Any dream will do
Jan. 31st, 2018 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
Today I started in on Exodus. What's remarkable at the beginning of Exodus is the apparent confluence of interests that is taking shape between the Egyptians and the Hebrews: the Egyptians want to get rid of the Hebrews, and the Hebrews want to leave. But before we get into that, some thoughts on Joseph.
I can't help wonder about Joseph: did he have a hand in bringing it about that his dream-interpretations came true? I was struck by Howard's seemingly excessive sourness about Joseph, but reading through the Joseph stories again now, with these seeds planted by Howard in my mind, some dark possibilities suggest themselves.
The fact that the text never has God speaking directly to Joseph is really conspicuous and curious--I just skimmed through every passage that mentions Joseph on Bible Gateway to see if this is really the case, and then discovered that all I actually had to do to confirm that it is is to google "God never speaks directly to Joseph": Joseph is indeed the first of the main figures in Genesis to whom God never speaks directly. If you're inclined to spin things "positively", you can say that Joseph's faith is secure enough that it doesn't need God's speaking directly to him to sustain it. And again you can say that all the strokes of good luck in Joseph's life, and all his predictions' coming true, show that God is with him. But why is it that God never speaks to him? It's not clear (to me) at what age Joseph is taken to Egypt, but it is at least before he is fully an adult. (In the Dreamworks movie, which I watched today, he sprouts facial hair for the first time on his way to Egypt.) He and his brothers, who are all older than him, still live in his father's household (although his brothers apparently still all live in his father's household many years later when they go to Egypt to get food). If you go by Howard's two-years-for-one rule of thumb, Joseph is only around fifteen when he is presented to Pharaoh to interpret his dreams, although this would make a mockery of Potiphar's having put him in charge of his household and Potiphar's wife repeatedly trying to seduce him and then getting him falsely imprisoned for trying to rape her, let alone Pharaoh's putting him in charge of the whole kingdom--although, as Shakespearian comedy goes, that seems no more "unrealistic" than the Jacob-for-Esau and Leah-for-Rachel tricks!
Just as God doesn't speak to Joseph, neither does Joseph speak to God, nor direct any kind of action toward God. Joseph is the first of the main figures in Genesis after Adam and Eve to neither make any offering to God nor build an altar. But this is not surprising, because Joseph spends his entire adult life in Egypt, living as an Egyptian. Before being presented to Pharaoh he shaves himself--the only time in Genesis (and I wonder if it is the only time in the Hebrew bible) that anyone ever shaves. Genesis concludes with Joseph being embalmed. Joseph also had Jacob embalmed, but Jacob's body was taken to the burial cave purchased by Abraham. Joseph's embalmed body, as far as we know, remains in Egypt.
The reason for Joseph's being brought to Pharaoh is odd: it is that, supposedly, no one among Pharaoh's priests is able to interpret Pharaoh's dreams of the seven skinny cows eating the seven fat cows and the seven thin ears of grain eating the seven fat ears; Pharaoh's butler[1] remembers Joseph's success in interpreting his and the baker's dreams and tells Pharaoh about it. This is odd because people love interpreting dreams. It's implausible that none of Pharaoh's priests would interpret his dreams for him (unless we suppose that, in that time and place, dream-interpretation was magic too powerful to mess with unless you were sure you had it right, and none of Pharaoh's priests were sure they had it right, which, well, maybe!). So it seems as if what Pharaoh probably means is that none of his priests has given him an interpretation he likes. Joseph tells Pharaoh that it is not he but God who will give Pharaoh an answer, as the KJV says, "of peace" (and once again the KJV has a more literal rendering than the NASB's and NRSV's "favorable answer" or the NIV's "answer he desires", because the Hebrew word for the kind of answer Joseph says God will provide is "shalom"). It is noteworthy that Joseph doesn't claim that the answer from God to be channeled through him will be true, only that it will give Pharaoh peace, that he will find it satisfactory. It is also noteworthy that Joseph doesn't stop to let Pharaoh respond after he has given him his interpretation of his dreams--i.e., that seven years of good harvests will be followed by seven years of famine that will make everyone forget the good years--but immediately goes on to tell him what he should do about it: he should "look for a man discerning and wise, and set him over Egypt," and he should appoint officials to gather and store a fifth of the harvest in each of the next seven years. This plan of action turns out to serve the interests of both Joseph, who is the discerning and wise man Pharaoh finds, and Pharaoh, who now has a justification for building a state apparatus that will ultimately put all Egyptians in bondage to him.
