Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Karl:

 

You wrote:  “[T]he Egyptian language may have had very different pronunciations during Joseph's sojourn in Egypt.”

 

That’s true.  But then again, look at how easily the four leading Egyptian names in the Patriarchal narratives can be explained based on only 8 simple Egyptian words [plus two Hebrew writing conventions].  These 8 Egyptian words are so super-simple that a Hebrew audience could readily figure them out.  All eight of these Egyptian words appear in Akhenaten’s Great Hymn to the Aten, which sets the monotheistic tone for these four Egyptian names.  Instead of passively copying historical Egyptian names that have little if any relationship to the storyline of Joseph being in Egypt, with gargantuan leaps of creativity being needed to forcefit sophisticated Egyptian terminology to the Hebrew letters in the received text (the scholarly view, and with Kenneth Kitchen even changing the order of the Hebrew letters in Joseph’s Egyptian name!), these four names in fact were created by the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives, using 8 super-simple Egyptian words.  Each name is expressly designed to epitomize the character’s main role in this section of the Biblical text.

 

1.  C P NT P (NX

 

This is Joseph’s Egyptian name:  sA pA nTr pA anx.  Its literal meaning is either “son of the The God, of The eternal life”, or more likely:  “son of The God, The [God] who lives eternally”.  Its two implied meanings are:  “one who has been appointed to lead Egypt by the king of Egypt who honors the one and only God who lives eternally”, and “one who effectively is the adopted son of the king of Egypt who honors the one and only God who lives eternally”.

 

2.  P W +  -Y-  P R(

 

This is the name of Joseph’s Egyptian priestly father-in-law from On [where Ra was worshipped]:  pA wa di -- pA ra.  It means:  “the one and only [God] gives -- the [one and only] Ra”.  [Hebrew peh vav/P W cannot possibly, under any circumstances, be pA, as scholars would have it, because plene spelling does not apply to foreign proper names in the Patriarchal narratives, and a vav/W is the wrong spelling in any event of Egyptian aleph, a letter that is directly comparable to Hebrew aleph.]   The phrase pA wa is short for the following ultra-monotheistic phrase that appears in Akhenaten’s Great Hymn to the Aten:  pA nTr wa.  The particular phrase “pA ra” is found in the most important nobleman’s rock tomb at Amarna (Aye’s tomb), in association with the younger sister of Queen Nefertiti.  [The interior yod/Y is the xireq compaginis, effectively being a dash, that is found in the Amarna Letters written by the scribe of Hurrian princeling ruler IR-Heba of Jerusalem.  Interestingly, per Harvard professor Scott C. Layton, the archaic morpheme xireq compaginis is found in non-poetic common words in the Bible solely in the Patriarchal narratives.  In my opinion, that is a linguistic indication of the true antiquity, dating all the long way back to the Late Bronze Age, of the Patriarchal narratives.  Neat!]

 

3.  P W +  -Y-  PR

 

This is Joseph’s Egyptian master, who is Captain of the Guard in charge of Pharaoh’s security.  This name is:  pA wa di -- pr.  It means:  “the one and only [God] gives -- house/great house/Pharaoh [for me to protect]”.  Note that on the boundary stelae at his new capital city at Amarna, Akhenaten is twice referred to as praA;  so it makes sense to reference him by pr/“house” and/or praA/“great house”.  [The scholarly view makes no sense whatsoever in implying an ayin at the end of this name.  That not only makes the name inappropriate for a Captain of the Guard, but even worse results in the Captain of the Guard allegedly having the very same name as Joseph’s priestly Egyptian father-in-law.  Not.  (These are the same scholars, by the way, who insist, completely erroneously, that Abraham’s divinely-changed name allegedly has the identical meaning as his birth name, and that Sarah’s divinely-changed name allegedly has the identical meaning as her birth name.)]

 

4.  P R(  -H

 

This Hebrew reference to the king of Egypt (misleadingly transliterated into English as “Pharaoh”) is pA ra Semiticized.  It starts out with the Egyptian proper name pA ra.  (See #2 above.)  Then in order to make that Egyptian proper name into a Hebrew common word, it is Semiticized by adding -H at the end.  [Somewhat similarly, the H at the end of the Biblical names Uriah and Araunah is a Semiticization of Hurrian proper names.]  It is true that later Hebrew authors in later books in the Bible forgot that original etymology, and only thought of the secondary meaning, where PR(H looks something like praA (“great house”), and on that independent basis can reference the king of Egypt.  But in the Patriarchal narratives, the king of Egypt is effectively called:  “[the Egyptian king who worships] The one and only Ra”.  Such a Hebrew reference fits monotheistic Akhenaten perfectly [after Year 9], though not any other pharaoh.  [After Year 9, the name of Akhenaten’s deity was no longer The Aten (pA itn), but rather was a long Ra-based name.  Akhenaten’s two youngest daughters were named after Ra, not Aten.]

 

I myself see all four of these Egyptian names as having been composed by the truly brilliant Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives in Year 14 of Akhenaten’s 17-year reign.  But all to no avail, as Akhenaten in fact never lifted a finger to help the first Hebrews maintain their homeland in south-central Canaan in the face of the Year 14 threat of Amorite princeling Milk-Ilu’s firstborn son Yapaxu, who is the “iniquitous Amorite” indirectly referenced at Genesis 15: 16.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois