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Asenath or Asenith (in modern times sometimes trasliterated as Osnat) is a figure in the Book of Genesis, an Egyptian
Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
 woman whom Pharaoh
Pharaoh

Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. In antiquity this title began to be used for the ruler who was the religious and political leader of united ancient Egypt, only during the New Kingdom, specifically, during the middle of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt....
 gave to Joseph
Joseph (Hebrew Bible)

Joseph or Yosef , is a major figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible . He was Jacob's eleventh son and Rachel's first. He is also mentioned favourably in the Qur'an....
 son of Jacob
Jacob

According to the Hebrew Bible, Jacob , also known as Israel , was the third Biblical patriarchs and the ancestor of the twelve Israelites....
 to be his wife. The daughter of Potipherah
Potipherah

Potipherah was a priest of the Ancient Egypt town of Heliopolis , mentioned in the Book of Genesis . He was the father of Asenath, who was given to Joseph as his wife by Pharaoh, and who bore Joseph two sons: Manasseh and Efraim....
, a priest of On
Heliopolis (ancient)

Heliopolis , meaning sun-city, was one of the most ancient cities of Egypt, and capital of the 13th Lower Egyptian Nome . Its name also refers to an unrelated Heliopolis of Cairo, also known as ??? ???????, Masr al-gidedah ....
, she bore Joseph two sons, Manasseh
Manasseh (tribal patriarch)

Manasseh or Menashshe was, according to the Book of Genesis, the first son of Joseph and Asenath, and the founder of the Israelites of Tribe of Manasseh; however some Biblical criticism view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation....
 and Ephraim
Ephraim

Ephraim was, according to the Book of Genesis, the second son of Joseph and Asenath, and the founder of the Israelites of Tribe of Ephraim; however some Biblical criticism view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation....
, who became the patriarchs of the Israelite
Israelite

According to the Tanakh, the Israelites were the descendants of the Biblical patriarch Jacob. They were divided into twelve tribes, each descended from one of twelve sons or grandsons of Jacob....
 tribes of Manasseh
Tribe of Manasseh

The Tribe of Menasheh was one of the Israelites. Together with the Tribe of Ephraim, Menasheh also formed the House of Joseph. At its height, the territory it occupied spanned the Jordan River, forming two "half-tribes", one on each side; the eastern half-tribe was almost entirely discontinuity with the western half-tribe, only slightly...
 and Ephraim
Tribe of Ephraim

The Tribe of Ephraim was one of the Israelites; together with the Tribe of Manasseh, Ephraim also formed the House of Joseph. At its height, the territory it occupied was at the center of Canaan, west of the Jordan, south of the territory of Manasseh, and north of the Tribe of Benjamin; the region which was later named Samaria mostly co...
, respectively. Modern scholarship says her name derives from the Egyptian
Egyptian language

Egyptian is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family along with the Chadic languages, Berber languages, Semitic languages, Cushitic languages and possibly Omotic languages languages....
 "holy to Anath"; her name may be phonetically transliterated from the New Kingdom Egyptian hieroglyphs as Ns-Nt.

Genesis records nothing more about Asenath, but her story is elaborated in the apocrypha
Apocrypha

Apocrypha are texts of uncertain authenticity, or writings where the authorship is questioned.When used in the specific context of Judeo-Christian theology, the term apocrypha refers to any collection of scriptural texts that falls outside the Biblical canon....
l Joseph and Asenath.






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Asenath or Asenith (in modern times sometimes trasliterated as Osnat) is a figure in the Book of Genesis, an Egyptian
Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
 woman whom Pharaoh
Pharaoh

Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. In antiquity this title began to be used for the ruler who was the religious and political leader of united ancient Egypt, only during the New Kingdom, specifically, during the middle of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt....
 gave to Joseph
Joseph (Hebrew Bible)

Joseph or Yosef , is a major figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible . He was Jacob's eleventh son and Rachel's first. He is also mentioned favourably in the Qur'an....
 son of Jacob
Jacob

According to the Hebrew Bible, Jacob , also known as Israel , was the third Biblical patriarchs and the ancestor of the twelve Israelites....
 to be his wife. The daughter of Potipherah
Potipherah

Potipherah was a priest of the Ancient Egypt town of Heliopolis , mentioned in the Book of Genesis . He was the father of Asenath, who was given to Joseph as his wife by Pharaoh, and who bore Joseph two sons: Manasseh and Efraim....
, a priest of On
Heliopolis (ancient)

Heliopolis , meaning sun-city, was one of the most ancient cities of Egypt, and capital of the 13th Lower Egyptian Nome . Its name also refers to an unrelated Heliopolis of Cairo, also known as ??? ???????, Masr al-gidedah ....
, she bore Joseph two sons, Manasseh
Manasseh (tribal patriarch)

Manasseh or Menashshe was, according to the Book of Genesis, the first son of Joseph and Asenath, and the founder of the Israelites of Tribe of Manasseh; however some Biblical criticism view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation....
 and Ephraim
Ephraim

