Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kevin Riley <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>]

 Egyptian kh could not be represented by Greek X until after it had 
changed from an aspirated stop to a fricative.  That is usually dated to 
after the time of the LXX.

'Απριηςis what would have been expected up until that time.

Kevin Riley


On 26/07/2010 10:54 AM, Will Parsons 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 throw out the
> evidence for what it's worth.