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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1842 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 5, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Anyways...the bronze age, amirite?

Funny thing is the Joseph story may actually be relatively young as Genesis stories go, possibly post-Exilic. I don't know if that's better or worse since the later it is the more "Jew" becomes an accurate descriptor of the writers. If it was earlier you could maybe see it as an attempt to ride off the coattails of the Semitic Hyksos (who were also allegedly driven out and destroyed) and claim their blood made it into Israel.

Interesting conjecture:

According to Römer, Joseph in this passage could be loosely based on a governor named Cleomenes who ruled part of Egypt under Alexander the Great:

…Joseph, in this passage, also somewhat resembles Cleomenes of Naucratis, an administrator of Alexander’s, the builder of Alexandria, and the originator of a mint in Egypt. In fact, it was he who, until his dismissal, held power in Egypt. While famine raged in the Mediterranean basin, he first prohibited the export of Egyptian wheat, and then greatly increased taxes on it in 329 BC. In a certain way, he obtained a sort of monopoly of wheat, which he would buy for 10 drachmas and sell for 32 drachmas. He inaugurated the control of the wheat trade by the Ptolemies. Cleomenes also seems to have been in conflict with the priests over the question of the maintenance of the temples.

Many such cases in the Bible. Maybe the biggest sin of the writers is taking credit for shit they didn't do (like the supposed genocide of the Canaanites).

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