never denied the existence of other gods.”
 
That’s true.  That’s why I often use the term “semi-monotheist”.  On the 
other hand, Akhenaten was unique in Egyptian history as having only one god 
officially worshipped at the royal court.  That’s a type of monotheism.  No 
other Egyptian pharaoh ever did anything like that.  Of course, the Egyptian 
sun-god Aten has very little similarity at all to the west Semitic-type 
deity YHWH.
 
I wonder if you may possibly be misunderstanding the AKA you cite.  
Akhenaten hated the god Amen, so he refused to continue to use the name 
AMEN-hotep 
IV.  He changed his name (as did each of Abraham and Jacob) to honor the 
deity he favored, which in Akhenaten’s case was Aten.  Akhenaten brutally 
attacked the cult of Amen, while building up the cult of Aten.  Believe it or 
not, by Year 15 or so Akhenaten did not even allow the “Amen” element to be 
used in rendering the name of his father, Amen-hotep III.  There’s no Amen at 
Amarna!  Nor in the Patriarchal narratives.
 
5.       You wrote:  “He simply transferred Royal support from the
all-powerful priests of Amun/Amon/Re/Ra to the priests of Aten that he
appointed. A brilliant political move.”
 
There’s a lot of truth to that.  That’s what Genesis 47: 13-26 is all 
about.  Pharaoh confiscates all the land along the Nile River of the 
super-wealthy Amen priests in Year 15.  (Genesis does not say that the 
persons who lost 
their land were Amen priests, but that’s what happened historically.  The 
priests whose land the text says Joseph did not confiscate would be only the 
priests of the cult of Aten, historically, who in fact did not own much 
land.)  Most every important historical event concerning Amarna in Years 12 – 
15 
is right there in the text of the Patriarchal narratives.
 
But though there definitely was a political element here, I myself see 
Akhenaten as a sincere religious zealot, not a hypocrite on the religious 
front 
who was just out for political power.  Politics in fact was not Akhenaten’s 
long suit.
 
For purposes of the b-hebrew list, the one language issue that is important 
here is that the references to Re in the Patriarchal narratives are 
definitely consistent with the Amarna Age.  So is the complete and total 
absence of 
any reference whatsoever, even in passing, to the favorite god of the 
Egyptians in all the rest of the New Kingdom:  Amen. 
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois