Shechem ben Hamor de Canaan

• Preferred Name: Shechem ben Hamor de Canaan
  
• Gender: M
  
• Death: in Canaan at LATI: N1.8616 LONG: E5.1244
  
• FSID: G8CG-S76
  
• Killed+by+Simeon+and+Levi,+sons+of+Jacob+: with note: Description: for raping their sister Dinah
  
• Notes:

  === Life Sketch ===
  http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2000/puzzle_ans.html
  
  3. The Hebrew Tradition
  But could Asenath really have been Dinah's daughter? To the best of my knowledge, this solution to the puzzle has never been published until now. No one has noticed that these verses in an obscure list of genealogy imply that Joseph's wife, the mother of the tribe who inherited the blessing of the firstborn of Israel, is also of the house of Israel. Could that really be true?
  It turns out that it has long been a Jewish tradition that Asenath was the daughter of Leah's daughter Dinah by Shechem, a prince in the land of Canaan (Gen. 34:2). It has been thought by scholars that this tradition was no more than a fabrication. It was supposedly invented to explain the otherwise embarrassing fact that Joseph married an Egyptian woman, when Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all given strict commands to marry in their own family lineage. It has always seemed strange to me, however, that a legend was invented to legitimize Joseph's wife's lineage by making her the illegitimate daughter of Dinah and someone from Canaan. Here is one of the many variations of this tradition:
  
  Dinah was already pregnant by Shechem, an bore him a posthumous daughter. Her brothers wished to kill the child, as custom demanded, lest any Canaanite might say 'The maidens of Israel are without shame!' Jacob, however, restrained them, hung about his grand-daughter's neck a silver disk on which were engraved the words 'Holy to God!', and laid her underneath a thorn bush -- hence she was called 'Asenath'. That same day Michael, in the shape of an eagle, flew off with Asenath to On in Egypt, and there laid her beside God's altar. The priest, by name Potipherah, seeing his wife was barren, brought up Asenath as his own child.
  Many years later, when Joseph had saved Egypt from famine and made a progress through the land, women threw him thank-offerings. Among them was Asenath who, having no other gift, tossed Joseph her silver disk, which he caught as it flew by. He recognized the inscription and, knowing the she must be his own niece, married her.[5]
  In a less miraculous version of this tradition, Jacob himself placed the infant Asenath
  
  near the wall of Egypt. On the same day Potiphar was taking a walk, accompanied by his retinue, and approached the wall. He heard the child weeping and commanded his followers to bring it to him. When he noticed the tablet and read the inscription he said to his followers, "This child is the daughter of eminent people. Carry it into my house and procure a nurse for it.[6]
  It is clear from how different these two traditions are that much of these stories are the interpolations of men. All of these legends agree, however, on the core idea that Asenath was the daughter of Dinah and Shechem. The uncertainty seems to be on just how she came to arrive in Egypt and to be adopted by Potipherah.
  
  Another clue is that Joseph is tied to Shechem is that Joseph was buried at Shechem (Joshua 24:32). Why was he buried there, when Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried together in Hebron? Shechem later became part of the inheritance of the tribe of Manasseh, Joseph's son. Now let us turn to early Christian traditions about Joseph and Asenath.
  
  4. The Christian Tradition
  A rather different story is told in the apocryphal book Joseph and Asenath, which was a highly respected book of early Christianity.[7] A principal theme is Asenath's total conversion to Joseph's religion, facilitated by the appearance of an angel who looked like Joseph (J&A 14:9).
  While this book says nothing about Asenath not being the literal daughter of Potipherah, it has many clues that the author knew her true lineage, but also wanted to keep it a secret. Remember, that during past ages, it was a huge disgrace to have been an illegitimate child, so the motive for keeping her lineage secret is obvious. Here are some clues that the author of Joseph and Asenath knew who Asenath really was.
  
  1. The point is made that Asenath does not look anything like other Egyptian women, but that she was "slender like unto Sarah, beautiful like Rebekah, and radiant in appearance like Rachel."[8] Stating that she looked exactly like the three wives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all of whom were from Abraham's family, has a pretty clear implications about her true lineage, without giving details.
  
  2. The author gives the ages of both Asenath and Joseph's brother Benjamin correctly, as being 18 years old at the time when Joseph was 30 (J&A 1:4, 27:2). That matches the Hebrew tradition perfectly,[9] although that information is not in the Old Testament.
  
  3. Asenath goes into a soliloquy where she states that she is "an orphan, and desolate and abandoned and hated" (J&A 11:3). Such a surprising declaration is justified by explaining that she means only that she expects to be rejected by her Egyptian parents when she denounces their gods. The evidence that she really was a rejected orphan makes it much more understandable that such an unusual statement would be included.
  
  4. The story speaks of Asenath's "foster father." He does not appear to be Potipherah, but rather a steward (J&A 18:2), but it is interesting that the story includes her foster father.
  
  Thus, there are many clues that the author of the Joseph and Asenath knew who she really was. Much of the rest of the book appears to be interpolation and fabrication, or what we might call today a "historical novel." The great success of recent historical novels seems to be that they are set in a true historical setting. Similarly, it appears that the author of Joseph and Asenath wrote the account to be consistent with all of the historical setting of which he was aware.
  
  5. Conclusion
  If it is acknowledged that there really is a true logic puzzle purposely included in Genesis 46, then it is an important discovery because it elevates the tradition of Asenath's true lineage from being a mere fabrication to being indicated by scripture. But one cannot prove that the logic puzzle was in the mind of the author of Genesis. It could be argued that the puzzle is not there at all, that it is rather just a coincidence that two errors just happen to indicate that Asenath is of the House of Israel. Anyone taking that position, however, should explain why Asenath's name is in the genealogy list at all, especially in light of the explicit statement that none of the wives is included in the count. This point and all of the other unusual wording can best be explained by recognizing that Genesis does indeed contain all the information necessary to deduce that Asenath, the mother of the two tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, was the daughter of Dinah of the house of Israel.
  Acknowledgments
  The author wishes to thank Wiliam L. Walker, Jr. for introducing me to the Asenath traditions which helped me to solve the puzzle, and David Barker for helping to research the subject.
  
  Notes
  Neusner, Jacob, Genesis Rabbah, The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis, A New American Translation (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1985). Vol III, pp. 319-324.
  Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews, (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1948), vol II, p. 122.
  For example see The Book of Jasher (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Artisan Sales, 1988), which implies that Jochebed was 130 at Moses birth (Jasher 59:9, 68:2, 68:11, 73:1-2).
  The 430 years mentioned in Exo. 12:40 was interpreted to be 215 years from Abraham's entering Canaan until Israel entered Egypt, followed by another 215 years in Egypt. See the Jewish historian Josephus in Antiquities, XIV.xv.2.
  Graves, Robert & Patai, Raphael, Hebrew Myths (New York: Greenwich House, 1964), p. 237. See also Ginzberg, op. cit., II: 38.
  V. Aptowitzer, "Asenath, the Wife of Joseph," Hebrew Union College Annual (New York: Ktav Publishing, 1924), Vol. I, pp. 239-255.
  Burchard, C., "Joseph and Asenath," in Charlesworth, James H., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 195 states, "Joseph and Asenath is one of the best attested and most widely distributed books included in this collection."
  Joseph and Asenath 1:8, translation from Ginzberg, op. cit., II:170.
  For example, Jubilees 30:2 says Dinah was 12 at the time of her union with Shechem. Joseph and Dinah were the same age, which would make Joseph about twelve years older than Asenath, so Asenath being 18 when Joseph was 30 makes sense. And Benjamin was born at Bethlehem shortly after the incident at Shechem, as the family traveled to Hebron (Gen. 35:18).
  
  See Dinah's daughter Asenath for the 1st half of the above article.

1. Asenath bat Dinah, b. 1725 BC in On, Heliopolis, Egypt, Genesis 41:45     d. in Memphis, Goshen, Egypt