Zaphnath-Paaneah
Zaphnath-Paaneah 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 gives the meaning of the name as "the man to whom hidden things are revealed"; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, "the man who revealeth mysteries"; Josephus, "a finder of mysteries". Rashi in his commentary on the Torah gives the meaning "explainer of hidden things". Nachmanides gives "explainer of secrets", while Bahya ben Asher gives "the one who reveals secrets". The reason for these translations is that the feminine noun צָפְנַת refers to something hidden/secret in Hebrew, deriving from the root צפן, meaning "to hide, conceal"; while פַּעְנֵחַ is a verb deriving from the root פענח, meaning "to discover, decipher, decode". This would give us the literal translation of "Zaphnath-Paaneah" from Hebrew as "He deciphered the Hidden".The Jewish interpretation is received in early Protestant translations: the Geneva Bible 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, Jerome gives as the Latin translation salvator mundi "saviour of the world". This Christian interpretation is influenced by the Greek form of the name, Ψονθομφανήχ ' and Ψομθομφανήχ ' 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".
Since the [Decipherment of ancient Egyptian language|Egyptian scripts|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 he lives". Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen, 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 that this name type always mentioned a specific deity, never 'the god'.
Kitchen's objections were already raised in 1929 by Abraham Yahuda, who also pointed out that this type of name makes sense only when it is given to a newborn, placing the baby under the god's protection; he suggested instead ḏfꜣ n tꜣ pꜣ ꜥnḫ "the living one is the sustenance of land" or ḏfꜣ n tꜣ pw ꜥnḫ "the sustenance of the land is he, the living one."
Jozef Vergote agreed with Yahuda's criticism of Steindorff's hypothesis but in turn considered the expression "living one" in Yahuda's suggestion to be "." Instead, Vergote returns to the Septuagint version, explaining Ψονθομφανήχ as pꜣ s nty ꜥm=f nꜣ iḫ.t, "the man who knows the things," consistent with the traditional Jewish interpretation.