Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Isaac Fried:

1.  You wrote:  “Namely, Potipar (a SARIYS) who was busy in Pharaoh's court supervising the kitchen….

(a)  Genesis 39: 1 says that Pa-wa-di -- pr was a SRYS/“officer” of Pharaoh.  But then it immediately clarifies that Pa-wa-di -- pr was Captain of the Guard, that is, in charge of Pharaoh’s security.  Pa-wa-di -- pr had nothing to do with Pharaoh’s kitchen.

(b) If we don’t go with the scholarly gambit of gratuitously adding an ayin/( at the end of this name [Ugh!], we see that it ends with pr, which means “house” or “great house” in Egyptian.  “Great house” was used on two boundary stelae at Akhenaten’s new capital city to refer to Pharaoh, so it nicely fits a Captain of the Guard in charge of Pharaoh’s security.  Add in a healthy dose of semi-monotheism from the beginning of this name, and one sees that pA-wa-di -- pr is the perfect name for a Captain of the Guard during the Amarna Age, while not fitting any other era in human history.

In that connection, why don’t you see the vav/W as the second letter in the name of Joseph’s Egyptian master, P-W-+  -Y-  PR, as being a consonantal vav/W?  Proper names in the truly ancient Patriarchal narratives don’t use plene spelling.

2.  You continued:  “[Potipar]…left the entire management of his estate to his young graceful and able slave (Potifar did not bid on him a goodly sum for nothing….”

Yes, that’s correct.

3.  But then you added:  “…the Midyanites having very probably turned a handsome profit from his sale)”

At Genesis 37: 36 we see:  H-MDN-YM.  H- means “the”, and -YM is a standard west Semitic plural form.  The people being referenced are MDN, which is the same as the name of one of the sons of Abraham’s Hurrian minor wife Qa-ti-i-ri/QTWR[-H] [“Keturah”], all of which sons are sent out east to the Hurrian homeland of eastern Syria.  With D and T often not being distinguished in cuneiform writing of west Semitic words or foreign proper names [and with cuneiform being the first written version of the Patriarchal narratives], the MDN in the received text is actually MTN, being the consonantal rendering in Hebrew defective spelling of Mi-ta-ni from the Amarna Letters.  Those traders who took Joseph to Egypt are Ishmaelites who have become permanent residents of Mitanni, which is the same place as Naharim/NHRYM at Genesis 24: 10 [the same name, except spelled with heth/X instead of he/H, as in the Amarna Letters], namely eastern Syria in the time of the Hurrians in the Late Bronze Age/Patriarchal Age.  Rather than non-historical “Midyanites”, they’re historical “Mitannians” in Years 12-14 [the exact time period referenced at Genesis 14: 4-5].  Note that  a-l-l  of these various proper names make perfect sense in the Amarna Age, while being inexplicable otherwise.

4.  You continued:  “Joseph ben Jacob HA-IBRIY.”

Yes.  The phrase “the Hebrews” is H-(BR-YM at Genesis 40: 15.  The tent-dwelling Hebrews proudly and audaciously claimed to be as powerful as the Hurrian lordly charioteers who dominated the ruling class of Canaan in Years 12-14.  The Hebrews called themselves (BR, which in Hurrian means “lord”.  With B and P often not being distinguished in cuneiform, note that the Hurrian/XTY/xu-ti-ya lord who charges Abraham an arm and a leg for Sarah’s gravesite has a name with the same root:  (PR, at Genesis 23: 8.  [The full name, adding the -WN classic Hurrian suffix, is (PR-WN.]  The Hebrews proudly called themselves “lords”, using a Hurrian-based name for themselves.  That nomenclature makes perfect sense in the Amarna Age, which is the Patriarchal Age when Hurrian charioteers dominated the ruling class of Canaan, while not making sense in any other historical time period.

5.  You continued:  “Potipar had such complete a trust in Joseph that he did not intervene naught in his doings, their only point of contact being an occasional tete-a-tete lunch, possibly an elegant vegetarian meal at the classy Ritz-on-the-Nile.”

No, Pa-wa-di -- pr let Joseph take care of managing his domestic estate, with Pa-wa-di -- pr simply eating the food at his own house that Joseph made sure was available, without having to worry about other matters concerning his domestic estate.  That allowed Pa-wa-di -- pr to focus on his all-important job of trying to figure out which of Pharaoh’s officers was committing treason.  At Joseph’s suggestion, as I mentioned in my prior post, Pa-wa-di -- pr decided to sneak young Joseph into the jail where were being held the two suspected officials of “Pharaoh”.   [“Pharaoh” = P-R(  -H = pA ra plus Semiticizing -H, with Akhenaten being the king of Egypt who semi-monotheistically honored pA ra:  the one and only god Ra.  Every name fits the Amarna Age/Patriarchal Age, while being out of place in any other time period.]  Pa-wa-di -- pr’s plan was that Joseph might overhear what the Cup Bearer and the Baker [who may be historical Panhesy] were saying, and thus help figure out which one of them was guilty.  The pretext was that the master’s wife was supposedly upset with Joseph, but that was a mere ruse to insinuate Joseph into that jail.  As I mentioned in my prior post, Joseph showed unbelievable chutzpah in ostentatiously having the two prisoners go over to his master’s house (Genesis 40: 7), where he grandly interprets their dreams to one and all.  Then in his master’s presence, at his master’s own house, Joseph brazenly asks the innocent Cup Bearer at Genesis 40: 14 to tell Pharaoh to free Joseph from his master’s house!  That’s chutzpah.

6.  In closing, perhaps I might note that the Patriarchal narratives end exactly the way they began.  The favorite son [Haran, Joseph], who is the firstborn son of his father’s favorite main wife, unfortunately dies in a foreign land, in the presence of his father’s descendants [MWLDT].  Same.  Haran doesn’t even survive his own father, and correspondingly Joseph doesn’t survive a single one of his 10 older half-brothers.  You see, a firstborn favorite son [who was a successor princeling in the valley] historically gave the first Hebrews no end of grief in Year 14.  That’s why each and every favorite son and each and every firstborn son gets the shaft and properly so in the Patriarchal narratives.

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois