An Atheist Explores the Bible Part Eight: Being the first act of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, and other references, plus spilling of seed (not mine) (Genesis 36-40)

Genesis 36-40

Being the first act of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, and other references, plus spilling of seed (not mine).

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology. 

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Genesis 36

“Now these are the generations of Esau, who is Edom.”

Some more of Reverend Lovejoy’s favourite parts of the bible in this chapter, as the lineage of Esau is laid out in remorseless detail. Now, I’m not averse to these sections as you can gloss over them if the names become overwhelming, but compared to, for example, Genesis 5, this one lacks much rhythm and scansion, and comes across as more clunky. I mean, Verse 42 is just “Duke Aholibamah, duke Elah, duke Pinon”. That’s it. It’s not even a complete sentence, it’s part of a list that starts in V40 and ends in V43. And then there’s the repetition from V1 “Now these are the generations of Esau, who is Edom” and V8 “Thus dwelt Esau in mount Seir: Esau is Edom” with no explanation as to why Esau is Edom. Now, I can understand the virtue of not editing a text held as sacred, and I’ve argued before that, dull as they are, these genealogical chapters are still part of a cultural heritage and have a place in the world, but surely this repetition has no virtue? It doesn’t even work for rhetorical effect, whereas a lot of the repeats in the KJB are obviously there for poetic flow;  there’s a lot of “Thy name shall be Dave; and Dave shalt be thy name” kind of forms which are fine, it’s a stylistic thing and also hints at an oral form of the work. This, not so much.

A strange inclusion, the rank of “Duke”. I wonder how much is a KJB translation issue and how much it refers to an actual rank of the time. Certainly no-one before has been given a title like this, or indeed and title beyond being referred to as a “father” of their people (figuratively and literally).

As discussed above, this chapter really makes me think about the translation work. Was this chapter always awkward and amateur compared to other chapters? Translations rarely work word for word (just try it with Google) and so presumably the King James translators had to try to impart the gist of the Latin version without ending up with tortuous grammar, but also being a sacred book there must be a reluctance to alter it too much. And of course the Latin version that they must have started from was itself a translation from, what, Aramaic or something like that? Plus Greek as well somewhere in the mix. So how much of the verbal flair, or lack thereof, comes from the translations and how much is there in ancient fragments. Even if you believe that the work is divinely inspired it seems that God had to work with material of variable ability.

Genesis 37

“Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.”

Curse you Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber! Okay, guess what the ear-worm for this chapter is. Right. All together everyone “…and it was red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and…”.

But that’s where we are now – the story of Joseph, youngest (I think) of Jacob/Israel’s twelve sons. Parents; harken to Joseph and Dolly Parton both – giving your child a coat of many colours will lead to them being bullied. But this is what happens here. Joseph doesn’t help his cause by talking about his dreams wherein his brothers all bow down to him, and so his jealous brothers lure him out into the desert and throw him in a pit, then sell him to some passing “Ishmeelites” (variant spelling of Ishmaelite?), take his coat and cover it with goat blood and pretend to Jacob that Joseph has been eaten by wild beasts. And here I’m reminded of the tale of Piramus and Thisbe as performed by the Divers Mechanicals in Midsummer Nights Dream. Also this is the first instance of a biblical character rending their garments in grief which takes me to yet another association, this time Peanuts wherein Linus ends up being so driven to distraction by his sister Lucy that he tears his T-shirt and then claims “She hath caused me to rend mine garment”. Well, Linus always was one for quoting scripture.

And so the chapter ends with Jacob believing his son to be dead, when in reality he’s been sold as a slave in Egypt to Potiphar, head of the Pharaoh’s guard.

Genesis 38

“And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.”

I thought we’d continue following Joseph, but actually we turn to one of his brothers, Judah, and a somewhat sordid little tale, full of smiting and sex.

Judah has three sons; the wonderfully named Er, and Onan and Shelah. Er gets killed by God for being wicked, so Judah tells Onan to make Er’s wife pregnant. Onan doesn’t, because he doesn’t want his children to be taken as his brother’s, and so he gets killed by God as well. Now, Onanism is usually assumed to be masturbation, and evidence that God objects to “spilling seed” recklessly, but it’s clear from this chapter that what Onan does is coitus interruptus, and I’d argue that the anger of God is not due to the wasted “seed”, but that Onan disobeyed his father – God evidently wants some kind of line of children from Tamar wife of Er. Maybe, anyway.

Shelah is too young to do this yet, but Judah promises Tamar that she can marry him when he is, but then forgets about this, or deliberately reneges, because when Shelah comes of age Tamar doesn’t get to marry him. And so she disguises herself as a prostitute and seduces Judah (not that he seems to take much persuading), and gets pregnant by her father in law. His first instinct when he finds out is to burn her (!) but relents because he realises that the fault was his for not marrying her to Shelah. That’s very big of you, Judah, great.

The chapter ends with Tamar giving birth to twins – Pharez and Zarah – with an odd little detail of Zarah reaching forth his hand from the womb, whereby the midwife ties a red ribbon around it. But then Pharez is born first. That’s… certainly an unusual birth.

Genesis 39

“And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, Lie with me.”

Back to Joseph, for his interlude in the service of Potiphar, where he is so successful that Potiphar basically leaves in him charge of his household affairs. But randy Mrs. Potiphar keeps chasing the hapless Joseph around the house and trying to seduce him, like an Egyptian Mrs Robinson, but eventually when he refuses her yet again and ends up in a state of undress she accuses him of coming on to her. Potiphar throws Joseph in prison, where he sings “Close Every Door”. No, no he doesn’t here, but he does end up a favourite of the prison warder. Maybe he does his tax returns for him like the Shawshank Redemption. And that’s about it for this chapter – it is very much the farce that Rice and Lloyd Weber make it. There’s some vague attempt to add a religious element by saying that Joseph is successful because God favours him, but that doesn’t really work for me – he’s successful because he works hard.

Genesis 40

“And they dreamed a dream both of them, each man his dream in one night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream, the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, which were bound in the prison.”

Joseph’s in prison, and he’s joined by a butler and a baker in the service of Pharaoh. Before I go any further: butler? This, surely, is a KJB translation of some kind of household steward position that actually did exist in ancient Egypt, but wasn’t called a “butler”. I’m visualising a figure in Egyptian clothing, eye make-up, thin beard, but with coat-tails and white gloves as well.

Anyway, these two have dreams and Joseph interprets them. The butler’s vision means that in three days time he will be pardoned and return to Pharaoh’s service. The baker says “Ooh, do me next” and then probably wishes he hadn’t because Joseph says “Yeah, in three days time you’ll be hung from a tree and birds will eat your rotting flesh.”

And these duly come to pass, but when he’s back working for the Pharaoh again the butler forgets his promise to Joseph to mention him to Pharaoh. Which basically seems to highlight the underlying unfairness of the universe rather than Joseph being favoured by a God that watches over him, and I’m sure that’s supposed to be the message.