The plain verse of (Genesis 46:20) simply records that Joseph married Asenath, daughter of Potiphera priest of On, and had two sons — Menasheh and Ephraim. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan cannot let the name of a foreign priest's daughter stand without comment, so it lifts the veil and tells a different genealogy.
Asenath, the Targum says, was the daughter of Dinah, Jacob's daughter, "educated in the house of Potiphera prince of Tanis." In other words, she was not a stranger. She was family, hidden inside an Egyptian household, restored to her tribe by marriage.
The Hidden History Behind the Marriage
The aggadic backdrop is painful. After the assault on Dinah in (Genesis 34), tradition holds that Dinah bore a daughter. The brothers wanted to kill the child, fearing she would bring shame upon the house of Jacob. Jacob intervened. He hung a gold amulet around her neck inscribed with the name of her mother and of the Holy One, and sent her away. An eagle — some versions say the angel Michael — carried her to Egypt, where the childless Potiphera found her and raised her as his own.
So when Joseph, standing at the height of Egyptian power, married the priest's daughter, he was not assimilating. He was gathering his family back in. The amulet around her neck was the receipt.
Why the Targum Insists
This tradition solves a theological problem that troubled the rabbis: how could Joseph the righteous — Yosef ha-tzaddik — marry a pagan priest's daughter and father the tribes of Ephraim and Menasheh? The Targum answers by refusing the premise. Asenath was always Jewish. The line of Israel flowing through Joseph's sons was unbroken from Jacob through Dinah through Asenath.
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, composed in its final form between the 4th and 8th centuries CE, is famous for these narrative expansions — not bare translation but a living retelling, preserving traditions found also in <a href='/categories/midrash-aggadah.html'>Midrash Aggadah</a> such as Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, chapter 38.
The takeaway is this. A child the brothers wanted to discard became the mother of two whole tribes. What family throws away, God restores — sometimes by way of an eagle, an amulet, and a quiet marriage in a foreign land.