MBMBMBMBMBMBMBMBMBMBMBaM (Transcript)

(Back to episode page.)

Chris Sims: Hey everybody. Before we get started with the show this week, we need to give you another content warning for the book of Genesis.

Benito Cereno: Yeah. While not quite as severe or variegated as some of the ones in the previous week, some of the stories included in the life Joseph are going to include a rape by deception, accusation and discussion of a rape by force. And so, if those kinds of things are going to bother you, maybe just give this week a skip and we'll eventually be reading a non-Genesis texts that will hopefully not need any kind of warning up at the top.

C: And with that, on with the show.

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C: "When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was positive, he said to Joseph, 'I also had a dream. Three baskets of white bread were on my head in the top basket, all sorts of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head.' 'This is its interpretation,' Joseph replied. 'The three baskets are three days. In just three days, a Pharaoh will lift up your head from off you and hang you on a tree. Then birds will eat the flesh from your body.'" The book of Genesis chapter 40 verses 16 through 19.

[Music: "Coat of Many Colors" by Dolly Parton]

C: Hello, friends and neighbors, and welcome to Apocrypals. It's the podcast where two nonbelievers read through the Bible and we try not to be jerks about it. We are your heavenly hosts. The sons of thunder. Back in action once again, to finally finish the book of Genesis. My name is Chris Sims with me as always is the other set of footprints, Benito Cereno. Benito, how are you tonight?

B: Pretty good, man. How about you? Did you make it out of the hurricane okay?

C: Yeah, actually we did. There was a lot of flooding and such around here, but my particular area of North Carolina did not get impacted too badly. Mostly the problems were out at the coast where things got muddy-muddy.

B: Yikes. Yeah. That's bad. But I think what you meant to say Chris was it was so bad at your house that we absolutely had to take a skip week for the podcast.

C: Oh, right, right. Yes. It wasn't... look, to be fair, I did not leave the house for like five days and I was going completely bonkers from being inside that much, to the point where I am now on a new medication. So.

B: Yeah. Yeah. So this means that we both prepared for this episode last week and then we didn't. So we're going to see how this one goes. I guess we are finally finishing up Genesis. We're doing the life of Joseph. He's the last one. There are no more members of the family in Genesis. And so we're finally going to wrap this up: chapters 37 through 50. And then we can finally do something else except, we're going to have a kind of a postmortem episode with our first guest ever next week. We'll talk about that at the end of the show. I don't know. Otherwise, how are you Chris? You like - it's fall now. That's good.

C: It is fall. It's fall. It's apple season. I did- I had some apples and honey.

B: Yeah.

C: Shana Tova, Benito. It is... How are you enjoying your 50...57?

B: 5,779

C: How are you enjoying your 5,779?

B: Feeling fine, 5,779. And I hope everybody out there finds themselves inscribed in the book of life. We're recording this right now, actually, the sun has gone down. So Yom Kippur has ended for this year. But for those of you, our Jewish friends out there, I hope you had an easy and meaningful fast today. We don't need to talk too much about Yom Kippur, but I do want to, for those who are not familiar with it, it is the day of atonement. It is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Turns out that that's not Hanukkah after all. That's weird. Yeah, it's the big one, but it's also a very solemn occasion. It's one that you're supposed to spend in reflection and prayer. Most people spend most of the day at synagogue. And it's also a fast. You fast for a period of approximately 25 hours. Really approximately in this case, I hope Chris doesn't give me guff from saying approximately, but approximately 25 hours, sundown to sundown. And it's another one of those where to show how serious and solemn you are, there's things you're not supposed to do. There are five main prohibitions, things that you are not supposed to do because five is a number tied to a couple of symbolic things, but the five things you're not supposed to do, no eating and drinking. But I hope you guys all who are celebrating today, I hope you all did all right. I hope you stayed hydrated. Hopefully by the time we're recording this, you are filling up on something delicious. No wearing of leather shoes, which is that other one that seems very specific. And I feel like somebody is probably getting around it by just wearing very comfortable flip flops or Crocs or something, probably.

C: I think the wearing of Crocs should probably be forbidden.

B: Yeah.

C: Unless you work in a kitchen or find them comfortable. Who am I to judge?

B: Yeah. Yeah. Number three, no bathing or washing. So, hmmm, And then...

C: No, wait, no washing at all?

B: I guess. I mean, I hope, I don't know. I don't know specifically. Someone let me know. Can you wash your hands on Yom Kippur? I assume yes, but I don't know how strict some people are. If it's like a denominational thing, if the stricter people absolutely don't even wash their hands on Yom Kippur, let us know. Also no anointing oneself with perfumes or lotions. So...cool. Smelling fine and 5,779. And then number five, no marital relations. And presumably that extends to extra-marital relations as well. So anyway, that's really it. We talked more about the high holy days, the days of awe in our last episode. I do not, I do not have my shofar this week.

C: Oh no.

B: Yeah. So we talked...

C: Well, hang on, hang on. I think I've got my shofar.

[Music: Saxophone from the opening of "Run Away with Me" by Carly Rae Jepsen]

C: I got that one.

B: Oh good. You're so much better than I am.

C: It's so weird. Completely self-taught.

B: Yeah. I actually, on Rosh Hashanah, I logged in to play trivia HQ or HQ trivia. If you guys play, you can add me BenitoCereno, all one word. And Scott Rogowsky, the host, who's always quick. He always points out Jewish holidays. He always wishes everyone Shabbat Shalom on Sabbath. And, he had his shofar and he blew it and he was at best marginally better than I was. And that guy has been Jewish for like 30-something years. So I feel okay compared to Scott Rogowsky's shofar playing.

C: I actually did hear some other shofar playing this past week.

B: Yeah?

C: Yeah. We had a Yom Kippur themed service at the Unitarian Universalist church that I've been attending since we started doing this podcast, trying to get the balance of my soul right.

B: Yeah. That's a thing we've been meaning to bring up on this show for like 20 weeks.

C: Yeah. I've been going to a church again, but it's, it's Unitarian Universalist. So it's like "kind of" a church.

B: Sure, but you're still taking those baby steps to getting dunked in a river, like your wife thinks is going to happen as a result of this podcast.

C: Look, I've been kayaking and I've been to church. You put those two things together, that's basically a baptism.

B: Pretty much there.

C: But yeah, they blew the shofar. And also we sang the song "Lean on Me," which is a great song to have in your hymnal.

B: Yeah, that is a traditional Jewish tune. It goes back to the Sephardim of the middle ages.

C: One last thing before we move into the book of Genesis, I'm glad that you mentioned that it's after sundown because this, I believe, is the latest at night that we have recorded the show.

B: Yeah, it absolutely is. We normally record during the day or in the morning, yeah.

C: Which I prefer.

B: Sure.

C: I will go ahead and throw it out there: I prefer a service in the daylight. Tonight might be some trouble because I did get that Spider-Man game yesterday, which means that I stayed up way too late playing that Spider-Man game yesterday. And then my wife got up at five o'clock in the morning, which means that I also was awake at five o'clock in the morning. So I'm literally falling asleep as we do this. So I am excited to find out what I'm going to have to say about the Book of Genesis when I listen back to this and edit it this weekend.

B: Yeah. Let's hope that we can have a lively discussion that keeps you awake.

C: All right. So we are going into the book of Genesis chapters 37 to 50. And I have to say, this is the life of Joseph. And it is not often that I feel a little let down by Bible.

B: Yeah. Okay.

C: But I like... here's the thing. I don't know anything about Joseph, but I know there's like, what is it? A musical?

B: There is!

C: Yeah. The coat of many colors is nothing. It's barely in this story. It is not like it is... It's, it's just a coat. The coat of many colors in the Dolly Parton song "Coat of Many Colors" has a bigger plot role to play than the technicolor dream coat that I will not call amazing because I was not amazed by its existence.

B: Hey Chris, do you want me to make it even more mundane for you?

C: Hit me.

B: Yeah. Another possible translation of his coat of many colors is actually a robe with long sleeves. So that could be what it was.

C: Boy oh boy.

B: Yeah. Can you imagine?

C: No. Joseph in his amazing long sleeve dream coat.

B: Yeah. Yeah. It's "Hey guys, my sleeves are so long. Are my sleeves long enough for you to throw me in a pit?" I don't know. I don't know.