It struck me just now that the funny thing about Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams is that the enactment of his plan brings it about that the second part of it doesn't come true: the seven years of good harvests are not forgotten, because the stored grain from those years keeps everyone alive. It struck me a few days ago that the interpretation given, though by Jacob and not by Joseph himself, for the second of Joseph's own dreams doesn't exactly come true either (which may be why the Dreamworks movie leaves it out altogether, and instead starts by making up a different dream of Joseph's that comes true immediately): while Joseph's brothers do bow down to him, there is nothing to say that Jacob does, and Rachel never goes to Egypt at all. (Rachel, at least, unlike Leah, has her death recorded. Leah just disappears from the narrative after she has the kids resulting from the mandrake episode. When Jacob meets Pharaoh, he complains that his life has been hard and shorter than those of his father and grandfather. (Jacob is said to be 130 at the time. By Howard's reckoning that would make him about 65. But on Howard's reckoning what do you do about the fact that Joseph says there will be seven years of good harvests and seven years of famine?) It seems that, as far as Jacob is concerned, his family drama that started when he laid eyes on Rachel has maybe not been worth it.) If Joseph's dream of the eleven stars and the sun and moon bowing down to him comes true, the sun and moon must be something other than Jacob and Rachel. If you want to say the sun is Pharaoh himself, well, you're stretching, and you're pretty much demonstrating the point that anything can be said to be a "dream come true" if you're willing to stretch the meaning of the dream far enough. (Up in Coe Hill everyone's living the dream, doncha know!)
It seems to count in favour of the view that Joseph doesn't bring about the famine that the famine extends into Canaan and so prompts his brothers to come to Egypt for food. It is curious, to me, that when Jacob relocates the whole household to Egypt, they bring their livestock with them. People desperately in need of food are not likely to have livestock. This reminds me of the bit in Zola's Germinal, which I think of often, where the family is going hungry because the miners' strike leaves them with no income to buy food, so the man goes fishing, catches a fish, and sells it to buy bread. You have to wonder, if he can catch fish that easily, why are they going hungry? Why aren't they eating fish? The case with keeping livestock is even worse, because not only are they not eating the animals, they're presumably actually feeding them. Or, if the livestock are finding their own food for grazing, how bad can the famine actually be? One way or another, Jacob's household may be short, such that they need to buy what they ordinarily would expect to provide for themselves, but are not in imminent danger of starvation. And then, in what seems to be the second-last year of the famine, the Egyptians exchange their livestock for food. In what seems to be the last year, they give up their land and their labour, all (except for the priests) becoming literal slaves to the state. And then something that seems like it might count in favour of the view that Joseph does bring the famine about is that the last thing the Egyptians ask for from Joseph is not food but seed. He gives them seed and tells them to sow the land, and that from now on (and the text says that this is the law in Egypt to this day) they must give a fifth of their harvest to Pharaoh. The positive spin on this is that Joseph has invented Keynesianism: in the good times, the state runs a surplus to be spent when times are bad. The sinister spin is that Joseph's scheme of seizing a fifth of everyone's grain has brought it about that the people don't have enough left to sow the fields, at least not to sow them fully, at least not every year--and after seven years of having a fifth of their grain seized, the seed deficit tips the land into famine. As I said, it's maybe not remarkable that no explanation is provided for why there is a famine in Egypt, because no explanation has been provided for famines in Canaan. But it could also be that no explanation is needed for famines in Canaan because the land there is semi-arid to arid, and so famines there can be expected with regularity because it will always be touch-and-go whether there is enough rainfall. In Egypt, water for agriculture comes from the Nile. Maybe sometimes it happens that the Nile is too low and agriculture suffers. Of course it can happen anywhere that there is some pestilence that destroys crops. But one way or another a famine in Egypt calls for an explanation in a way a famine in Canaan does not, and it could be that the text actually does provide such an explanation: following Joseph's plan, the state seizes grain that was needed for seed.
[1] The KJV has the quaint-sounding "butler" while the NASB has "cup-bearer", but once again the KJV is more literal than you might think. Here's what the Online Etymology Dictionary says about "butler":
mid-13c. (as a surname late 12c.), from Anglo-French buteillier, Old French boteillier, "cup-bearer, butler, officer in charge of wine," from boteille "wine vessel, bottle" (see bottle (n.)). The word reflects the position's original function as "chief servant in charge of wine." It gradually evolved to "head, servant of a household." In Old French, the fem. boteilliere was used of the Virgin Mary as the dispenser of the cup of Mercy.
