THREAD: Below are a bunch of what look (to me) to be #Egyptian personal names in the #Hebrew Bible.
I’d be grateful for comments from #Semitists and, particularly, for possible translations from #Egyptologists .
I’ll start with a couple of obvious candidates (mentioned by Hoffmeier at least and no doubt others):
Judah’s genealogy mentions a guy named ‘Sheshan’ (1 Chr. 2),
who’s part of an ancestral chain which seeks to traverse Israel’s years in Egypt (though ultimately goes nowhere).
The name of his slave (‘Jarha’) looks like it’s composed of the Egyptian elements:
⟨wr⟩ = ‘great’, and
⟨ḫʕ⟩ = ‘the one who appears’, an epithet of ‘Re’ (from ⟨ḫʕi⟩ = ‘to appear’).
By way of illustration, here’s a name of the form ⟨Wr-DN⟩:
Meanwhile, the name ‘Sheshan’ denotes ‘a lotus flower’.
Here’s an instance of the equivalent name in Egyptian:
All well and good (perhaps).
So, now for some more tentative candidates, which aren’t mentioned by Hoffmeier. (They may be considered in Muchiki; I don’t have it here.)
In Genesis, we find Isaac near Egypt (Gen. 25.8),
where he encounters a commander named ‘Phicol’ (פִּיכֹל), who’s associated with ‘the land of the Philistines’ (presumably the region in and around modern-day Gaza?).
Ephesians 1.3–10 is a majestic statement. It opens in the heavenly realms, before the foundation of the world, and concludes in the fulness of time, with all things in heaven and earth united in Christ—a grand sweep of divine history.
It is an awesome and extraordinary declaration of God’s plans. And its syntax matches its message.
Scattered throughout its sweep of history are references to what God has done for us—“blessed us”, “chosen us”, “predestined us”, etc.
Just as we find ourselves caught up in the syntax of Ephesian 1, so we find ourselves caught up in God’s plans.
The text of Job 28 is a beautiful composition. It reveals important truths about the nature of wisdom and at the same time paints an exquisite picture of the book of Job’s central theme.
Back in chapter 13, Job made an important statement. “If you would only be silent for a while”, he told his friends, “it would result in your wisdom” (Job 13.5).
Well, here in chapter 28, that statement takes on a prophetic character.
The Biblical narrative contains numerous examples of ‘righteous sufferers’—men who suffer not as a result of their own sin, but because of and to some extent *for* the benefit of others.
Joseph, Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah—the list goes on.
The most dramatic OT example of a righteous sufferer, however, is surely Job.
— Job was not merely a good man; he was the most blameless and upright man on earth (Job 1.8).
— Job was not merely a rich man; he was the richest man in the east (1.3).
— And Job did not merely come upon hard times; he lost *everything* (aside from his integrity),…
Joseph is a well known type/picture of Christ, so it’s natural for us (as Christians) to want us to map his experiences directly onto Jesus’s, all of which is well and good…
…But we can learn a great deal from a contemplation of Joseph’s life in its original (OT) context. For a start, let’s have a think about Genesis’s general flow.
As the book unfolds, God chooses out a line of promise. One by one its offshoots are peeled away as the story zooms in God’s chosen people (Israel).