TY - CHAP

T1 - A Coat of Many Colors and a Range of Many Dates

T2 - The Origins of the Story of Joseph in Genesis 37–50

AU - Rezetko, Robert Carl

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Trying to nail down the origins of biblical writings is very contentious business, but also important and interesting. Conflicts arise about which criteria to take into consideration and how to evaluate their importance relative to one another. Rather than one-dimensional approaches, which arise naturally from scholarly interest and expertise, but which on their own are limited in scope, and which ultimately diminish the complexity of the object and the task, we propose to analyze and integrate diverse phenomena. We start by developing a template that includes historical, cultural, social, literary, textual, linguistic, and conceptual phenomena. We then examine six facets of the Joseph story in Genesis 37–50 that have been most leveraged for dating: Egyptian cultural phenomena, Egyptian literary comparisons, biblical literary criticism, biblical conceptual phenomena, Hebrew language features, and Egyptian proper names and loanwords. Our conclusion is that the various criteria coalesce to suggest that the Joseph story, rather than being a preexilic, exilic, or postexilic composition only, arguably has an assortment of archaisms and modernisms, and therefore most likely had a long and complex production history that extended across the exile into the diaspora.

AB - Trying to nail down the origins of biblical writings is very contentious business, but also important and interesting. Conflicts arise about which criteria to take into consideration and how to evaluate their importance relative to one another. Rather than one-dimensional approaches, which arise naturally from scholarly interest and expertise, but which on their own are limited in scope, and which ultimately diminish the complexity of the object and the task, we propose to analyze and integrate diverse phenomena. We start by developing a template that includes historical, cultural, social, literary, textual, linguistic, and conceptual phenomena. We then examine six facets of the Joseph story in Genesis 37–50 that have been most leveraged for dating: Egyptian cultural phenomena, Egyptian literary comparisons, biblical literary criticism, biblical conceptual phenomena, Hebrew language features, and Egyptian proper names and loanwords. Our conclusion is that the various criteria coalesce to suggest that the Joseph story, rather than being a preexilic, exilic, or postexilic composition only, arguably has an assortment of archaisms and modernisms, and therefore most likely had a long and complex production history that extended across the exile into the diaspora.

U2 - 10.1163/9789004536296_002

DO - 10.1163/9789004536296_002

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-90-04-53628-9

VL - 207

T3 - Biblical Interpretation Series

SP - 3

EP - 39

BT - Where Is the Way to the Dwelling of Light?

A2 - van Loon, Hanneke

A2 - van Hecke, Pierre

PB - Brill

CY - Leiden

ER -