C: Are they, are they long? Now, are they just long sleeves? Like when I wear a long sleeve shirt and it comes down to my wrist or are they long sleeves like Hsien-Ko in DarkStalkers has - very niche fighting game reference.

B: Yeah.

C: For everyone out there.

B: Yeah. Who knows? Who knows how long they might be? Are they stripey-ed? Do they look like the straight jacket that Joker wears from the Jeff Matsuda Batman cartoon?

B: So anyway, yeah, Joseph and his dreams are going to be a recurring motif for Joseph throughout the story of his life.

C: That's the other thing.

B: Yeah.

C: The story of Joseph is, if we can put this back into comic book terms like we so often do.

B: Yeah.

C: It's golden age, Daniel.

B: Kinda. Yeah!

C: Cause it's kind of the same stuff as Daniel, except for Daniel had that super dope apocryphal moment where he was like, "an angel is outside ready to sever your head from your body."

B: Right. Sure.

C: Now Joseph does have that very choice dream interpretation that I read at the top of the show.

B: Yeah.

C: But that's kind of a high point.

B: One thing you might've noticed in reading this is this story is a little more cohesive than the lives of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. It feels a little less fragmentary.

C: It is definitely a narrative with a beginning, middle and end.

B: Right. And while of course, documentary hypothesis still applies to this and different segments are are attributed to different sources, there's also those who hold that this segment is all from a single authorial community or even from a single author because they find the life of Joseph so cohesive and maybe? But then again, you know, the documentarians will still break this one down bit by bit. And if you read the book we talked about with the different sections highlighted in the different colors, you'll see that there, but yeah. So in 37, we get into Joseph at the age 17, tending sheep with his brothers. Of course, remember Joseph is the oldest of only two sons had by Rachel who was Jacob's favored wife. And so, he and his younger brother, Benjamin are the favorite sons of Jacob. And so the others kind of resent him for that. And one of the signs that Jacob or Israel loves Joseph more than the others, is he gives him this coat of many colors or this coat with long sleeves. The typical clothing for, you know, an Israelite at this time, and up through most of the time of the Bible, even, when you see Jesus talking about, if somebody asks for your cloak or your coat, give them your shirt also. You basically have two layers. You have a long tunic. And then over that you have some kind of a robe that you would wear. And so this would be the outer clothing that you would wear over the tunic. And yeah, he has a dream, which in retrospect seems not difficult to interpret because it's like, there's a sheaves of grain, one sheaf stood up and the other sheaves bowed down to it. That doesn't seem like, and it's like, "there were 12 sheaves of grain and one had a name tag that says, I'm Joseph. And the others had all your names on it. And they were all bowing down to the one that said Joseph." And then he has another dream with the sun, moon and 11 stars. That's weird. And of course the brothers are like, well that's, that's something. So, they decide maybe they should do something about Joseph. They hate him and his stupid coat so much that they gotta do something about it.

C: They just got to throw them in a hole.

B: Yeah. We're going to throw them in a hole and maybe sell them into some light slavery. Just we'll see where the afternoon takes us.

C: Look, and we can both agree as, as modern people.

B: Yeah.

C: Slavery bad.

B: Oh yeah.

C: Like a hundred percent bad.

B: Yeah. I, we can take that very bold stance.

C: Digging a hole and your problems in it though. A pretty solid tactic for the past 5,000 years. Yeah.

B: Just bury it. Just bury it.

C: Throw it in a hole and it's gone.

B: Yeah. We see the oldest brother, Reuben, he's the one who saves Joseph from being killed, right? The original plan was to kill him. And he says, well, what if we don't kill him? And what if we sell him into slavery? We pretend that we killed him. We'll kill an animal and take it back to dad and say, "uh... here he is." But Reuben had the plan to, he was going to come back and rescue Joseph out of the hole. And so he's like, don't throw him in the pit. Don't lay a hand on him. "And he intended to rescue him from their hands and return to his father." So one thing, one other thing I want to mention here in 37:19, HCSB has the brother saying, "they said to one another, here comes that dreamer. Come on, let's kill him and throw him into one of the pits." Here's HCSB letting us down a little bit, because let me tell you what the literal translation of from here comes that dreamer is, here comes the Lord of the dreams.

C: Morpheus?

B: OI! It's me, innit. Lord of the dreams. Here with me ol' China, Matthew, the raven, innit. I'm back.

C: Is there anything that is less objectively funny that is more subjectively funny to you and me than bad impressions of Neil Gaiman?

B: Yeah. It's a, it's a good joke that I think you and I enjoy and that we're going to force on other people, because that's not even close to Neil Gaiman's accent.

C: Not at all.

B: Not close at all. Not at all. Not even the same region of the country.

C: Oi had me a dream about sheaves of grain.

B: And all the stars were... Nah, that's Australia. I'm getting Australian.

C: We kind of lost it.

B: Um, anyway, yeah, they throw Joseph in the pit.

C: Here comes the Prince of Stories.

B: The Prince of Stories. He's going to have us a midsummer night's dream for Shakespeare. All right. Anyway.

B: So they throw him in a pit, they go to eat. And then while they're looking, a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, their camels were carrying aromatic gum, possibly Bazooka Joe. That's an aromatic gum.

C: Fruit stripe.

B: Yeah. Fruit stripe is a very aromatic gum. I think you nailed it. Anyway. So yeah. "What do we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?" This is Judah talking. Judah, who surprisingly comes out well at the end of this book. Well, I mean, not so surprisingly, if you understand that, uh, much of this is by the J source, who's very pro-South, therefore very pro tribe of Judah. So Judah comes out well. Reuben comes out pretty well. Simeon and Levi, not so hot. If you remember, they were the ones who murdered an entire town to avenge their sister. So Simeon and Levi don't turn out so hot, but Reuben and Judah come out okay at the end of this one.

C: Now I have a specific quibble.

B: Yeah.

C: In chapter 37, this is verse 28.

B: Yeah.

C: "When Midianite traders passed by, his brothers pulled Joseph out of the pit and sold him for 20 pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites who took Joseph to Egypt."

B: Yeah.

C: Missed opportunity.

B: Yeah.

C: Should have been 30 pieces.

B: What was the J source thinking not tying this into the future gospels? Come on.

C: Well, I mean, like, look, you're - with all that we've talked about, you could tell me like, Oh yeah, many Christian philosophers consider this to be the 16th gospel.

B: Yeah. Yeah, of course. One thing that I thought you were going to point out here is that there is no consistency about who Joseph was sold to. Was he sold to Midianites or Ishmaelites or Egyptians? Right? And while the obvious surface interpretation is to this author, they were just conflating those things, right. That Ishmaelites and Midianites are the same to them. So they just use the term interchangeably. However, you know there's a Midrash for this, and there is! And the question of how many times was it that he was sold into slavery, not just once, but indeed four times. So they explained that first his brothers sell him to the Ishmaelites who sell him to the Midianites who sell him to the Medanites who then subsequently sell him to the Egyptians. And that's how he ends up in Egypt, is that there are a number of transactions.

C: The only other note that I had was I just wrote down inflation question mark, like maybe 20 pieces of silver in Joseph times is 30 pieces of silver in Jesus times, because they have the same name. Don't forget.

B: No, Jesus and Joshua are the same.

C: Oh. Oh, nevermind.

B: But yeah, speaking of Joseph's name, yeah. So we get the modern Joseph from the Greek Josephus, which is the transliteration of the Hebrew name Yosef, which either comes from a word element that means taken away, related to Rachel saying God has taken away my reproach or the more traditional interpretation is that it comes from a word element that means add as in the Lord shall add to me another son. And so generally today the name Joseph is interpreted to mean increase. So if your name is increase, like if you're any Increase Mather fans out there, you're name bros with anyone named Joseph. So...

C: Joseph shipped off for 20 pieces of silver. Again, big missed opportunity for foreshadowing. And then we go back to Judah and Tamar.

B: Yeah.

C: And this story is wild.

B: Sure is. Yeah. This is one that, this is the one we gave the content warning for. So maybe skip ahead a few minutes if you're, if you're worried about that. So we get Judah, he's one of the sons. It's a strange little tangent story that has nothing to do with the life of Joseph. It doesn't really fit into the timeline very well, and also I had to actually check to see if this was from a different source because this one makes Judah look bad. And generally J is pro Judah, but no, this story is from the J source. And so I don't know what's going on here.

