Asenath

Fausset's Bible Dictionary

Daughter of Potipherah, prince priest of On; Joseph's wife; mother of Ephraim and Manasseh ( Genesis 41:50;  Genesis 46:20). Her name is probably Egyptian, and means "she who is consecrated to Neith," the goddess of wisdom, a tutelary deity of On or Revelation Athom, the city of the sun god, the Athene of Greece. If it be the Hebrew name assumed on her conversion (as (See Bithiah means "daughter of Jehovah") and union with Joseph, it may be from Asan , "a storehouse," in allusion to Joseph's national service, and Ephraim's name meaning "fruitfulness".

Canon Cook makes it a compound of "Isis" and "Neith," two goddesses akin. The marriage into this idolatrous family seems to have borne evil fruit afterward in the idolatry of Joseph's descendants, Ephraim, and the calf worship. Foreigners had been raised to high rank by Pharaohs of the early empire; Joseph, as Abraham's descendant, would be regarded as of noble birth, and be admitted, especially at the command of an absolute king, into alliance with the haughty priest caste. His circumcision, if, as in after ages, it was then practiced in Egypt by the priests, would be a recommendation. However, as it is not represented in the monuments until the 19th dynasty, long after Joseph, he probably first introduced it.

Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible

ASENATH . Daughter of Poti-phera, priest of On, wife of Joseph and mother of Ephraim and Manasseh (  Genesis 41:45;   Genesis 41:50;   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 Asneit or Esneit , meaning ‘belonging to Neit.’ Neit was the goddess of Sais, and her name was especially popular in names from the 26th (Saite) Dyn., c [Note: circa, about.] . b.c. 664, and onwards for some two centuries.

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.

F. Ll. Griffith.

Smith's Bible Dictionary

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

American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

Daughter of Potipherag, priest or prince of On; given in marriage by Pharaoh to Joseph, as adding honor and strength to his high office. She was the mother of Iphraim and Manasseh,  Genesis 41:45;  46:20 .

Morrish Bible Dictionary

Daughter of Poti-pherah, priest of On, wife of Joseph, and mother of Manasseh and Ephraim.  Genesis 41:45,50;  Genesis 46:20 .

Holman Bible Dictionary

 Genesis 41:45 Genesis 41:50-51

Easton's Bible Dictionary

 Genesis 41:45

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

(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 ( Genesis 41:45;  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 ( 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).

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

as´ē̇ - nath ( Ἀσενέθ , Asenéth ): The wife of Joseph, daughter of Potiphera, mother of Manasseh and Ephraim ( Genesis 41:45 ,  Genesis 41:50;  Genesis 46:20 ). She was evidently an Egyptian woman and bore an Egyptian name. אסנת , pointed by the Massoretes as אסנת , 'āṣenath , appears in the Septuagint as āseneth or asenneth ̌ . The last two consonants appear to represent the name of the Egyptian goddess Neith. The first part of the name will then represent either ns = "belonging to" (so Brugsch and generally), or 'ws - n (note the doubled "n" in the Septuagint transcription) = "she belongs to" (so Spiegelberg). It is possible that these four letters represent the Egyptian name Sn - t (so Lieblein and others), though the א must then be explained as 'ālēph prostheticum and the taw ( ת ) would be less regular than a he (ה ) to stand for the Egyptian feminine t .

Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblial Literature

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.