Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:54:08 -0400 (EDT), Will Parsons 
<wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:43:26 +0300, Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il> 
> wrote:
> > 
> > "Conventional wisdom" is that "Hophra" in Jer. 44:33 is the same as the 
> > king
> > that the Greek historians call Apries, 4th king of the 26th dynasty, who
> > ruled from 589 to 570 BCE. The form "Khepera" is not the name of a king, 
> > but
> > rather a title of the sun god Re, actually referring to the sacred dung
> > beetle. But if you or anyone else think that "Hophra" should be identified
> > with someone else, I'm sure that we would all be happy to hear your
> > evidence.
> 
> There is an Egyptian name Kheper-re` (ḫpr-rˁ), however.
> 
> Phonetically, Hebrew H.ophra` can be seen to match pretty closely,
> especially if we take the vocalization of the Egyptian form to be something
> like Khopi-ra`.
> 
> The Greek form Απριης/Apries can also be seen to match such a form,
> especially if we take the vocalization of the Egyptian form to be something
> like Khapi-re`.  (This is, however, not as straight-forward as the Hebrew
> correspondence, since one might reasonably have thought that an initial
> Egyptian ḫ/kh would be rendered as χ/kh in Greek.)
> 
> The LXX, however, renders the name as Ουαφρη/Ouaphre.  This does not match
> the attested Hebrew form particularly well, but matches an Egyptian form
> of the name of a Saite Pharaoh Wa'ah-ib-re` (w3ḥ-ỉb-rˁ).
> 
> As to what to make of this, I'm not sure.  But, I'll through out the
                                                       ^^^^^^^
                                                       throw
I apologize for spelling and grammatical errors that arise from pure
carelessness.  One does tend to be a bit sloppy when throwing (sic!) out
ideas, and not paying enough attention to checking what one has written.

> evidence for what it's worth.