Currently at Havelock: -20.4. High today: -6.6. Between the cold and incoming clouds and the fact that it won't be total in these parts anyway, not to mention the fact that I've stayed up too late writing bible stories again, it's not looking good for lunar eclipse viewing in the morning, but I guess we'll see what we see.
I can't help wonder about Joseph: did he have a hand in bringing it about that his dream-interpretations came true? I was struck by Howard's seemingly excessive sourness about Joseph, but reading through the Joseph stories again now, with these seeds planted by Howard in my mind, some dark possibilities suggest themselves.
The fact that the text never has God speaking directly to Joseph is really conspicuous and curious--I just skimmed through every passage that mentions Joseph on Bible Gateway to see if this is really the case, and then discovered that all I actually had to do to confirm that it is is to google "God never speaks directly to Joseph": Joseph is indeed the first of the main figures in Genesis to whom God never speaks directly. If you're inclined to spin things "positively", you can say that Joseph's faith is secure enough that it doesn't need God's speaking directly to him to sustain it. And again you can say that all the strokes of good luck in Joseph's life, and all his predictions' coming true, show that God is with him. But why is it that God never speaks to him? It's not clear (to me) at what age Joseph is taken to Egypt, but it is at least before he is fully an adult. (In the Dreamworks movie, which I watched today, he sprouts facial hair for the first time on his way to Egypt.) He and his brothers, who are all older than him, still live in his father's household (although his brothers apparently still all live in his father's household many years later when they go to Egypt to get food). If you go by Howard's two-years-for-one rule of thumb, Joseph is only around fifteen when he is presented to Pharaoh to interpret his dreams, although this would make a mockery of Potiphar's having put him in charge of his household and Potiphar's wife repeatedly trying to seduce him and then getting him falsely imprisoned for trying to rape her, let alone Pharaoh's putting him in charge of the whole kingdom--although, as Shakespearian comedy goes, that seems no more "unrealistic" than the Jacob-for-Esau and Leah-for-Rachel tricks!
Just as God doesn't speak to Joseph, neither does Joseph speak to God, nor direct any kind of action toward God. Joseph is the first of the main figures in Genesis after Adam and Eve to neither make any offering to God nor build an altar. But this is not surprising, because Joseph spends his entire adult life in Egypt, living as an Egyptian. Before being presented to Pharaoh he shaves himself--the only time in Genesis (and I wonder if it is the only time in the Hebrew bible) that anyone ever shaves. Genesis concludes with Joseph being embalmed. Joseph also had Jacob embalmed, but Jacob's body was taken to the burial cave purchased by Abraham. Joseph's embalmed body, as far as we know, remains in Egypt.
The reason for Joseph's being brought to Pharaoh is odd: it is that, supposedly, no one among Pharaoh's priests is able to interpret Pharaoh's dreams of the seven skinny cows eating the seven fat cows and the seven thin ears of grain eating the seven fat ears; Pharaoh's butler[1] remembers Joseph's success in interpreting his and the baker's dreams and tells Pharaoh about it. This is odd because people love interpreting dreams. It's implausible that none of Pharaoh's priests would interpret his dreams for him (unless we suppose that, in that time and place, dream-interpretation was magic too powerful to mess with unless you were sure you had it right, and none of Pharaoh's priests were sure they had it right, which, well, maybe!). So it seems as if what Pharaoh probably means is that none of his priests has given him an interpretation he likes. Joseph tells Pharaoh that it is not he but God who will give Pharaoh an answer, as the KJV says, "of peace" (and once again the KJV has a more literal rendering than the NASB's and NRSV's "favorable answer" or the NIV's "answer he desires", because the Hebrew word for the kind of answer Joseph says God will provide is "shalom"). It is noteworthy that Joseph doesn't claim that the answer from God to be channeled through him will be true, only that it will give Pharaoh peace, that he will find it satisfactory. It is also noteworthy that Joseph doesn't stop to let Pharaoh respond after he has given him his interpretation of his dreams--i.e., that seven years of good harvests will be followed by seven years of famine that will make everyone forget the good years--but immediately goes on to tell him what he should do about it: he should "look for a man discerning and wise, and set him over Egypt," and he should appoint officials to gather and store a fifth of the harvest in each of the next seven years. This plan of action turns out to serve the interests of both Joseph, who is the discerning and wise man Pharaoh finds, and Pharaoh, who now has a justification for building a state apparatus that will ultimately put all Egyptians in bondage to him.
