Joseph is one of the main characters of Genesis - not Joseph, the father of Jesus,
but rather the one with the rainbow jacket. But there's a lot more to Joseph than his
Technicolor Dreamcoat. Here is the untold truth of Joseph in the Old Testament.
As far as the canonical Bible goes, Joseph's appearances are pretty much limited to the
last third of the book of Genesis. However, as the Jewish Encyclopedia points out, there is no
patriarch who stars in as many traditional legends as Joseph, going all the way back to his birth.
Rabbinical literature notes that Joseph was in many ways the spitting image of his father Jacob,
not only in physical appearance but in virtue. As a bodily symbol of Joseph's
complete righteousness, legend says that he was born circumcised,
so that no doubt saved a lot of discomfort.
Commentaries on Genesis also say that the only reason the Red Sea parted for Moses later was
the presence of the bones of Joseph. Furthermore, when Joseph and his mother met Jacob's brother
Esau in Genesis 33, tradition says that Joseph kept his uncle from looking lasciviously at his
mother by blocking her from view, and as a reward Joseph and all his descendants were
made immune to the curse of the evil eye, which is no small thing in Jewish culture.
If you only know one thing about Joseph, it's probably that he was at one point in
possession of what you might call a coat of many colors if you're a Dolly Parton fan,
or a technicolor dreamcoat if you're an Andrew Lloyd Weber fan. This coat was a gift from his
father as a sign of Jacob's favoritism toward Joseph, which was either due to his being the
first son of Jacob's favorite wife Rachel, or because he looked exactly like him, depending
on the account. This coat and the favoritism it represented was a major source of discord
for Joseph's older brothers and basically the inciting incident for Joseph's whole life story.
Only, as it turns out, the coat may not have been many-colored after all.
As Old Testament professor Claude Mariottini [mar-ee-oh-TEE-nee] explains, the tradition of
calling it a coat of many colors stems from a mistranslation of the Greek version of Genesis.
In fact, the Hebrew words to describe Joseph's coat have no known translation, and the words
are only used one other time in the Bible - describing a special garment worn by a princess.
Instead of being technicolor, some scholars think Joseph's robe just had really long
sleeves that may have reached all the way to the ground - or maybe it was just a super
nice robe and had no particularly special characteristics at all beyond looking swank.
Joseph's 11 older brothers had a number of reasons for being angry at him: their dad loved him best,
he had a cool jacket that none of them had, and Joseph ratted them out when they broke the rules.
But the final straw had to be the dreams. According to Genesis 37, Joseph had two
prophetic dreams that his brothers didn't like the sound of. In the first, all 12 brothers were out
gathering grain when all the brothers' grain bundles suddenly started bowing to Joseph's.
In the second dream, the sun, the moon, and 11 stars were all bowing to Joseph.
Rightly interpreting that these celestial objects meant them and their mother and father,
Joseph's brothers decided they weren't interested in bowing to their baby brother.
Joseph's facility with prophetic dreams – both having and interpreting them – doesn't end there.
In fact, in Genesis 37, he is referred to – derisively
but accurately – by his brothers as, quote, "the lord of dreams."
And it's a good thing too, because his prophetic dream
powers eventually saved him and all his people.
Key to the story of Joseph is the moment when he was sold into slavery by his own brothers.
The account in Genesis 37 tells us that it happened like this:
Jacob sent Joseph to find his absent brothers, who, it turned out, were waiting to kill him.
Joseph's eldest brother, Reuben, persuaded them instead to just strip him of his coat
and throw him into a pit. Reuben planned to rescue Joseph later, but before he could,
the brothers sold Joseph into slavery to some random people passing by.
Then they gave the coat to their Dad as proof that Joseph had been killed in an animal attack.
That's the basic version of the story. But it's been embellished and expanded over the centuries.
According to The Legends of the Jews, it was actually the Archangel Gabriel
who helped Joseph find his brothers, who originally planned to murder Joseph with
dogs until Reuben talked them out of it. For his part, Reuben was rewarded by being
blessed with descendants who would be the first to offer help in times of trouble.
In this version of the story, the pit Joseph was thrown in was also full of snakes and scorpions,
but the hand of the Lord protected him. Gabriel then made Joseph a magical garment to replace
his many colored cloak, because God thought it would be tacky for him to be a naked slave.
After being sold somewhere between one and five times, depending on which rabbi you ask,
Joseph found himself a slave in the household of Potiphar,
the captain of the Pharaoh's guard in Egypt.
According to the story in Genesis 39,
Potiphar's wife had a thing for Joseph and tried to seduce him. When he rejected her,
she accused him of assaulting her, leading to Joseph being thrown in jail.
Of course, depending on who you believe, that's not all there is to the story.
The Legends of the Jews has a whole bunch of tales about just how Potipher's wife
tried to seduce Joseph, from threat to promises of power to enchanted snacks.
And there's also a whole theory that Potiphar himself might have tried to seduce Joseph as well.
