An Atheist Explores the Bible Part Nine: Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat: Act II (Genesis 41-45)

Genesis 41-46 
Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat: Act II

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 41
“And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it.”

The story of Joseph continues with the Pharaohs dream, of seven  fat kine and seven lean kine. And thank you KJV for the word “kine” as a plural of cow – used nowhere else today I’m sure. The sleazy butler suddenly remembers Joseph and tells Pharaoh. Now, he refers to Joseph as “an Hebrew” and I thought this was the first instance of the word. Not quite, but it only appears twice before, once a few chapters back in the Mrs. Potiphar chapter. Prior to this the idea of Hebrew as a tribe or ethnic group has not been given, despite all the genealogies. And although the characters identify themselves as following Abraham’s covenant, the lines between them and the various Edomities and Canaanites and Hittites and Hivites and so on is not clearly drawn.

But back to Joseph, who is yoinked out of prison, given a shave and a haircut and asked to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, which he does as meaning seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, which the Egyptian magicians couldn’t tell. Which is pretty rubbish for an oneiromancer, although I guess Joseph has to be the one to get it right because he has God On His Side.

He suggests to Pharaoh that he ought to store up the grain from the seven good years to tide them over the seven bad years, and that somebody ought to oversee this, nudge nudge. Pharaoh picks up this massive hint that Joseph drops and appoints him his factotum, second in power only to the Pharaoh. Joseph gets a new Egyptian name, the snappy Zaphnathpaneah , and an Egyptian wife Asenath, daughter of Potipherah (who I wonder if is meant to be the same as Potiphar, in which case that means that his mother-in-law tried to seduce him. Probably with a Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack).

Joseph is a success, his plan is a success, so much so that it feeds Egypt and other nations as well.

This is probably indicative of reality. The Egyptians were well acquainted with cyclical seasons, not least due to the regular flooding of the Nile, and were also important providers of grain for the Mediterranean nations, so there would have been times when they would be the go-to people for grain supplies.

Genesis 42

“And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them; and he said unto them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food”

Karmic payback comes to bite Joseph’s brothers when they are sent by Jacob to buy corn from the Egyptians. Joseph recognises them but they don’t recognise him, so he torments them a bit, accusing them of spying and locking them in prison. After three days he releases them but keeps Simeon hostage until they return with the youngest brother Benjamin; only trouble is, Jacob doesn’t want him to leave in case all his sons get killed. But Joseph’s bigger than that – not only does he give them the grain they need, he secretly returns their money to them, whereby the brothers are gullible fools for when they  discover their money in the grain sacks they think God has tricked them. So much so that they do it again when they show Jacob. Idiots.

Genesis 43

“And the men took that present, and they took double money in their hand, and Benjamin; and rose up, and went down to Egypt, and stood before Joseph.”

This is a bit of back and forth with the last chapter. Jacob and his sons use up all the grain they bought last time and so the sons have to go back, and in the end they persuade Jacob to let Benjamin go with them. Jacob shows a bit more nous than his sons as he assumes that the returned money was a simple oversight and they should take double payment just in case. So at least he’s a sensible businessman and not a superstitious buffoon.

The brothers return to Egypt where Joseph invites them to lunch, and where we learn that it is an abomination to an Egyptian to dine with a Hebrew, and that Joseph’s bowels yearned for his brother Benjamin so he has to go and cry in secret. And, that’s about it.

Genesis 44

“And put my cup, the silver cup, in the sack's mouth of the youngest, and his corn money. And he did according to the word that Joseph had spoken.”

Joseph pranks his brothers again, showing that he is indeed Jacob’s son. This time he hides a silver cup in Benjamin’s saddle bag, then has a servant ride after them to say “Why have you stolen from my master?” Naturally they protest, then the cup is found, garments are rent, Joseph demands that Benjamin stay as hostage and the brothers argue that to lose his youngest son would kill their father. There’s a point here that I missed before, in that Joseph and Benjamin are the only two sons by their mother Rachel (I’d forgotten about Jacob and his randy goings on), hence why Benjamin’s loss, on top of Joseph’s, would be particularly tragic to Jacob.

The summaries of the past few chapters have come out quite short because there’s a lot of repetition, where characters do something, then tell the whole story over again to someone else. A pretty typical folk tale trope, but not one that makes for interesting summaries.

Genesis 45

“And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence”

Surprise! Actually a fairly touching reunion plays out, and it turns out in our chronology that there are still five years of famine left, so Joseph tells his brothers to bring the whole family to Egypt to ride it out, and Pharaoh gives his blessing to this. Joseph isn’t angry at them for trying to get rid of him as it ultimately put him a position with the power and wealth to help them now.

Of the various narratives so far the Joseph story is probably the most sophisticated, with reversals of fortune and foreshadowing. Other narratives from Noah to Jacob have tried to shoe-horn in the idea that God Has A Plan, but they don’t really work to support that, whereas the Joseph story is better at that kind of narrative arc. All the dark and miserable stages of Josep h’s journey ultimately serve to put him where he is, rich and powerful and the saviour of his family. No wonder Rice and Lloyd Weber decided it would make a good musical.