GIUSEPPE (Heb. Jōsēph; Ps. 81:6 Jēhōsēph = “God increases”). — Giacobbe (v.) and of Rachele. His life (Gen. 37; 39–48; 50) is eventful. Envied by his brothers and sold as a slave, in Egypt, because of his mistress’s impure desires, G., innocent, is imprisoned. A skilled and inspired interpreter of dreams, first for the chief cupbearer and then for the King, he becomes viceroy and high commissioner for the provisioning of Egypt. Compelled by the need for food, his brothers travel to Egypt, where G. recognizes them without being recognized by them. G. subjects them to various trials and finally reconciles with them (God has brought everything to a good end), has his father brought there, and, with Pharaoh’s authorization, assigns the land of Gessen as a permanent dwelling to the family. This marks the beginning of the sojourn and, later, of the enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt.
G. dies in Egypt and is buried there, but at the time of the exodus the Israelites transport his remains to Sichem (Gen. 48:22), the land that had been given to him by his father (Ios. 24:32).
The two sons of G., Ephraim and Manasse, adopted by Giacobbe, are regarded as the heads of two tribes in Israel.
to the episodes of the patriarch’s life from the dream onward, that is, almost all those listed in a singular praefatio discovered by J. Mabillon in a missal from Bobbio (J. Mabillon, Musaeum Italicum, I, Paris 1689, p. 303). In funerary art, the scene of G. being lifted from the well and sold to the Ishmaelite merchants is represented only once, on a sarcophagus dating from ca. 340, discovered in the confessio of S. Pietro 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 frequently represented, and it is also found on two gilt glasses in 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 represented in manuscripts such as the Vienna Genesis, the Cotton Bible, the Ashburnham Pentateuch, the Greek Vatican Octateuchs 846 and 847, and Greek manuscript 510 of the National Library of Paris; in ivories, among which the most distinguished example for the number of scenes and the refinement of its composition is the ivory cathedra of Maximianus in Ravenna; moreover, in an ivory pyxis in the Basilewsky collection (R. Garrucci, op. cit., VII, Prato 1880, pl. 439); in a casket in the treasury of the cathedral of Sens; in ivories in the British Museum (A. Goldschmidt–K. Weitzmann, Die byzantinischen Elfenbeinshulpturen des X.–XII. Jahrhunderts, I, Berlin 1930, pls. 96–97); and in an ivory in the Berlin Museum (W. Wöge, Beschreibung der Bildwerke der christlichen Epochen, ibid. 1900, p. 4, pl. 3, no. 4). On textiles, as in the Coptic fabric of Golenischef (J. Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom, Leipzig 1901, pp. 113–14 and fig. 44); or in the silk fragment in 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 S. Marco in Venice (W. de Grüneisen, Ste Marie Antique, Rome 1911, figs. 290–98); in the fresco cycles in S. Maria Antiqua (Wilpert, Mosaiken, pp. 706–707), in S. Paolo fuori le mura (pp. 609–12), and at S. Giovanni «ante portam Latinam»; in the church of the abbey of S. Pietro 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.). — Vedi pl. LVII.