Joseph

JOSEPH, or, in Hebrew, Yosef, was the firstborn son of Jacob's favorite wife, Rachel. The account of Joseph's life, which the Qurʾān (12:3) calls "the most beautiful of stories," is described in a uniquely detailed and sustained biblical narrative.

As Rachel's son, Joseph was treasured by his father. Resentful of Joseph's resulting conceit, his brothers sold him to a group of passing traders, who took him to Egypt, where he was purchased by one of pharaoh's officers. When Joseph, who is described as "attractive and good-looking" (Gn. 39:65), rejected the advances of the officer's wife, she accused him of attempted rape and had him imprisoned. In jail he demonstrated his ability to interpret dreams. He was therefore brought to pharaoh, whose dreams could not be otherwise understood. Joseph recognized them as warning that a period of abundance would be followed by famine. Elevated to high office to prepare Egypt for the coming threat, Joseph was given both an Egyptian name (Zaphenath-paneah) and wife (Aseneth).

As a result of Joseph's efforts, Egypt was ready for the difficult times that followed and even served as a resource for surrounding peoples. Joseph's brothers came from Canaan to purchase grain; he recognized and tested them before revealing himself and bringing the entire family to settle in the eastern Nile Delta. Joseph died at the age of 110; the Israelites took his bones to Canaan when they left Egypt during the Exodus.

Joseph's special status is attested by the ascription to him of two biblical tribes, named after his sons Ephraim and Manasseh. Ephraim came to dominate the northern kingdom of Israel, which is therefore also called the House of Joseph. Joseph's childhood dreams were thus fulfilled during the lifetimes of his descendants as much as during his own lifetime.

The story of Joseph is remarkable for its numerous human touches, which lead to the apparent absence of divine intervention so common elsewhere in Genesis. In fact, however, God is present, if not always visible, acting through human behavior (Gn. 45:5, 50:20). The narrative incorporates many elements found in other biblical tales, most strikingly in the stories of Daniel and Esther, which also describe an Israelite's rise in a foreign court. In postbiblical traditions, Joseph's fate is often connected to his personality: some present his experiences as a punishment for earlier wrongdoing; elsewhere they are seen as a trial intended to test his righteousness. Particular attention is devoted to his relationship with the wife of pharaoh's officer, elaborating on her efforts to attract Joseph or raising questions about his own role in the incident.

The historicity of the Joseph story has been defended on the basis of its incorporation of Egyptian vocabulary, customs, and narrative motifs. Historians since the first-century Josephus Flavius (Against Apion 1.103) have linked Joseph with the Hyksos, a West Semitic people who dominated Egypt toward the end of the middle Bronze Age. Their expulsion in the sixteenth century might then account for the Bible's statement that "there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph" (Ex. 1:8). However, none of these factors is sufficient historical proof. The author's knowledge of Egyptian culture hardly proves the story's historicity. The land of Canaan was long under Egyptian control, and there are several cases of apparently Semitic figures holding high positions in the Egyptian bureaucracy. As a result, such knowledge could have been acquired in any of several different periods.

Jacob; Rachel and Leah.

An overview of modern scholarship relating to the entire patriarchal period is in Nahum M. Sarna's Understanding Genesis (New York, 1970). This must, however, be read in conjunction with the historical information in Roland de Vaux's The Early History of Israel, translated by David Smith (Philadelphia, 1978). A detailed examination of the Joseph story, including both its literary characteristics and its Egyptian coloration, is in Donald B. Redford's A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Genesis 37–50) (Leiden, Netherlands, 1970). The ways in which the story has been elaborated and their relationships to other traditions are explored in Shalom Goldman, The Wiles of Women/The Wiles of Men (Albany, N.Y., 1995); James L. Kugel, In Potiphar's House (San Francisco, 1990); and Maren Niehoff, The Figure of Joseph in Post-Biblical Jewish Literature (Leiden, Netherlands, 1992). Louis Ginzberg's The Legends of the Jews, 7 vols., translated by Henrietta Szold (Philadelphia, 1909–1938), contains an exhaustive collection of rabbinic lore relating to biblical stories.

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