B: So yeah, we have, we have Judah, he takes a Canaanite wife. They have a son named Ur. They have another son named Onan, more on him in a second. They have another son named Sheila. Or Shalla, maybe not like, not like Sheila. Ur is evil. He was born evil in the Lord's sight and the Lord put him to death. No further explanation.

C: Yeah. I wrote that in the margins. No details.

B: Yeah.

C: Just like, Hey, this kid was evil from birth.

B: Yeah.

C: God hated him and he was put to death. I'm sorry. I am going to need at least one more sentence of detail.

B: Yeah, it's very strange. Like, I mean, we do get some examples in the old Testament and new Testament of God, just hating someone so much that he kills them. Like we saw that in Acts, right? They didn't give enough of their money. So they get zapped, but yeah, we don't get any more explanation. But what's supposed to happen now, right, Because Ur was put to death. He didn't have any children. And so his next oldest brother Onan is, according to Levirate law, supposed to marry Tamar and then give her children that would then legally be the heirs of his older brother Ur, right. And so this is the thing that Onan is famous for to this day, a minor character.

C: Except that he's not?

B: Right. You're right.

C: 'Cause the sin of Onan is different from what is actually in the Bible, which very much surprised me, because I was familiar with the term because if there's one thing that I love, it's olde timey terms for things.

B: Yeah. So this is another instance where we have a modern, well, you know, modern-ish name for a sin that actually doesn't represent the thing that happened. Like if you think about, we talked about Sodom and Gomorrah and sodomy does not properly represent what was actually going on in Sodom, right. Similarly, the term Onanism, which is broadly used to mean masturbation does not mean that in context, right? Because what actually happens is Onan doesn't want to have children that are not his own heirs. He doesn't want to have children that belong to his dead brother, right? And so, and so he still sleeps with Tamar, but... gotta keep this one clean.

C: Look here's what it says in Bible. Here's what the word says. This is a chapter 38 verse nine. "But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he slept with his brother's wife, he released his semen on the ground so that he would not produce offspring for his brother."

B: Right. Yeah. And of course, you know, the traditional King James is, "he spilled his seed on the ground," right? And so, and so because of that...

C: We should have gone with that one because I am very uncomfortable having read that out loud now.

B: Yeah. Well too late. We can never do another take. But yeah. So because of the idea of like fruitlessly spilling his seed, that's the association where then people go, "Ah, Onanism is you know, self pleasure." But when it's clearly, the sin is that he's refusing to accept his duties as, like his familial duties. Right? He's supposed to create heirs for his brother. And he doesn't want to do that. And that's what is evil in the Lord's sight. And so he was also put to death.

B: And so what happens then is Judah tells Tamar, "Hey, you're just going to be a widow. Like, I know I have another son, but like I'm worried about an Asmodeus situation here, where all of my sons are getting murdered by some kind of demon." And maybe, "Tamar, get out of here. Your vagina is haunted!" or something. He refuses to let her marry his next son.

B: And then, and then later Judah's wife, Shuah, she dies.

C: Judah's wife is not Shuah. Judah's wife is the daughter of Shuah.

B: Oh, the daughter of Shuah. You're right.

C: Judah's wife is unnamed.

B: Right. Which is true of so many women in the Bible. You're totally right. I missed that. Yeah. And so they were going out to shear some sheep. And Tamar says, "I'm going to take this opportunity to pull a hilarious sex prank," I guess? I don't know. And so.

C: It's a real Porky's.

B: Yeah. It's a real reverse Revenge of the Nerds situation. I don't know.

C: It is, as I described it in this note, I wrote in the margins, "a normal sequence of events."

B: She dresses herself up like a sex worker. She goes and sits by the city gate and she waits for Judah to come by. And he's like, "Hey, let's, let's do this thing." And she's like, "Cool. Standard price, a goat." So he's like, "Well, I don't have a goat with me, but I promise to bring you a goat later." She's like, "Great. Leave me something as a sign, like some kind of collateral for this goat that you've promised me." And so he gives her his signet ring, cord, I guess from his belt maybe, and then his staff.

