Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

In response to my assertion that ssade/C in early Biblical Hebrew can sometimes be an emphatic sin, having a sound quite similar to sin/%, Will Parsons wrote:

 

“I don't know, Jim - this view sounds kind of mainstream to me.  At this rate you may lose your reputation for advocating ‘unconventional’ interpretations.”

 

Well, if it’s “mainstream” that ssade/C in early Biblical Hebrew can sometimes be an emphatic sin, having a sound quite similar to sin/%, then why has no university scholar ever considered that in trying to figure out the 3,000-year-old mystery of the meaning of Joseph’s Egyptian name?  That name starts with ssade/C, per Genesis 41: 45:  C P NT P (NX.  Scholars have never been able to make much sense out of Joseph’s Egyptian name.  Perhaps that’s because scholars have never analyzed that name on the basis that ssade/C in early Biblical Hebrew can sometimes be an emphatic sin, in which case it has a sound quite similar to sin/%.

 

The best explanation I have ever seen as to how ssade/C relates to Egyptian names in the Bible appeared right here on the b-hebrew list, way back on November 21, 2004, by Yitzhak Sapir.  Citing the noted Egyptian linguist Loprieno, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

 

“Tsade sounded like an emphatic s.  Loprieno suggests that the AfroAsiatic *t. and *s. merge into Eg. /d/, which in turn is realized as an ejective t. … However, this d_ is now closer to Tsade: Tanis is transcribed Tsoan.  Egyptian /d/ (heir of *t. and *s.) is rendered by Semitic tet (t.) in Hebrew….”

 

Thus logically we would [in my opinion] surmise the following.  The Hebrew ssade/C at the beginning of Joseph’s Egyptian name might be expected to reflect in Egyptian either of the following:  (i) D;  or (ii) an emphatic sin or a regular sin (or samekh), that is:  s.  Scholars are not sure whether Egyptian had a pure sin/% sound, though s is prominent in Egyptian;  perhaps the closest Hebrew equivalent to Egyptian s was Hebrew ssade/C as an emphatic sin.  Of critical importance here, however, is to note that the single Hebrew letter ssade/C can  n-o-t  be Dd, as the majority scholarly view of Joseph’s Egyptian name would have it:  a single Hebrew ssade/C cannot represent two different Egyptian true consonants.  So Dd, which may have been pronounced De-de, is not a viable option here.  Rather, the two viable options for Hebrew ssade/C at the beginning of Joseph’s Egyptian name are:  D or s.

 

If we don’t follow Kenneth Kitchen’s outrageous gambit of changing the order of the remaining consonants in this name [ouch!], the next letter is peh/P, which surely must render the Egyptian word pA.  There is no Egyptian word Dp [though there is the Egyptian name Djefa].  The first letter of Joseph’s Egyptian name, a ssade/C, thus stands alone, and is not connected to the next letter (which is P, meaning pA).

 

The majority scholarly view of Joseph’s Egyptian name, though it has convinced few non-scholars, is that of Steindorff, which goes all the long way back to 1899.  (The best that one might say about that old view is that all post-1899 attempts to analyze Joseph’s Egyptian name have been even worse.)  Steindorff insists that the Hebrew ssade/C at the beginning of Joseph’s Egyptian name is the Egyptian word Dd, meaning “he said”.  But in fact, we definitely would not expect the single Hebrew letter ssade to be two true consonants in Egyptian.  Dd/De-de in Egyptian would require ssade-tet/C+ in Hebrew, but here we only have ssade/C.  Steindorff’s gambit is untenable.

 

Logically, if we are willing to go beyond what scholars have published, we should ask if that Hebrew ssade at the beginning of Joseph’s Egyptian name might alternatively be sin or emphatic sin or samekh.  In that case, that single Hebrew letter ssade would be the Egyptian sound s, and would be rendering the Egyptian word sA, which means “son”.  Since sA is a 1-syllable Egyptian word, we would expect it to be rendered by 1 Hebrew letter, which per the foregoing could well be ssade/C.  [The aleph at the end of the Egyptian word for “son”, sA, would not be rendered by Hebrew aleph, because the general rule is that a 1-syllable foreign word will be rendered by 1 Hebrew letter in early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling.  Thus Hebrew peh/P is the 1-syllable Egyptian word pA, and Hebrew ssade/C is the 1-syllable Egyptian word sA.]

 

Wait!  Pharaoh has just in effect adopted Joseph as his “son” when Pharaoh bestows this new Egyptian name upon Joseph.  And with Joseph being given powers almost akin to the powers of Pharaoh himself, we know that the most famous pharaonic title of all time was sA ra, literally meaning “son” of the god Ra.  So we would almost expect the Egyptian word “son”, that is, sA, to be the initial element of Joseph’s Egyptian name, if the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives knows what he’s talking about.  And it is!

 

If we’re willing to recognize that in early Biblical Hebrew ssade could be emphatic sin and have a sound quite similar to sin, then we can figure out the heretofore inexplicable meaning of Joseph’s Egyptian name.  The first letter is Hebrew ssade/C, being a sound similar to s, and as such rendering the Egyptian word sA, meaning “son”.

 

The key to being the first ones to understand Joseph’s Egyptian name in over 3,000 years is to realize that Hebrew ssade could be emphatic sin.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois