Ptol'emee, Ptoloniae'us, Ptol'omee, forms
of the name Ptolemy sometimes found in the Apocry- phal books of Esther and Maccabees. See Ptolejletjs.
Ftol'emy. See Ptolemjecs.
Ptolemy was a Gnostic philosopher, in whom, ac- cording to St. frenaeus (Preef. ail lib. i. Adv. liter.), the system of Valentinus reached its bloom, [renaeus gives a full exposition of it in his work Adv. Hcereses, lil>. i. c i. 8. Ptolemy is also named by Tertullian, but with- out any particulars of his history {Contr. Vdtent. c. xxxiii), and in a very few words by Philaster i llnr. c x xx i x ». Augustine 1 1 In r. c. xiii I, Preedesl inatusi ffcer. c. \ii>. and the continuator ot Tertullian (Pseudo- Tertullian, ffar.c. xii). St. Epiphanius, in his great work on heresies | Har. Lib. xxx, c. iii), communicates a letter of this Ptolemy to flora, in which the for- mer explains to the lady the fundamental features of his doctrine. The only difference between the Ptole- imeans and the Yakut inians in general appears to have been in respect to the number of seons which they in- vented for their respective systems, and the name of Ptolemy is associated particularly with that of Herac- leori as regards a duplex system of four. See lliu.u- i i .i\i 1 1 >. In the year 1843 Mr. Stieren,who has since made himself more generally known by his recently cot enced edition of the works ol St. Lreneaus, pub- lished a dissertation under the title /'< Ptolemcei Gno- stici ad /'/■'rum Epistola, etc (Jena-, ap. c. Hochhau- sen i. in which he endeavors to prove that the doctrine contained in the Letter to Flora is at variance with the system of Ptolemy as known by the writings ot st. tremens, and that, in consequence, the letter must he considered as apocryphal. Hefele, in the Tiibingi r Quar- talschrift, L845, p. 387 396, undertook to show thai there is no real contradiction between the letter and the sys-
PUA
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tcm, and that neither the authenticity nor the integrity (except one marginal note in cap. 1, § (!) of the former can be questioned. — Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchen-Lexikon, s. v.
Pu'a (Numb, xxvi, 23). See Phuvah.
Pu'all, the form in the A. V. of the name of two men and one woman, each different in the Hebrew.
1. (Heb. Puwah', WB, 1 Chron. vii, 1.) See Phu- vah.
2. (Heb. Pudh, Jl^E, thought by Gesenius and Fiirst to be for H^S1?, splendid; Sept. <J>oua, Vulg. Phua.} The last named of the two midwives to whom Pharaoh gave instructions to kill the Hebrew male children at their birth (Exod. i, 15). B.C. cir. 1740. In the A. V. they are called " Hebrew midwives," a ren- dering which is not required by the original, and which is regarded by many as doubtful, both from the improb- ability that the king would have intrusted the execu- tion of such a task to the women of the nation he was endeavoring to destroy, as well as from the answer of the women themselves in ver. 19. "for the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women ;" from which we may infer that they were accustomed to attend upon the latter, and were themselves Egyptians. If we trans- late Exod. i, 18 in this way, "And the king of Egypt said to the women who acted as midwives to the He- brew women," this difficulty is removed. The two, Shiphrah and Puah, are supposed to have been the chief and representatives of their profession; as Aben- Ezra says, "They were chiefs over all the midwives: for no doubt there were more than 500 midwives, but these two were chiefs over them to give tribute to the king of the hire." According to Jewish tradition. Shiph- rah was Jochebed, and Puah Miriam; "because." says Rashi, " she cried and talked and murmured to the child, after the manner of the women that lull a weeping in- fant." The origin of all this is an imaginary play upon the name Puah, which is derived from a root signifying " to cry out," as in Isa. xlii, 14, and used in Kabbinical writers of the bleating of sheep. — Smith. Josephus (Ant. ii, 9, 9) intimates that these were Egyptian women : but when it is considered that no Egyptian woman was likely to pollute herself by rendering such offices to a Hebrew woman ; that Puah and Shiphrah are described as fearing Jehovah (Exod. i, 17) ; that their names are Hebrew; and that though the words n*"C"fl nHls^TQS may be translated "midwives of the Hebrews," they more probably mean, as the A. V. gives them, " Hebrew midwives;" and that had Moses intended to convey the other meaning, he would have written "tl "X izb, reason will be found for preferring the opinion that they were Hebrew women. — Kit to.
3. (Heb. Pu'dh, !~WB, perhaps i. q. i~t£, mouth; Sept. <£>ovd, Vulg. Phua.) The father of Tola, who was of the tribe of Issachar, and judge of Israel after Abim- elech (Judg. x, 1). B.C. ante 1319. In the Vulg., in- stead of " the son of Dodo," he is called " the uncle of Abimelech ;" and in the Sept. Tola is said to be " the son of Phua, the sou (v'wc.) of his father's brother;" both versions endeavoring to render " Dodo" as an ap- pellative, while the Litter introduces a remarkable ge- nealogical difficulty. — Smith.