C: These are like what would be in your inventory in a LucasArts adventure game.

B: Yeah. Yeah.

C: "I tied the signet ring to the staff."

B: That's how you can reach the light bulb to get the note out. But then anyway, then she changes back into her regular widow clothes and then goes back. And then, when Judah goes, to be fair, honest to his word, when he goes back to bring a goat to the sex worker at the gate, he was like, "Hey, uh, where's she at? I got this goat that I owe her." And the men there were like, "there's no cult sex worker here." So then he goes back home and he's like, "Man, I tried my best, tried my best to make this, this particular debt right, and it couldn't be done."

B: And then about three months later, Judah finds out, "Hey, your daughter-in-law Tamar has been acting like a sex worker. Now she's pregnant." And he's like, "What? Burn her to death."

C: That's extreme.

B: Yeah. But fortunately she pulls out the signet ring and the staff and the cord. And she's like, "Ma-hah! It's your baby actually dad."

C: It's just like when Stephanie McMahon was going to marry Test on Monday Night Raw.

[Audio clip: "I know that you can only have one question on your mind, DAD!"]

B: Yeah. I can absolutely confirm the thing that you said.

B: Then Judah's like, all right, "Well, she is more on the right than I am, 'cause I was supposed to marry her to my next son. So this one's on me, my bad." And, "he did not know her intimately again." So that's good to know that Judah learned something from this situation.

C: He backs off the whole let's burn somebody to death thing real quick.

B: Yeah. Real quick. When he, well, they're his babies. He's gonna burn somebody else's babies, not his own.

C: Yeah, but I mean, he's like, "Hey, I want to burn somebody to death for this." And then she's like, "Actually this is kinda on you." And he's like, "Mistakes were made."

B: Mistakes were made. Yeah.

C: "Please, please stop stacking up the, the firewood."

B: Yeah.

C: Let's keep our heads about this situation.

B: And then another very cool, very normal birth. She's got twins in her womb. One of them is born hand first or is almost born hand first, very normal. "And so the midwife took the hand and tied a scarlet thread around it so they would know which twin was the firstborn." Right? Then the hand got pulled back in again, very normal series of events. And the other brother came out. "And so they said, you have broken out first. And so he got named Perez, which means breaking out. And then his brother with the Scarlet thread tied to his hand came out and he was named Zerah, which means the brightness of sunrise, perhaps related to the Scarlet thread." Yeah. So Perez bursting forth or breach and Zerah meaning dawning shining." Perez is an ancestor of David and Jesus. We would have seen him in the genealogy from Matthew.

C: So that's what chapter 38 is, everybody. All of chapter 38 is just Judah and Tamar and sex deception and babies fighting each other.

B: Yep.

C: In the womb. And this whole time you might be thinking, "I wonder what happened to Joseph."

B: Yeah.

C: Cause I feel like that's who we were reading out before this story took a strong left turn.

B: Yeah. Speaking of sex crimes, let's get back to Joseph. So yeah, Joseph in Potiphar's house. So this of course is one of the more famous bits from Joseph' story. Potiphar, by the way, coming from an Egyptian named Potefera, which means, "he whom raw Ra given, that is the gift of Ra," AKA the gift of God, which means if your name is Potiphar, you're name bros with Matthew and Theodore. So name bros all around, high five, every Potiphar you meet, if your name is Matt or Ted or Theo and Potiphar: high-fivin'. Name bros.

B: Yeah. And then of course we get another very famous female figure from the Bible who has no name textually, canonically. Of course, as you can imagine, commentary writers have supplied a name to Potiphar's wife. A medieval commentary gives her the name Zuleikha, which is also used in Islamic sources, including a famous Persian poem called Yusuf and Zuleikha. And so you can look that one up if you're interested in some Persian poetry about the life of Joseph. Yeah.

B: So yeah, Joseph he's sold into slavery. He makes his way into the house of Potiphar, who's an officer of the Pharaoh's guards. He's the captain of the guard. And Joseph, it turns out is very good at being a household manager. And so he's basically promoted as far as he can. He becomes Potiphar's right-hand man. Basically he found favor in his master's sight and became his personal attendant. The problem is Joseph is also very handsome.

