Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

For the last 100 years, university scholars have been unanimous in seeing the name of Joseph’s initial Egyptian master, PW+YPR [“Potiphar”], as well as the name of Joseph’s Egyptian priestly father-in-law, as being the Hebrew rendering of the following Egyptian name:  pA di pA ra.  That unanimous scholarly view has been accomplished, however, without citing a single other example in all of Hebrew literature of where plene spelling was used to record a non-west Semitic proper name and in which the same foreign word, pA, was spelled in two completely different ways in the very same name.  It is on  t-h-a-t  basis, mind you, that university scholars tell us that the name of Joseph’s initial Egyptian master is late, post-dating the Bronze Age.

 

Given that Hebrew peh/P, standing alone, near the end of that name renders the Egyptian word pA, one would think that some scholar out there would have at least asked if the same holds true for the first Hebrew peh/P in this name.  As with the second peh/P, isn’t it more likely than not that the first Hebrew peh/P in this name, standing alone, renders the Egyptian word pA?  If so, then the second letter in this name, vav/W, would be the beginning of a second Egyptian word that begins with consonantal vav/W.  For example, we have already seen that the historical name of the high priest of Ra from On at Amarna was Pawah, which features the phenomenon of an Egyptian name beginning with pA, followed by an Egyptian word that begins with consonantal vav/W.

 

Now consider the Egyptian name that is rendered as pa-wu-ra at Amarna Letters EA 124: 44;  132: 38;  263: 21, and as pí-wu-ri at Amarna Letters EA 129-95, 97;  131: 22;  362: 69.  Per Richard S. Hess, “Amarna Personal Names” (1993) at p. 126, the first two letters (being one cuneiform sign), whether pa or pí, render the Egyptian word pA (transliterated as “p3” by Hess), meaning “the”.  The next Egyptian word starts with W, and in this Egyptian name from the Amarna Letters is the Egyptian word wr (meaning “great”), rendered in Akkadian cuneiform by two signs:  wu-ra or wu-ri.  Thus we see that it is very possible for an Egyptian name to begin with pA, and then be followed by an Egyptian word that begins with consonantal Egyptian w.  

 

Moreover, there is nothing unusual in general about pA being followed by consonantal w in Egyptian.  For example [though this is not a proper name], the phrase pA wD, meaning “the stela”, appears fourteen times on Akhenaten’s Boundary Stelae.  Miriam Lichtheim, “Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings. Vol.2. The New Kingdom” (1976), pp. 48-51.

 

Remember, scholars insist that the Patriarchal narratives are late and fictional, and in making that ubiquitous scholarly argument, scholars rely fairly heavily on their unanimous [but totally erroneous] claim that the name of Joseph’s initial Egyptian master, PW+YPR [“Potiphar”], is the Hebrew rendering of the Egyptian name pA di pA ra, which is not historically attested prior to the 11^th century BCE.  But since Hebrew peh/P alone near the end of this name renders pA, there’s no way that the two Hebrew letters at the beginning of this name, PW, jointly render pA.  Not.  Rather,  a-l-l  of the objective evidence indicates that the first Hebrew peh/P in this name functions identically to the second Hebrew peh/P in this name, in both cases by such single Hebrew letter rendering the Egyptian word pA.  At the beginning of this name, that peh/P is then followed by an Egyptian word that begins with consonantal vav/W, namely wA.ti.  These Hebrew letters thus render the following as the name of Joseph’s initial Egyptian master:  pA wA.ti  --  pA ra.  In his Great Hymn, Akhenaten repeatedly refers to Ra [or Aten, being two different names for the Egyptian sun-god] as being wA.ti, the “distant”/wA.ti god.  This Biblical Egyptian name is coming straight out of Late Bronze Age nomenclature and thinking.  Joseph’s initial Egyptian master [whose historical name, as we saw previously, was Ramose, featuring Ra] has been given the appropriate Patriarchal nickname of pA wA.ti -- pA ra, showing his professed [though perhaps insincere] devotion to Ra as the “distant”/wA.ti god.

 

The scholarly view of the name “Potiphar”, though unanimous for the last 100 years, is nevertheless utterly untenable, and can only be asserted on the basis of special pleading writ large [where PW and P are claimed to be different spellings of the  s-a-m-e  Egyptian word in the  s-a-m-e  name].  Likewise, the scholarly claim that the Patriarchal narratives are late and fictional is similarly untenable.  It’s all of a piece.  Someday some university scholar out there will look at the vav/W in the name “Potiphar” and, against the odds, will be brave enough to publish something that says:  “Hey guys, the second letter in the name ‘Potiphar’ is a consonantal vav/W!”  That will be the dawn of a renaissance in the scholarship of the Patriarchal narratives.  But looking at it the other way around, there will be no progress at all until some university scholar out there is brave enough to focus on, instead of totally ignore [as has been the case for the last 100 years], the Hebrew vav/W as the second letter of the name PW+YPR.

 

Everyone on the b-hebrew list can see that vav/W as the second letter of the Biblical Egyptian name PW+YPR that appears at Genesis 39: 1.  So why ignore that vav/W entirely in analyzing this Biblical Egyptian name, as  a-l-l  university scholars have done now for the last 100 years?  Why not instead ask if it’s a consonantal vav/W?  All that there is to lose is the scholarly conviction that the Patriarchal narratives are late and fictional.  That scholarly conceit will collapse of its own dead weight, if any university scholar out there is willing to ask, in a published writing, whether the second letter in the name “Potiphar” is a consonantal vav/W.  It is!

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois