the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Potiphar
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or POTIPHAR . Genesis 39:1-23 , a high Egyptian official in the story of Joseph. The name is perhaps a deformation of Potiphera (wh. see) or an unsuccessful attempt to form an Egyptian name on the same lines. Potiphar seems to be entitled ‘chief cook’ (EV [Note: English Version.] ‘captain of the guard’), and likewise saris , ‘eunuch’ of Pharaoh. But the former title ‘cook’ may be only a mark of high rank; persons described as royal tasters in the New Kingdom were leaders of expeditions, investigators of criminal cases, judges in the most important trials, etc.; as yet, too, there is little indication that eunuchs were employed in Egypt even at a later period: so this also was but an honorific official title; the Hebrew word saris is actually found attached to the names of Persian officers in Egypt. Joseph was sold to Potiphar, on whose wife’s accusation he was cast into the king’s prison (in Potiphar’s own house), to which Pharaoh afterwards committed his chief butler and chief baker. The office thus held by Potiphar cannot yet be precisely identified in Egyptian documents. In the passage Genesis 41:45 and the repeated description of Joseph’s wife, the forms of the names and the title of the priest are much more precisely Egyptian.
F. Ll. Griffith.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Potiphar'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/p/potiphar.html. 1909.
