Asenath (Hastings' Dictionary)

The daughter of Poti-pherah, priest of On, and wife of Joseph. She was the mother of Ephraim and Manasseh (Gn 41^ " 46*'). The name may mean • belonging to (or favourite of) Neith' {Oxf. Heb. Lex. s.v.) She is com- memorated by the Greek Church apparently on Dec. 13, and by the Ethiopian on the 1st of Senne. The story of A.

has been made the subject of a remarkable novel which exists in Greek (the original language), Syriac, Armenian, and Latin, as well as in many mediajval European versions made from the Latin. The Latin is itself not older than the 13th cent., and is the work, as is believed, of Robert Grosset«ste, bishop of Lincoln, or of one of the scholars as.soci- ated with him. The name of the romance is either the History of A. ot The Book of the Con- fcs.tion of A.

It has been a-ssigned by its last editor, P. Batiffol, to the 5th cent. It is certain, liowever, that the Syriac version is as old as the 6th cent., and the probability is that the originai is at least as early as the 3rd cent. In its present form it is a Christian version of • Jewish legend. A full account of the story may be .«een in Hort's article in Smith's Z>ic<. Christ. Bwgr. Summarised it runs thus : A. is the proud and beauti- ful daughter of Pentephres of Heliopolis.

She lives in magnificent seclusion and deipises all men. Her father and mother propose that she shall marry Joseph, now prime minister to Pharaoh. She rejects the thought with scorn. However, Joseph soon arrives at the house on one of hia journeys through Egypt to collect com. Asenath sees liim and at once falls in love. But Josepli, who has a horror of all women, will have notliing to say to her, and can- not even kiss her, since she worships idols.

He blesses her, and tlien she retires to her room. Here she shuts herself up for seven days in sack- cloth and ashes, throws her idols out of tlie window, and does strict penance. On the 8th day she utters a long prayer. Thereafter an angel comes to her in the form of Joseph and blesses her, and gives her to eat of a mystic honeycomb, on whicli the sign of the cross is made. A.

, then accepted of God, arrays herself in beautiful garments, and goes forth to meet Joseph, who now returns to the house. The parents are away, but the be- trothal takes place in their absence ; and then the wedding in Pharaoh's presence. At this point the Armenian version makes a break, and ends the first part; here also in Syr., Arm., and Lat., but not in any known Greek MS, occurs a lamentation of Asenath for her former pride. The second part of the book contains the story first of A.'

s introduction to Jacob when he came to Egypt, and then, at great length, of an attempt on the part of Pharaoh's firstborn son to abduct A., — an attempt in which he enlists the services of Dan and Gad, and in which he is baffled by Benjamin, Simeon, and Levi, and loses his life. This part of the story, which is very well told, has hardly any religious interest, save in tlie forgiveness of Dan »ad Gad by A. But in the first part of the book the religious element is far more prominent.

Stress is lai<l on purity and on repentance. The rni3:m d'etre of the book, or rather, of the Jewish legend which lies beliind it, is to evade the difficulty of Josei)h's marriage with a heathen wife: and, as Batilfol and Oppenheim (see Lit.) have shown, the original legend made A. a Jewess by birth. It identified her with tlie daughter of Dinah, Jacob's daughter, and of Shechem. This has been slurred over in the Greek novel ; but it is implied by certain wonla in the Syriac, where A.'

s visit to Jactfb is de.scribed. The romance is altogether one of the most successful, from a literary point of view, that the apocryphal literature afl'ords. It was widely known in Europe by means of the extracts from it which Fratcr Vincentius (Vincent of Beauvais) included in his Speculum llistoriaU in the I3th oentory. Lrr»RATUK». — VlnrenfB Lat. vereion and a fraprment of the Or. in Fabricius' Cod. Pinid. V. T. : Sjrioc in I^nil's Aneedota Syriaca, iii. 1S70 ; Ijit. tr.

of Syriac by Oppcnbcim, Faliula Jwvhi et AtrnflhiT, 188« ; Or. by P. Batiffol from tour M.S.S in Stnaia Patrittiea, Ksso ; Ijit. (oomplete \er8i(n0 from two Cnm- bridge iI.SS coniniiinicated l)y the prt'Bcnt writer to M. IlatilToI, and publiahed hv him op.cU. ; Aruicnian n-centlv pultliHhed at Venice hy P. Baaile. M. K. JamES. ASH (nh, 'oren, rl-nn, pinux) (Is 44", AV. RV has fir, with ash in m.)