Ephraim was, according to the Book of Genesis, the second son of Joseph and Asenath, and the founder of the Israelites of Tribe of Ephraim; however some Biblical criticism view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation....
, who became the patriarchs of the Israelite
Israelite

According to the Tanakh, the Israelites were the descendants of the Biblical patriarch Jacob. They were divided into twelve tribes, each descended from one of twelve sons or grandsons of Jacob....
 tribes of Manasseh
Tribe of Manasseh

The Tribe of Menasheh was one of the Israelites. Together with the Tribe of Ephraim, Menasheh also formed the House of Joseph. At its height, the territory it occupied spanned the Jordan River, forming two "half-tribes", one on each side; the eastern half-tribe was almost entirely discontinuity with the western half-tribe, only slightly...
 and Ephraim
Tribe of Ephraim

The Tribe of Ephraim was one of the Israelites; together with the Tribe of Manasseh, Ephraim also formed the House of Joseph. At its height, the territory it occupied was at the center of Canaan, west of the Jordan, south of the territory of Manasseh, and north of the Tribe of Benjamin; the region which was later named Samaria mostly co...
, respectively. Modern scholarship says her name derives from the Egyptian
Egyptian language

Egyptian is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family along with the Chadic languages, Berber languages, Semitic languages, Cushitic languages and possibly Omotic languages languages....
 "holy to Anath"; her name may be phonetically transliterated from the New Kingdom Egyptian hieroglyphs as Ns-Nt.

Genesis records nothing more about Asenath, but her story is elaborated in the apocrypha
Apocrypha

Apocrypha are texts of uncertain authenticity, or writings where the authorship is questioned.When used in the specific context of Judeo-Christian theology, the term apocrypha refers to any collection of scriptural texts that falls outside the Biblical canon....
l Joseph and Asenath. There, she is a virgin who rejects several worthy suitors in favor of Joseph, but Joseph will not have a pagan for a wife. She locks herself in a tower and rejects her idolatry in favor of Joseph's God Yahweh
Yahweh

Image:Tetragrammaton scripts.svg[Aramaic alphabet|Aramaic]] and Hebrew alphabet Yahweh is the English rendering of , a vocalization of the Tetragrammaton that was proposed by the Hebrew scholar Gesenius in the 19th century....
, and receives a visit from an angel who accepts her conversion. A ritual involving a honeycomb
Honeycomb

A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal waxcells built by honey bees in their beehive to contain their larva and stores of honey and pollen.beekeeping may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey....
 follows. Bees cover her and sting her lips to remove the false prayers to the pagan gods of her past. Joseph now consents to marry her. She bears him their sons Mannaseh and Ephraim. Pharaoh's son wants Asenath for himself, however, and with the aid of Joseph's brothers Dan
Dan (Biblical figure)

Dan was, according to the Book of Genesis, a son of Jacob and Bilhah , and the founder of the Israelites of Tribe of Dan; however some biblical criticism view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation; in the biblical account, Dan's mother is...
 and Gad
Gad (Biblical figure)

Gad was, according to the Book of Genesis, the first son of Jacob and Zilpah, the seventh of Jacob overall, and the founder of the Israelites of Tribe of Gad; however some Biblical criticism view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation....
, he conspires to kill her husband. The loyal brother Benjamin
Benjamin

Benjamin in the Book of Genesis, is a son of Jacob, the second son of Rachel, and the founder of the Israelites Tribe of Benjamin; in the Biblical account, unlike Rachel's first son - Joseph , the father of Ephraim and Manasseh - Benjamin was born after Jacob and Rachel arrived in Canaan....
 interferes, and Pharaoh's son is ultimately slain. Asenath forgives the conspirators, and she and Joseph rule over Egypt for 48 years, after which they pass the crown to Pharaoh's grandson.

The Midrash
Midrash

Midrash is a Hebrew language term referring to the not exact, but comparative method of exegesis of Biblical texts, which is one of four methods cumulatively called Pardes ....
 Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer
Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer

Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer is a aggadic-midrashic work on Genesis, part of Exodus, and a few sentences of Book of Numbers, ascribed to R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, and composed shortly after 833 CE....
 records a view that Asenath was actually the daughter of Joseph's sister Dinah
Dinah

According to the Hebrew Bible, Dinah was the daughter of Jacob, one of the patriarchs of the Israelites and Leah, his first wife. The episode of her abduction and violation by a Canaanite prince, and the subsequent vengeance of her brothers Simeon and Levi, commonly referred to as "The Rape of Dinah", is told in ....
, conceived in her rape by Shechem
Shechem

Shechem was Canaanite city mentioned in the Amarna letters, and later became an Israelite city in the tribe of Manasseh. It was the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel....
. Some of the circumstantial textual evidence supporting this view is laid out in an by John Pratt.

"Asenath" or "Osnat" is a commonly used female first name in present-day Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area....
.

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