Biblical scholars employ many methods to interpret the text, but one perspective is often overlooked: reading the Bible as the work of writers. Attending to the authors’ literary and aesthetic choices can illuminate meanings that other approaches miss.
The Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century B.C.E., reports that Egyptians would not kiss a Greek on the mouth or use any of their food implements—knife, fork, or pot—because Greeks ate cows, which Egyptians regarded as sacred. This background sheds light on the biblical account of Egyptians refusing to eat with Joseph’s brothers—or even with Joseph himself.
Job, overwhelmed by suffering, imagines the moments from womb to nursing in which he wishes he had died. His lament, however, preserves surprising evidence about how women once gave birth.
Originally, Joseph, the ancestor figure of the northern kingdom, was the hero of an independent story. A suite of editorial additions by southern scribes, however, connects Joseph to the other ancestral stories, subtly positioning Judah as the true heir to Jacob’s legacy.
Potiphar’s wife sets up her friends to learn about Joseph’s beauty for themselves, the hard way, in a story that appears in both rabbinic midrash and the Quran. Sefer HaYashar, a 16th century midrashic work, dramatizes this story in a way sympathetic to her character, even giving her the name Zuleikha, borrowed from Islamic sources.
Falling face-down on the ground, with hands and feet outstretched, was a common gesture of honor and respect in the Bible. Why is prostration only performed today on the High Holidays?
Joseph sustains his family from the official Egyptian storehouses, unlike the Egyptian population, whose produce and livestock were taxed by a fifth, and who were forced into corvée labor to keep from starving. Then a new king arose who did not honor that agreement.
“Now Joseph was well-built and handsome”—Genesis 39:7
After Joseph’s goblet is found in Benjamin’s sack, Judah makes a passionate speech to save Benjamin, in which he claims that if Benjamin leaves his father, “he will die.” Who will die? Why does the Torah phrase this so ambiguously?
A text from Hellenistic Egypt (ca. 100 B.C.E. to 100 C.E.) tells a romantic story of Joseph and Asenath’s courtship. Initially, Asenath rejects Joseph, but then falls in love with him, only to have Joseph reject her because she is the daughter of an Egyptian priest. It’s only after she repents and changes her allegiance to Israel’s God that Joseph marries her.
“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?
During the reign of Pharaoh Siptah, Egypt had a powerful vizier from the Levant named Baya, who dominated even the Pharaoh. Archaeological records and climatological studies show that this was right in the middle of a lengthy famine that affected the entire Mediterranean.
Translating the Torah from Hebrew into a different language is a huge challenge: What is the right balance between composing a text that reads smoothly while capturing the flavor of its original language? When I translated the Torah and the Early Prophets, I navigated this tension in favor of keeping the Hebrew flavor.
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.
Egyptian officials, including Pharaoh, are kind and wise. Joseph shaves his beard, adopts Egyptian clothing, takes an Egyptian name, and marries the daughter of an Egyptian priest—all without any hint of disapproval from the text.
Esau’s kiss to Jacob is written with scribal dots over the word וַׄיִּׄשָּׁׄקֵ֑ׄהׄוּׄ, “and he kissed him.” Traditional commentators suggest this hints to Esau’s feelings or state of mind. Critical scholarship, however, points to something much more prosaic, a question of syntax.
If a corpse is found in a field, and the killer is unknown, the enders of the closest city to break a heifer’s neck by a stream and declare that they did not spill “this blood” (Deuteronomy 21). How does this ritual of eglah arufah, “broken-necked heifer,” atone for Israel’s bloodguilt?
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.
Egyptologists have long searched the details of the Joseph story for clues to when the story was written. Does the Jewish experience as a diaspora community in Egypt hold the clue to the story’s origin?
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.
How was ancient mummification carried out? What does it say about Jacob and Joseph that their remains were handled in accordance with Egyptian burial practices?
Contemporary abuse of a once popular biblical hero.
Understanding the practice of dream interpretation in the Joseph story by using the ANE interpretive traditions as background.
Joseph, sold by two different groups (Midianites and Ishmaelites), seems to have been bought by two different men (Potiphar, captain of the guard, and an unnamed Egyptian man), leading to two discrete storylines, each of which place Joseph in a different position when he meets the cupbearer and the baker.
Clothing functions both as a marker of distinction and as the source of undoing in the Joseph story. A midrash suggests that Joseph’s coat is the same garment made from the sloughed skin of the serpent that God gave to Adam and Eve, which was then worn by Nimrod, Esau, and Jacob. Another midrash claims it to be the (future) High Priest’s tunic.
Why the rabbis ended Parashat Miketz with a cliffhanger (in both the Babylonian and the Eretz-Yisraeli traditions), and what the Ancient Near Eastern legal context of “evidence law” can clarify for us about the background of the story.
The historical symbolism of the twelve tribes and the geographical significance of the tribe of Benjamin.
The story of Joseph as a young man (Genesis 37-40) is full of contradictions and doublets, and is interrupted by the story of Tamar and Judah (Genesis 38). Beyond that, hovering in the background is the question: how can the spoiled youth, his father’s favorite, become the prudent leader and savior of his family?
Does the Torah end with Deuteronomy or Joshua? The answer depends on whether we view the Torah as a law collection or as a narrative about a promise fulfilled.
Joseph reveals himself only when Judah acknowledges the pain the brothers caused to their father.