— The conditions to be fulfilleil by this tree are that its wood should be suitable to be carved into an image, and nsed for fuel ; that it should be a familiar tree, pUinled, as distingtiishcd from the forest trees mentioned in the former part of the verse ; and that it should be nouri.ihed by rain, and not by artificial irrigation, as in the ca.se of almost all the cultivated trees of Syria and Palestine. These conditions exclude several of the candidates.

They make it improbable that the unknown tree 'arnn, described by Abu Failli a« growing in Arabia Petra'a, is mtended. Surh a tree would not be likely to be planted, nor to thrive out of the stations where it is indigenous. Salvadora Per- sica, proposed by Royle, is a desert shrub, with a trunk out of which it would be impossible to find a piece large enougli to carve into a graven image, and in every other way quite unsuitable. Luther's surmise, that the final i of the Heb.

original is a i, and that the tree is a cedar, is forbidden by the preWous mention of the cedar in the same pas.sage. The interpretation ash of AV has no support from philology. It is wholly improbable that 'oren has any connexion with urnus. There are three species of a-sh in SjTia — Fraxinus Ornus, L., which grows in the mountains from Lebanon to Amanus ; F. excelsior, L. , Amanus and northward ; and F. oxycarpa, Willd., var. oligopht/lla, Boiss.

, Tel-el- ^adi (Dan) to Antilebanon, Lebanon, and Aleppo, 'ihe modern Arab, name for the last is dardAr (also the elm). It is a tine tree, with a hemispherical comus, 15 to 45 feet high, and has a trunk which would furnish wood suitable for the requirements of the text. But it grows XDild, usually near or by water, and therefore would not likely have been selected as a tree which the 'rain doth nourish.'

Fir is an unfortunate guess, as there are other words which correspond to the different sorts of fir. Pine has the authority of the LXX. There are three species of pine growing in the Holy Land — Pinus Ilaleppensis, Mill, the Aleppo Pine ; P. Brutia, Ten. ; and P. Pinea, L., the maritime or stone pine. The latter tree fulfils best the condi- tions of the 'oren.

It is a tree well knoAvn by the Arabic name snowbar, with a resinous, hard wood, capable of being carved, and much used for fuel, especially in the public ovens. It produces large cones, and an edible seed, for which it is cultivated, and the taste of which when roasted resembles that of a roasted peanut. Moreover, it is a tree which ig very extensively planted, and always in sandy places or on dry hillsides, where it receives only the rain.

It is one of the few cultivated (planted) trees in this land which are never watered except by the rain. It is never planted in irrigated ground.

The seed is so>vn m low-lying districts along the coast after the first rains, when the ground is softened, and in the mountains in the latter days of February, when all danger of the tender sprout being nipped by frost has passed away, but when there is prospect of rain sufficient to ' nourish ' the seedling for its exposure to the blazing sunshine during the eight long rainless months that are to follow.

The explanatory clause of our passage has very peculiar force witn refer- ence to this tree. The objection of Celsius, that the pine does not bear transplanting, is futile, as it is only said that they were planted. The same word is used for the lign-aloes (Nu 24"), and the cedars (Ps 1U4"), both of which it is said the ' Lord planted,' i.e. smced, for they were certainly not transplanted. Al.so God is rei)resented as planting the desolate places (Ezk Hli'").

Vast groves of fnnichar have been planted at points along the coast to arrest the movement of the sand dunes. Such a grove was planted by Ibrahim Pasha in 1840 near Beirftt, and is one of the most picturesque features of the beautiful plain between the city and Lebanon. Large numbers of these groves are planted on the red sand-stone oi Lebanon, and in parts of Palestine. As the tree grows, the lower brunches are lopped off, and only a mushroom-shaped top is left.

The trees grow near together and very uniformly, so that the top of a large grove such as that near lieirt^t, when looked upon from the mountain, presents a flat green surface, which constitutes a very marked and attractive feature of the landscape.

Wlicn planted on steep mountain sides, as in Lebanon and on 164 ASHAN ASHER the Apulian coast of Italy, the tall trunks, sur- mounted by their dense crown of evergreen leaves, fringe the tops and dot the sides of the rugged grey peaks with a beauty hardly rivalled by any ot her tree. G. E. Post. ASHAN (m), Jos 15" 19', 1 Ch 4*' 6»».— Per- haps the same as Cor-aahan, which see. It was a to«-n of Judah, near Libnah and Rimmon, belon";ing to Simeon, and not far from Debir.

It must have been on the slopes of the hills east of Gaza, but the site is doubtful. C. R. Conder.