Zaphnath-Paaneah

Zaphnath-Paaneah ( hbo, צָפְנַת פַּעְנֵחַ , grc, label= LXX, Ψονθομφανήχ ) is the name given by Pharaoh to Joseph in the Genesis narrative ().

The name may be of Egyptian origins, but there is no straightforward etymology; some Egyptologists accept that the second element of the name may contain the word ' "life".

Interpretations

Targum Onkelos (1st century CE) gives the meaning of the name as "the man to whom hidden things are revealed"; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, "the man who revealeth mysteries"; Josephus (c. CE 94), "a finder of mysteries". Rashi (11th-12th century CE) in his commentary on the Torah gives the meaning "explainer of hidden things". Ramban (13th century CE) gives “explainer of secrets”, while Rabbeinu Bahya (13th-14th century CE) gives "the one who reveals secrets". This would give us the literal translation of צָפְנַת פַּעְנֵחַ (''Ṣāp̄naṯ Paʿnēaḥ'') from Hebrew as "He hodeciphered the Hidden".

The Jewish interpretation is received in early Protestant translations: the Geneva Bible (1599) glosses "The expounder of secrets", while the Authorised Version of 1611 has in the margin: "Which in the Coptic signifies, 'A revealer of secrets', or 'The man to whom secrets are revealed.'"

In his work on Genesis, and in the Vulgate, St. Jerome gives as the Latin translation "saviour of the world". This Christian interpretation (reinforcing the ancient concept of Joseph as a type of Christ) is influenced by the Greek form of the name, ' and ' in the Septuagint and the Hexaplaric version, respectively. This, at least, is the suggestion made by Wilhelm Gesenius in his ''Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon''. Early Egyptologists have interpreted the name as equivalent to Coptic ' or ' meaning "the salvation of the age".

After the decipherment of hieroglyphics, Egyptologists have interpreted the final element of the name (, ) as containing the Egyptian word ' "life"; notably, Georg Steindorff in 1889 offered a full reconstruction of ''ḏd pꜣ nṯr iw.f ꜥnḫ'' "the god speaks ndhe lives" ( Middle Egyptian pronunciation: ''V'' represents an unknown short vowel sound. ). Egyptologist Patrick Clarke, however, has pointed out this interpretation's shortcomings; namely, this name-type is unattested prior to the 11th century BCE while Joseph lived much earlier, and this name type "always mentioned a specific deity, never ‘the god’"."One very popular idea that Joseph was some kind of ‘revealer of godly secrets’ () was first postulated by Steindorff over a century ago. This name-type has been attested by scholarship as occurring between the 11th–6th centuries BC but not during the time of Joseph, which in both the conventional and the biblical chronology was considerably earlier. What Steindorff did not know at that time was that his always mentioned a specific deity, never ‘the god’."

References

Bibliography

*Marquardt, Philologus, vii. 676;
*Cheyne and Black, Encyc. Bibl. col. 5379 (where a disfigured Hebrew original is suspected);
*Steindorff, G., ' 41, 45. ZÄS 27, 1889, 41–42.
*Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch. xx. 208 (where the other theories have been collected). E. G.
*{{cite web, url=http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=31&letter=Z#ixzz0Zf5CidHp , title=Zaphnath-Paaneah , publisher=JewishEncyclopedia.com , access-date=2015-08-30

Notes

Joseph (Genesis)
Egypt in the Hebrew Bible