Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Karl:

 

1.  You wrote:  “Are you trying to resurrect your argument from Feb. four years ago?”

 

I have done considerable additional research since then.  Back then, I honestly didn’t know that scholars have never come up with a satisfactory explanation of Joseph’s Egyptian name, with Steindorff’s 1899 attempt being much-criticized but never supplanted.  Nor did I realize the key issue of whether Hebrew ssade could be D in Egyptian or s in Egyptian.

 

2.  You wrote:  “Don’t neglect the linguistic pronunciation substitutions that may have changed greatly the pronunciation of the Egyptian language used about 3,900 years ago when Joseph lived, to when it was first transliterated to alphabetic language over a millennium later. Therefore, short of finding his name in hieroglyphics, any translation of his name will be highly speculative and impossible to prove.”

 

Along those very lines, the scholarly community keeps looking for an attested Egyptian name as the basis for Joseph’s Egyptian name.  There is none.  That’s why scholars can’t make sense of Joseph’s Egyptian name.  In fact, the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives created Joseph’s Egyptian name, using 4 super-simple Egyptian common words.  Let’s take a look, and solve this 3,000-year-old Biblical mystery once and for all.

 

Per my prior post, if the Hebrew ssade/C at the beginning of Joseph’s Egyptian name is an emphatic sin, and hence is the Egyptian letter s, then the first word in Joseph’s Egyptian name is sA, meaning “son”.  Now all of Joseph’s Egyptian name is child’s play to figure out:  C P NT P (NX.

 

Each peh/P is pA, meaning “the” in Egyptian.  In the New Kingdom, pA/“the” before a divine name had a monotheistic connotation.  To highlight that key fact, I will render this Egyptian word pA with a capital T in English:  “The”.

 

Steindorff and the overwhelming majority view of scholars are right as to the other two Egyptian words.  NT is nTr, meaning “god” or “God” or “the divine”.  The Hebrew rendering has no resh/R at the end, because as Egyptian linguist Loprieno points out, a final R in multi-syllable Egyptian words was undergoing “lenition” in the New Kingdom, and in Late Egyptian was not pronounced at all.  This Egyptian word was probably pronounced ne-tje(r), and such a 2-syllable Egyptian word would be expected to be rendered by 2 Hebrew letters:  nun-tav/NT.  [That is the overwhelming majority view of scholars, and I agree with it.]  The one and only word for which there has always been unanimous agreement is (NX, which clearly is anx, misleadingly spelled “ankh” in English.  This is probably a 3-syllable Egyptian word, khe-ne-xe, that rhymes with “Hannukah”.  The Egyptian word anx means “life” or “eternal life” or “to live”.

 

C P NT = sA pA nTr.  On the first level, that beginning of Joseph’s Egyptian name is somewhat similar to sA ra, which was the grandest and best-known pharaonic title, befitting the fact that Joseph has just now been given powers that are almost equivalent to that of a Pharaoh.  But on another level, taking note of the monotheistic word pA/“The”, Joseph has in effect been more or less adopted as a “son” by a Pharaoh who worships pA nTr, “The [one and only] God”.  pA nTr may well be an abbreviated form of the phrase pA nTr wa that appears in Akhenaten’s Great Hymn to the Aten, which is the most monotheistic phrase possible in the Egyptian language:  “The one and only God”.

 

The word sA appears frequently in Akhenaten’s Great Hymn to the Aten, as Akhenaten insists that he is the “son” of Aten.  We see the phrase sA ra, followed by anx, in the last verse of such Hymn, which can be compared to both sA pA nTr above and pA anx below in Joseph’s Egyptian name.

 

Continuing on with this monotheistic theme, the rest of Joseph’s Egyptian name is P (NX = pA anx, which can be compared to the following three phrases in the Great Hymn to the Aten:  itn, followed by anx;  pA itn;  sA ra, followed by anx.  The implied phrase pA itn anx means:  “The [one and only] Aten lives eternally”.  [Absent the deity name itn or ra being implied in the middle of pA anx, the phrase “The eternal life” would seem a bit odd.]  pA anx works perfectly as an abbreviated version of either pA itn anx or pA ra anx, recognizing [as to that latter implied phrase] that after Year 9 Akhenaten used a Ra-based name for his deity, no longer the name itn/Aten.  [In Egyptian inscriptions, anx would customarily begin a new standard phrase praising the deity.  In Joseph’s name, we have only anx.]

 

So Akhenaten’s most famous and most highly monotheistic phrases from his Great Hymn to the Aten seem to be present in Joseph’s Egyptian name in abbreviated form.  First, pA nTr = pA nTr wa:  “The one and only God”.  Second, pA anx combines itn anx and pA itn, effectively being pA itn anx:  “The [one and only] Aten lives eternally”.  But since “itn” does not literally appear in Joseph’s Egyptian name, perhaps the implied phrase here [post-Year 9] is actually pA ra anx:  “The [one and only] Ra lives eternally”.

 

This Egyptian name for Joseph could only have been created in Year 14, when Akhenaten was at the height of his monotheistic zeal.  [As to the exact date of Year 14, Genesis 14: 5 refers to “the fourteenth year”, immediately after the express reference at Genesis 14: 4 to:  “Year 13”.]  The early Hebrew author who created this name was hoping that pharaoh Akhenaten might help the Hebrews stay in their homeland in south-central Canaan, after the Amorite princeling ruler Milk-Ilu [whose historical name is honored and set forth at Genesis 46: 17], whose Patriarchal nickname at Genesis 14: 13 is “Mamre the Amorite”, died in early Year 14, succeeded by his awful firstborn son Yapaxu.  [That’s why 7 of 7 firstborn sons in the Patriarchal narratives are portrayed as getting the shaft and properly so:  Haran, Lot, Ishmael, Esau, Reuben, Er, Manasseh.]   

 

Not surprisingly, Akhenaten in fact did not lift a finger to help the first Hebrews.  The pre-Hebrews historically became the Hebrews when they finally realized late in Year 14 that Akhenaten would be of no help to the Hebrews whatsoever.  From now on, the first Hebrews had to trust solely in YHWH.  Historically, that’s what happened in Year 14, which was the historical birth of Judaism.  The Patriarchal narratives record that historical event of earth-shaking importance with a pinpoint historical accuracy that is possible only for a contemporary who knew exactly what he was talking about (and who was utterly brilliant to boot).  The scholarly claim that the Patriarchal narratives are “late” and “oral folklore” is akin to, and is just as unconvincing as, the scholarly misunderstanding [dating back to 1899] of Joseph’s Egyptian name.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois