26-06-'08 | S. Reichmann

PhD student

S. Reichmann

Date and time

26 June 2008, 4.15 p.m.

PhD thesis

Bei Übernahme Korrektur? Aufnahme und Wandlung ägyptischer Tradition und das Alte Testament

Supervisor

Prof. E. Noort

Egyptian origin of two Bible texts

Two texts from the Old Testament appear to be deliberately deviating translations of Egyptian texts, according to PhD student Sirje Reichmann. Any relationship between the texts was dismissed for a long time due to this deviation. However, Reichmann states that a text can never be literally translated and that translation is always a matter of interpretation.

Sirje Reichmann conducted her PhD research on the influence of Egyptian literature on certain Old Testament texts. Her starting point was the idea that Akhenaton’s Great Hymn to the Aten influenced Psalm 104 and that the Instruction of Amenemope influenced Proverbs 22:17-24:22.

Reichman first explains the complex processes involved in translation by comparing three Ancient Near-Eastern bilingual and trilingual documents with each other, thus providing a framework for the problem of ‘translation’ in the Ancient Near-Eastern world. It turns out that adaptations and striking changes can be made in such a translation.

Reichmann then goes on to investigate whether the above-mentioned Hebrew texts are partial translations of the Egyptian texts. The text comparison shows that there are great similarities in themes and motifs, although the concrete verbal formulations may differ. These differences are often used to reject the idea of literary interdependence between Ancient Near-Eastern and biblical texts. However, Reichman claims that differences emerge during the translation process and that they do not mean that one text cannot be a translation of the other. She thinks that different translations were deliberately used in the two Bible texts.

Sirje Reichmann (Germany, 1974) studied at the University of Hamburg and conducted her PhD research as an Ubbo Emmius scholar at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies. /ES