This spins out of the fact that Genesis 41 tells us Joseph eventually married the daughter of a
priest named Potiphera. Since that sounds sort of like a feminie version of the name Potiphar,
some rabbis came up with the idea that the Archangel Gabriel removed Potipher's genitals,
and that he then changed his name and became a priest.
Because that's clearly more likely than, you know, a typo or something.
Of course, the general story of a woman attempting to seduce a young man and
then accusing him of assault when rejected appears as a common motif in ancient myth.
But Joseph's story is the only one that hinges on a magic talking baby instead.
Yes, the conclusion of the episode of Joseph in Potiphar's house as described in Genesis
chapter 40 shows Joseph running away from Potiphar's wife's advances, but she manages
to snatch his robe off of him, which she uses as evidence of Joseph assaulting her.
The result is Joseph being put in jail until he can dream-interpret his way out of there.
Fortunately, Legends of the Jews gives us more details. In the extended version of the story,
Potiphar has Joseph whipped for his alleged crime,
but when Joseph prays to be delivered from this unfair punishment at the hand of Gentiles,
God causes Potiphar's newborn baby to start miraculously speaking.
"pretty stupid!"
The baby tells in full detail all of the wife's failed attempts to seduce Joseph
and that they should look at Joseph's lost robe more closely. Upon further inspection,
Potiphar finds that Joseph's robe was ripped at the back, indicating that he
was trying to run away. Although at this point Potiphar fully believes in Joseph's innocence,
he must still put Joseph in prison to save his family from gaining a bad reputation.
"I could not do such a thing."
"No, no you couldn't. It goes against everything I have ever seen in you."
Joseph's reward for chastity and faithfulness to God is that he gets an extra letter H added
to his name. Now called Jehoseph, he is one letter closer to the sacred name of God, YHWH.
To make a long story short, Joseph gets out of prison by correctly interpreting the dreams of
other prisoners and finds favor with the Pharaoh by correctly predicting a cycle of
famine and plenty. Pharaoh makes him vizier, a position of high influence within Egypt.
Then his brothers, affected by the famine, come to Egypt to buy grain,
which the country has shrewdly stockpiled under Joseph's advice. His brothers don't recognize
Joseph because they haven't seen him in like 20 years and now he's dressed all Egyptian-like.
In the canonical account, Joseph tests his brothers to see if they've grown any in
the intervening years, which they have, and the brothers are joyfully reunited.
The Jewish Encyclopedia shows,
however, that one again that rabbinical literature has a lot more to say about it.
In this expanded account, Joseph anticipates his brothers coming for grain, and so has all
petitioners submit the name of their father on entry to the city. That means he knows when the
guys first arrive in town, but when they don't show up at the palace, Joseph sends men to look
for them. The group is discovered at a brothel - allegedly because they were looking for Joseph,
but come on. So Joseph messes with his brothers by claiming he used psychic powers to deduce they
are spies, and the ensuing fight between Joseph's angry brothers and his guards threatens to destroy
all of Egypt! Fortunately, Joseph stopped the prank before it brought down the country.
After Joseph gets his fill of almost destroying a mighty empire in order to mess with his older
brothers, he reveals himself to them, and he is reunited with his family.
Joseph then convinces the Pharaoh to grant some land to his kin, and that's how the Israelites
end up in Egypt, from which Moses will have to free them generations later. The book of
Genesis ends with Joseph dying at age 110 and being buried in Egypt. Many years later, Moses
takes Joseph's bones out of Egypt with him during the exodus and reburies him on his father's land.
The Jewish Encyclopedia, however, tells us more specifically where Joseph's body was buried in
Egypt. Apparently, Joseph was so beloved that the different districts wanted the honor of his being
buried there; in the end, the compromise was to sink his coffin to the bottom of the Nile.
During the exodus, one of Joseph's nieces shows Moses where the body had been sunk.
Moses summons the coffin by throwing a pebble into the water and telling
Joseph that all the Jews are getting out of Egypt and everyone is waiting
on him. The coffin floats to the surface, and Moses himself carries Joseph's bones
next to the Ark of the Covenant as the Israelites proceed to the Promised Land.
Death isn't the end of Joseph's story, though.
One of the core tenets of Jewish belief is the expectation of the arrival of a
Messiah - meaning "anointed one" - who will usher in a new age of universal peace and brotherhood.
Generally, this term is understood to apply to a descendant of the line of King David,
from the tribe of Judah, who will be the ultimate redeemer and liberi ator of mankind.
Christians believe this figure - the Messiah ben David - has already arrived in the form of Jesus,
also called the Christ, which is the Greek translation of Messiah.
Perhaps less well known outside of the Jewish community is that since the time of the Second
Temple, Jewish tradition has taught of a second messiah, descended not from David,
but from Joseph. This figure is known as the Messiah ben Yosef, and he's fairly controversial.
Some scholars believe he was basically made up by the rabbis over the centuries,
while others insist that his story originates in the Torah. Either way, the general understanding
of his role is that he will prepare the way for the coming of Messiah ben David by waging
war against the enemies of Israel. After he falls in battle, a period of great calamity
will befall the Jewish people before Messiah ben David arrives to usher in eternal peace.
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