Difference between revisions of "Asenath"

<p> <strong> [[Asenath]] </strong> . Daughter of Poti-phera, priest of On, wife of [[Joseph]] and mother of Ephraim and Manasseh (&nbsp; [[Genesis]] 41:45; &nbsp; Genesis 41:50; &nbsp; Genesis 46:20 ). The name, like the other [[Egyptian]] names in the story of Joseph, is of a well-known late type, prevalent from about b.c. 950; it should probably be vocalized <em> Asneit </em> or <em> Esneit </em> , meaning ‘belonging to Neit.’ Neit was the goddess of Sais, and her name was especially popular in names from the 26th (Saite) Dyn., <em> c </em> <em> [Note: circa, about.] </em> . b.c. 664, and onwards for some two centuries. </p> <p> Asenath is the heroine of a remarkable [[Jewish]] and [[Christian]] romance, in which she renounces her false gods before her marriage with Joseph; it can be traced back to the 5th cent. a.d., and is probably a good deal earlier. </p> <p> F. Ll. Griffith. </p>

<p> '''As'enath.''' ''(Worshipper Of Neith).'' Daughter of Potipherah, priest, or possibly prince, of On, (''See '' [[Potipherah]] ), wife of Joseph, &nbsp;Genesis 41:45, and mother of Manasseh and Ephraim. &nbsp;Genesis 41:50; &nbsp;Genesis 46:20. (B.C. 1715). </p>

<p> (Heb. Asenath', א סְנִת '','' on the signif. see below; Sept. Ἀσενέθ v.r. Ἀσεννέθ )'','' the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On, whom the king of Egypt bestowed in marriage upon Joseph (&nbsp;Genesis 41:45; &nbsp;Genesis 46:20), with the view probably of strengthening his position in Egypt by this high connection, B.C. 1883. (See Joseph). She became the mother of Ephraim and Manasseh (&nbsp;Genesis 41:50). No better etymnology of Asenath has been proposed than that by Jablonski, who ''(Pansfh. Egypt.'' i, 56; ''Opuscul.'' ii, 208) regards it as representative of a [[Coptic]] compound, ''Assheneit.'' The latter part of this word he takes to be the name of Neith, the titular goddess of Sais, the Athene of the Greeks. and considers the whole to mean ''Worshipper Nf Neith.'' Gesenius, in his ''Thesaurus,'' suggests that the original Coptic form was ''Asncith,'' which means ''Who Belongs To Neith:'' That the name refers to this goddess is the generally received opinion (in modern times Von Bohlen alone has, in his Genesis, proposed an unsatisfactory Shemitic etymology [see Lepsius, Chronicles d. dEgypter, i, 382]): it is favored by the fact that the Egyptians, as Jablonski has shown, were accustomed to choose names expressive of some relation to their gods; and it appears liable to no stronger objection than the doubt whether the worship of [[Neith]] existed at so early a period as that of the composition of the [[Look]] of Genesis (see Champollion, [[Pantheon]] Egyptienne, No. 6). Even this doubt is now removed, as it appears that she was really one of the primitive deities of Lower Egypt (Bunsen, Egypt's Place, i, 389), for her name occurs as an element in that of Nitocris (Neith-akri), a queen of the sixth dynasty (Wilkinson, in Rawlinson's Herodotus, ii, 142, note 2). </p>

<p> As´enath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On, whom the king of Egypt bestowed in marriage upon Joseph, with the view probably of strengthening his position in Egypt by this high connection. The considerations suggested by this marriage belong to another place [JOSEPH]; and attention is here only required to the name, which, in common with other words of foreign origin, has attracted considerable notice. The most probable interpretation is that, it means worshipper of Neith—the titular goddess of Sais, the Athene of the Greeks. </p>