Dreams

God grants the young Solomon divine wisdom in a dream at Gibeon. This account, which reads like an ancient Near Eastern royal novella, was an apologia for Solomon’s accession and his style of kingship.

“I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours” ― Bob Dylan

Before speaking with Pharaoh, Joseph adapts to Egyptian norms by shaving and changing his clothes. When he interprets Pharaoh’s dream, he only uses the generic word for God, Elohim, making no mention of YHWH. Pharaoh, in turn, declares Joseph to be wise and a man with the spirit of God, and puts aside Joseph’s ethnic and socio-economic background, appointing him viceroy to save Egypt from the pending famine.

Jacob berates Joseph when he hears his second dream: “Are we to come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow to you?” (Genesis 37:10) Rachel, his mother, was dead. What then did the dream mean?

Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a statue made of four metals in Daniel 2 was composed using Persian and Greek historiographic imagery. The crushing of the statue by a stone mountain alludes to the story of the golden calf, and is a message of hope to the Judeans that God will eventually crush their Greek oppressors.

The story of Joseph in Pharaoh’s court (Genesis 41), like the story of Daniel in Nebuchadnezzar’s court (Daniel 2), is a Thompson Type 922 folktale in which an underdog gains his fortune by answering hard questions that elude his superiors. Paradoxically, viewing the story of Joseph through the lens of folklore studies allows us to appreciate the uniqueness of Israelite cultural religious orientation.

The first section of Daniel (chs. 2-6) is a collection of quasi-independent court tales. Once they were combined into the book of Daniel in its current form, the story of Daniel interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, which parallels Pharaoh’s dream in the Joseph story, was revised. It was further supplemented with Daniel’s prayer which creates a contrast between the power of God and that of Antiochus IV.

The Joseph story invites the reader to be transported to Egypt itself through the inclusion of Egyptian words, proper names, and customs; to analyze the unsurpassed use of repetition with variation; and to enter the mind of the character (in this case, especially Pharaoh) through the use of interior monologue.

The Torah is silent about the nature of Joseph’s dreams: What do they mean?  Do they come from God? This ambiguity is part of the literary artistry of the story, which relates Joseph’s “coming of age” as a prophet.

The vow Jacob makes to God is ambiguous. Where does the condition of the vow end and his action begin?

On his way to Haran, Jacob stops at a place, later named Beth-El, and sees in a dream angels going up and down a staircase to the gateway of heaven. In the story, Jacob also notices YHWH standing beside him and YHWH speaks to him. Examined closely, this short story is beset with literary difficulties that suggest it is composed of two independent narratives.

Understanding the practice of dream interpretation in the Joseph story by using the ANE interpretive traditions as background.

The four beasts of Daniel 7 represent four kingdoms. The terrifying fourth beast with ten horns and iron teeth is the Greek kingdom of Syria. This beast grows a talking horn, which represents Antiochus IV, whose persecutions (167–164 B.C.E.), the biblical author believes, can only be stopped by divine intercession.