It struck me just now that the funny thing about Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams is that the enactment of his plan brings it about that the second part of it doesn't come true: the seven years of good harvests are not forgotten, because the stored grain from those years keeps everyone alive. It struck me a few days ago that the interpretation given, though by Jacob and not by Joseph himself, for the second of Joseph's own dreams doesn't exactly come true either (which may be why the Dreamworks movie leaves it out altogether, and instead starts by making up a different dream of Joseph's that comes true immediately): while Joseph's brothers do bow down to him, there is nothing to say that Jacob does, and Rachel never goes to Egypt at all. (Rachel, at least, unlike Leah, has her death recorded. Leah just disappears from the narrative after she has the kids resulting from the mandrake episode. When Jacob meets Pharaoh, he complains that his life has been hard and shorter than those of his father and grandfather. (Jacob is said to be 130 at the time. By Howard's reckoning that would make him about 65. But on Howard's reckoning what do you do about the fact that Joseph says there will be seven years of good harvests and seven years of famine?) It seems that, as far as Jacob is concerned, his family drama that started when he laid eyes on Rachel has maybe not been worth it.) If Joseph's dream of the eleven stars and the sun and moon bowing down to him comes true, the sun and moon must be something other than Jacob and Rachel. If you want to say the sun is Pharaoh himself, well, you're stretching, and you're pretty much demonstrating the point that anything can be said to be a "dream come true" if you're willing to stretch the meaning of the dream far enough. (Up in Coe Hill everyone's living the dream, doncha know!)
It seems to count in favour of the view that Joseph doesn't bring about the famine that the famine extends into Canaan and so prompts his brothers to come to Egypt for food. It is curious, to me, that when Jacob relocates the whole household to Egypt, they bring their livestock with them. People desperately in need of food are not likely to have livestock. This reminds me of the bit in Zola's Germinal, which I think of often, where the family is going hungry because the miners' strike leaves them with no income to buy food, so the man goes fishing, catches a fish, and sells it to buy bread. You have to wonder, if he can catch fish that easily, why are they going hungry? Why aren't they eating fish? The case with keeping livestock is even worse, because not only are they not eating the animals, they're presumably actually feeding them. Or, if the livestock are finding their own food for grazing, how bad can the famine actually be? One way or another, Jacob's household may be short, such that they need to buy what they ordinarily would expect to provide for themselves, but are not in imminent danger of starvation. And then, in what seems to be the second-last year of the famine, the Egyptians exchange their livestock for food. In what seems to be the last year, they give up their land and their labour, all (except for the priests) becoming literal slaves to the state. And then something that seems like it might count in favour of the view that Joseph does bring the famine about is that the last thing the Egyptians ask for from Joseph is not food but seed. He gives them seed and tells them to sow the land, and that from now on (and the text says that this is the law in Egypt to this day) they must give a fifth of their harvest to Pharaoh. The positive spin on this is that Joseph has invented Keynesianism: in the good times, the state runs a surplus to be spent when times are bad. The sinister spin is that Joseph's scheme of seizing a fifth of everyone's grain has brought it about that the people don't have enough left to sow the fields, at least not to sow them fully, at least not every year--and after seven years of having a fifth of their grain seized, the seed deficit tips the land into famine. As I said, it's maybe not remarkable that no explanation is provided for why there is a famine in Egypt, because no explanation has been provided for famines in Canaan. But it could also be that no explanation is needed for famines in Canaan because the land there is semi-arid to arid, and so famines there can be expected with regularity because it will always be touch-and-go whether there is enough rainfall. In Egypt, water for agriculture comes from the Nile. Maybe sometimes it happens that the Nile is too low and agriculture suffers. Of course it can happen anywhere that there is some pestilence that destroys crops. But one way or another a famine in Egypt calls for an explanation in a way a famine in Canaan does not, and it could be that the text actually does provide such an explanation: following Joseph's plan, the state seizes grain that was needed for seed.
[1] The KJV has the quaint-sounding "butler" while the NASB has "cup-bearer", but once again the KJV is more literal than you might think. Here's what the Online Etymology Dictionary says about "butler":
mid-13c. (as a surname late 12c.), from Anglo-French buteillier, Old French boteillier, "cup-bearer, butler, officer in charge of wine," from boteille "wine vessel, bottle" (see bottle (n.)). The word reflects the position's original function as "chief servant in charge of wine." It gradually evolved to "head, servant of a household." In Old French, the fem. boteilliere was used of the Virgin Mary as the dispenser of the cup of Mercy.
Currently at Havelock: -20.4. High today: -6.6. Between the cold and incoming clouds and the fact that it won't be total in these parts anyway, not to mention the fact that I've stayed up too late writing bible stories again, it's not looking good for lunar eclipse viewing in the morning, but I guess we'll see what we see.
