As to the key question of the Biblical spelling of “Ra” that Will Parsons
raised, please consider that “Potiphar” is a different name than “
Potiphera”. I hope and expect that everyone on the b-hebrew list will reject
the
scholarly claim that two different Biblical authors, who did not know each
other or each other’s work, somehow on a non-miraculous basis allegedly
managed to come up with the same name, though spelled somewhat differently,
for two different characters: “Very early, before P wrote, the figure of
Joseph became connected with the Egyptian name P3-di-p3-Ra [pA di pA ra], ‘
Potiphar’; but the connexion was never explicit. One tradition ascribed the
name to Joseph's father-in-law, another to Joseph's master. An editor,
plagued by a bent towards completeness, inserted them both.” D. B. Redford, “
A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50)” (1970), pp.
136-137.
In fact, with ra being spelled by the sole Hebrew letter resh/R in
Biblical Hebrew, as in the name “Potiphar” [Joseph’s Egyptian master who is
Captain of the Guard], the resh-ayin/R( at the end of the name “Potiphera”, as
Joseph’s Egyptian priestly father-in-law, cannot mean ra. Rather than
having anything whatsoever to do with pA di pA ra, which is a 1st millennium
BCE
style of Egyptian name that would be out of place in the ancient
Patriarchal narratives and which in any event so conspicuously does not in
fact
match the Hebrew letters here at all, let’s look at what the Biblical Egyptian
name “Potiphera” actually means in Egyptian. The name “Potiphera”
should exemplify Akhenaten’s peculiar, unattractive theology found in his
Great
Hymn to the Aten, if I am right that the Patriarchal Age is the Amarna Age.
1. P = pA. The Hymn to the Aten features pA itn and pA nTr wa. So we
should expect pA + deity name. The first letter in “Potiphera” is peh/P, and
just like the second peh/P in that same name, that Hebrew letter, by
itself, renders the Egyptian word pA, meaning “the”, but at Amarna implying
“the
one and only”.
2. W = wA. On four occasions in the Hymn to the Aten, Akhenaten refers
to Ra/Aten as being the “distant”/wA.ti god, and on one further occasion he
uses this same Egyptian word in a more generic sense, referring to a “
distant”/wAt land. Just as peh/P = pA, so also vav/W = wA. Both with pA and
wA, the Egyptian aleph/A is not represented by a separate Hebrew letter.
[There’s no way that Hebrew vav/W is Egyptian aleph here, so that PW = pA, as
scholars would have it. Not. Hebrew aleph is directly equivalent to
Egyptian aleph, whereas Hebrew vav/W has nothing to do with Egyptian aleph.
Moreover, based on the second half of this name, we know that peh/P alone
renders the Egyptian word pA. So the Hebrew vav/W here is not part of the
Egyptian word pA, but rather starts a new word, and is a consonantal vav/W.]
3. + = t. What’s attested regarding Hebrew teth/+ is that it represents
Egyptian regular t [not d or dj]. For example, the t in wAt in the Great
Hymn to the Aten is Gardiner hieroglyphic sign X1, being a regular Egyptian
t. At item #22 on the mid-15thcentury BCE Thutmose III list of places in
Canaan, the place name “Tob” begins with Gardiner sign X1, being a regular
Egyptian t. That is Akkadian cuneiform teth for this name Tob at Amarna
Letter EA 205: 3 (being the exact time period of the Great Hymn to the Aten).
This same geographical place name, Tob, appears at Judges 11: 3, 5 spelled
with alphabetical Hebrew teth: +WB. [Hebrew tav/T was not available for
regular Egyptian t, because the special Egyptian Tj in nTr/netjer is
rendered by tav/T: NT [where by New Kingdom times the final R was no longer
pronounced], in Joseph’s Egyptian name and in the name of Joseph’s Egyptian
wife. I see little or no basis for the scholarly claim that Hebrew teth/+ in
the name “Potiphera” supposedly represents Egyptian d or Egyptian dj,
which would be needed for the Egyptian word “gift”, pronounced dji; surely
Hebrew dalet/D would be used for such d-type sounds.]
So the name of Joseph’s Egyptian priestly father-in-law, the priest of Ra
from On, starts out P W+, rendering pA wAt in Egyptian [where neither of
the Egyptian alephs/A is represented by a separate Hebrew letter]. The
meaning is “the [one and only] distant [god]”, that is, Ra. O.K. so far?
4. Y = xireq compaginis. Just as the -Y- in the middle of the Amorite
name Milk-i-Ilu from the Amarna Letters at Genesis 46: 17, MLK -Y- )L, is a
dash or xireq compaginis, so also is the interior yod/Y in the name “
Potiphera”. Both IR-Heba’s scribe at Jerusalem, and the Patriarchal
narratives,
use xireq compaginis.
5. P = pA. The second peh/P is like the earlier one in this name, meaning
pA, that is: “the”.
6. R + ending = rx. Ra would be just resh/R alone, as we know from the
ending of the name “Potiphar” of Joseph’s Egyptian master [and which is
consistent with the Akkadian cuneiform rendering of “Ra” in pharaohs’ names,
per Amarna Letters coming out of mid-14th century BCE Canaan]. But here we
see R + ending, with ayin being the ending in the received text. In order
for this Year 14 theology to be in the Patriarchal narratives with such
incredible accuracy, it must have been written down in the Amarna Age, and
that could only have been by way of Akkadian cuneiform. The Achilles heel of
Akkadian cuneiform is that in final position, Akkadian cuneiform heth could
represent virtually every Hebrew letter we don’t have in English: ayin or
heth or emphatic H or he or even archaic ghayin. Here, the scribe in
7thcentury BCE Jerusalem who transformed the Akkadian cuneiform signs from the
original tablets held in the Temple into alphabetical Hebrew made a
fully-understandable mis-recognition mistake. He saw Akkadian cuneiform heth
and
guessed ayin, but in fact alphabetical Hebrew heth was actually intended
here. So the end of the name “Potiphera”was supposed to be RX, being rx in
Egyptian, meaning “to know”. pA rx means “the one and only [person] who
knows”.
The theology behind the name of this priest of Ra from On makes sense only
in the Amarna Age. Akhenaten’s name wa-n-ra means “sole one of Ra”, and
in his Great Hymn to the Aten, Akhenaten famously and outrageously says
near the end: “there is none other who knows [rx] you”. The Biblical name
of this priest of Ra from On duly conveys that this priest of Ra affirms
that supposedly Akhenaten is the only person who knows God/Ra.
* * *
P W+ -Y- P RX = pA wAt -- pA rx = “the one and only person who knows
the distant God”, being a reference to Akhenaten. That simultaneously (i)
distills the essence of Akhenaten’s theology per his Great Hymn to the Aten,
while also (ii) showing the Hebrew author’s distaste for Akhenaten’s
outrageous claim that supposedly only Akhenaten “knew”/rx“the”/pA “distant”
/wAt God. Note the pinpoint letter-for-letter historical accuracy of this
Egyptian priestly name in a Year 14 context. Yes!
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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