A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50)

306 Pages·1970·31.968 MB·English

by  Donald B. Redford

A STUDY OF THE
BIBLICAL STORY OF JOSEPH
SUPPLEMENTS
TO
VETUSTESTAMENTUM
EDITED BY
THE BOARD OF THE QUARTERLY
G. W. ANDERSON - P. A. H. DE BOER - G. R. CASTELLINO
HENRY CAZELLES - E. HAMMERSHAIMB - H. G. MAY
W. ZIMMERLI
VOLUME XX
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LEIDEN
J.
E. BRILL
1970
A STUDY OF THE
BIBLICAL STORY OF JOSEPH
(GENESIS 37-50)
BY
DONALD B. REDFORD
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LEIDEN
J.
E. BRILL
1970
Copyright 1970 by E. j. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche
or any other means without written permission from the publisher
PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
TO PHILIP AND CHRISTOPHER

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction . IX
Abbreviations XI
I. THE PRESENT CONTEXT OF THE JOSEPH STORY. 1
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Judah-Tamar Interlude. . . . . . . . 16
The Theophany to Jacob and the Genealogy 18
The Blessings of Jacob. . . . . . . . 22
The Conclusion to the Book of Genesis . . 25
II. THE SYNTAX OF THE JOSEPH STORY 28
The Glosses of the Joseph Story. . 28
Word Order in the Verbal Clause . 32
Word Order in the Nominal Clause 34
Word Order in the Participial Statement 37
The Asyndeton Clause 38
The Bound Clause. . . . . . . . 38
The Verbal Noun. . . . . . . . 42
The Uninflected Verbal Morpheme 44
III. LEXICOGRAPHICAL NOTES. . . . . . . . . . . . .. 46
Idiomatic Usage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 46
Words and Expressions Occurring in Late Hebrew or
Aramaic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 54
IV. THE JOSEPH STORY AS LITERATURE. . . 66
The Joseph Story a Miirchen-Novelle . . 66
The Unifying Role of Joseph's Dreams. 68
Plot Symmetry . . . . . 71
Irony in the Joseph Story. 72
The Pace of the Action. 74
Recapitulation. . . . . . 77
Embellishment . . . . . 85
The Motifs of the Joseph Story 87
VIII TABLE OF CONTENTS
V. SOURCE ANALYSIS: ONOMASTICON . . . . . . . . •. 106
Onomasticon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
1. Divine Names and Epithets . . . . . . . . 107
Excursus: Divine Names in Egyptian Literature. 110
2. Names of the Father in the Joseph Story. . . 131
3. Names of the Good Brother in the Joseph Story 132
4. Identity of Joseph's First Master . . . . . . . 135
VI. SOURCE ANALYSIS: PLOT AND STYLE . . . . . . . . . 138
Details of the Plot. 138
Redundancy 164
Style. . . . . . . 171
VII. SOURCE ANALYSIS: CONCLUSIONS. . . . . . . . . . . 178
The Original Joseph Story . . . . . . . . . . .. 178
The Work of the Genesis Editor . . . . . . . .. 179
The Hero of the Marchen in Folkloristic Adaptations 180
Synopsis of Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . .. 182
VIII. THE EGYPTIAN BACKGROUND OF THE JOSEPH STORY 187
Introduction . . . . . 187
The Egyptian colouring 189
Conclusions. . . . . . 241
IX. THE DATE OF COMPOSITION. 244
Discrepancies in the early Traditions . 245
J and E in the story of Joseph 251
Bibliography 254
Indexes 273
INTRODUCTION
It is in the scholarly products of two generations past that one must
look for the most detailed and imaginative treatment of the Joseph
Story of Genesis. In the works of H. Gunkel and H. Gressmann in
ZDMG and EYXAPI~THPION, both of which appeared in the same
year (1922), the study of the narrative achieved a degree of careful
scholarship which has not been attained since. Such a statement might
seem strange coming from the pen of one who disagrees so funda
mentally with one of the afore-mentioned scholars; but he cannot
disguise his sense of gratitude for the stimulus Gressmann's work has
lent his own efforts. Of course in the forty-five years which have
elapsed since these two giants wrote there have been numerous
valuable additions to the library of studies on the Joseph Story. We
may cite for example the work of Von Rad in his Genesis commentary
and his commendable introduction to this final section of Genesis,
Die Josephsgeschichte, or the slimmer contributions of Jannsen, Ward
and Kitchen in the elucidation of the Egyptian colouring of the
narrative. In this latter field of endeavour Vergote's Joseph en Egypte
will also remain of lasting value, though the writer disagrees in the
main with Vergote's conclusions. The most recent study the writer is
aware of is Ruppert's Die Josephserzahlung der Genesis. Ruppert's work
presupposes acceptance of the source analysis which the present study
rejects (hopefully on empirical grounds), but many of his observations
are very stimulating.
Of late "Joseph Studies" have taken a deplorable tack. They show
a curious tendency either to use the narrative of Gen. 37-50 as an
historical source at its face value, or to return to the discredited and
(one had hoped) defunct practice of interpreting it as tribal history.
Both tendencies remind me of an attempt to write the history of
Sennacherib's reign using only the Ahikar romance as a source. One
must first ask the question, what genre of literature am I dealing with;
and the answer to that question may preclude any use being made of
the text as an historical source. In the present book the absence of
an extended section dealing with the Joseph Story as history finds its
explanation in the results of the literary and source analysis.
The present work arises out of a reading course in the Pentateuch
which the author taught at the U ni versity of Toronto from 1962-1966.