Joseph

JOSEPH (Heb. Yôsēph; Ps. 81, 6 Yĕhôsēph = «God Increases»). - Beloved son of the patriarch Jacob (v.) and of Rachel. His life (Gen. 37; 39-48; 50) is eventful. Envied by his brothers, sold as a slave, in Egypt, because of the impure desires of his mistress, J., though innocent, is imprisoned. A skilled and inspired interpreter of dreams, first of the chief cupbearer and then of the King, he becomes viceroy and high commissioner for the provisioning of Egypt. Compelled by the need for food, his brothers go to Egypt, where J. recognizes them without being recognized by them. J. subjects them to various tests and in the end is reconciled with them (God has made everything turn out for the best), sends for his father and assigns to the family, with the Pharaoh's authorization, the land of Goshen as a permanent dwelling. This is the beginning of the sojourn and, subsequently, of the servitude of the Hebrews in Egypt.

J. dies in Egypt and is buried there, but at the time of the exodus the Israelites carry the body to Shechem (Gen. 48:22), the land that was given to him by his father (Josh. 24:32).

The two sons of J., Ephraim and Manasseh, adopted by Jacob, are regarded as heads of two tribes in Israel.

Eugenio Zolli

ARCHAEOLOGY

Since the time of Tertullian the patriarch J. has prefigured Jesus Christ, because he was sold by his brothers, as Jesus Christ was by one of his disciples (Adversus Marcionem, III, 18: PL 2, 374). St. Ambrose would repeat the same in his treatise De Ioseph Patriarcha: «vendidit eum Iudas, emerunt Ismaelitae qui significantur, latina interpretatione, odio habentes Deum suum» (PL 14, 678). Other scenes relating to the patriarch J. were represented at Milan in St. Ambrose (V. Forcella, Le iscrizioni di Milano, Codogno 1897, n. 518), at Nola in the basilica of St. Felix (Paulinus of Nola, Carmen, 62, 28), in Spain, probably at Saragossa, with distichs of Prudentius (Dythochaeum, n. 7, 8). Rusticus Elpidius has preserved the titles relating to the illustrations of a lost pictorial cycle, which reproduced the scenes concerning the patriarch J. (PL 62, 545). This explains how Christian iconography spread the scenes relating to the episodes of the patriarch's life from the dream onward, that is, almost all those that are listed in a singular praefatio found by J. Mabillon in a missal of Bobbio (J. Mabillon, Musaeum Italicum, I, Paris 1689, p. 303). In funerary art the scene of J. drawn from the well and sold to the Ishmaelite merchants is found represented only once, on a sarcophagus of c. A.D. 340, discovered in the confessio of St. Peter's in the Vatican in 1941 (L. De Bruyne, Importante coperchio di sarcofago, in Riv. di arch. crist., 20 [1945], pp. 249-80). This is the episode most often represented and it is also found on two gilded glasses of the Christian Museum of the Vatican Library (R. Garrucci, Storia dell'arte cristiana, III, Prato 1876, pls. 3, 3 and 9, 4). The cycle is found represented in manuscripts, such as the Vienna Genesis, the Cotton Bible, the Ashburnham Pentateuch, the Greek Vatican Octateuchs 846 and 847, the Greek manuscript 510 of the National Library of Paris; in ivories, among which the most distinguished example for number of scenes and fineness of composition is the ivory chair of Maximian in Ravenna; furthermore in an ivory pyx of the Basilewsky collection (R. Garrucci, op. cit., VII, Prato 1880, pl. 439); in a small casket in the treasury of the cathedral of Sens; in ivories of the British Museum (A. Goldschmidt-K. Weitzmann, Die byzantinischen Elfenbeinshulpturen des X.-XII. Jahrhunderts, I, Berlin 1930, pls. 96-97); in an ivory of the Berlin Museum (W. Wöge, Beschreibung der Bildwerke der christlichen Epochen, ibid. 1900, p. 4, pl. 3, n. 4). In textiles, as in the Coptic cloth of Golenischef (J. Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom, Leipzig 1901, pp. 113-14 and fig. 44); or in the silk fragment of the treasury of the cathedral of Sens with three scenes (E. Chartraire, Le trésor de la cathédrale de Sens, Paris 1931, p. 45), in mosaics as in the cycle of St. Mark's in Venice (W. de Grüneisen, Ste Marie Antique, Rome 1911, figs. 290-98); in the cycles frescoed in S. Maria Antiqua (Wilpert, Mosaiken, pp. 706-707), in St. Paul Outside the Walls (pp. 609-12), at St. John «ante portam Latinam»; in the church of the abbey of St. Peter in Valle near Ferentillo; and in the church of the Benedictine abbey of St-Savin-sur-Gartempe in the diocese of Poitiers (P. Deschamps, Les peintures de St-Savin-sur-Gartempe, in Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et belles lettres, 1949, p. 13 ff.). - See pl. LVII.

Enrico Josi