C: There are two bits in this section that I really like. One is about Potiphar. He left all that he owned under Joseph's authority. He did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.

B: Yeah.

C: That's the life.

B: That's very real.

C: This is an entire paragraph.

B: Yeah.

C: This is the end of that verse. And the next one. "Now Joseph was well-built and handsome. After some time his master's wife looked longingly at Joseph and said, 'sleep with me.'" Bold moves.

B: Yeah.

C: People make a lot of bad moves in Genesis, like pretty much on the reg. Genesis is actually 50 verses of people making bad moves, but you do have to respect that they are bold.

B: Yeah. This is a bold one. I mean, and to be fair, she's the mistress of the house.

C: Shoot your shot.

B: She's the mistress of the house. Technically, what she says goes. But, Joseph refused. And he says, you know, "with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in this house. He's put all that he owns under my authority. No one's greater than I am, but how could I do such a great evil and sin against God?" Yeah. Cause the master Potiphar has withheld nothing from him except his wife. So it's very, it's very garden of Eden, right? Like eat from any tree, except this tree, my wife don't eat my wife fruit.

B: And so Joseph being a good person is like, no, I'm not going to do that. And, she responds by or accusing him of having attacked her and sexually assaulted her. She even manages to get some evidence by grabbing him by his robe and pulling his robe off and running outside with it as, as evidence,

C: Which by the way, we should point out is not the, the robe of many colors, because that was left back with his brothers and, soaked up with goat blood so that they could tell Israel, AKA Jacob, that Joseph was eaten by a wolf.

B: You think Simeon was like, Hey, look at all the colors on this coat. What if we added one more? Oh, Levi says, what color would that be? Simeon? What about goat blood color?

C: Did you want me to like punch in the who there? 'Cause I don't think I'm going to.

B: Oh, okay. All right. That's fine. You don't have to. Yeah, we've got Potiphar's wife falsely accusing Joseph of trying to rape her which has some echoes and other folkloric stories, especially in Greek myth. We can see very similar stories in the life of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, the famous hero who killed the Minotaur, right? Later in his life, his son, Hippolytus, that he had with the Amazon queen Hippolyta or Antiope, depending on the version.

C: Also, the inventor of wrestling.

B: Theseus was the inventor of wrestling and the mullet, according to Plutarch. And democracy. Three very fine American inventions, wrestling, mullet, democracy, America's three favorite things.

B: Yeah, Hippolytus gets accused of rape by his stepmother, Phaedra. And, uh, it goes very badly for him. He ends up dying when he's racing down the beach in a chariot and a bull comes out of the sea and makes him crash and he dies. Anyway, Hippolytus, that happens.

B: Also Bellerophon who was the mythological rider of Pegasus, not Perseus, as you might expect if you've seen clash of the Titans, or not Hercules, if you've seen Disney's Hercules. So, the actual rider of Pegasus was a guy named Bellerophon, who in a story very similar to the story of Potiphar, actually, he goes and he's exiled from his home. He ends up serving a King and the King's wife accuses him of rape when he refuses to sleep with her. And so, those two stories are very similar. Yeah.

B: And of course, uh, there's Midrash on this as well, which says that it seems likely that Potiphar's wife had made such charges against servants before, and Potiphar in this case didn't believe her, because A, she cried wolf on this account before, and also he trusted Joseph so much and he knew that Joseph was a righteous man. That according to the Midrash is what saves Joseph's life because in any other normal circumstances, Joseph would be executed immediately. And instead he's thrown in prison. And the reason he has to still be punished is because of the class discrepancy. The mistress accused him, so he's gotta be punished in some way, but he's not put to death because Potiphar doesn't believe the charges fully. But he does go to prison and he is in prison apparently for a long time, possibly years and years, decades, even possibly.

C: But when he goes to prison, the Lord is with him. And he granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden...

B: So here we got Joseph being made king of the prison.

C: He becomes, I guess, becomes a trustee. And this is where Joseph starts doing some freelance dream interpretation. And there's a great line in here. "So he asked Pharaoh's officers who were in custody with him in his master's house, 'Why do you look so sad today?' 'We had dreams.'" Same, same, very relatable. Very #relatable.

B: Yeah. Extremely same.

C: We get two dreams here.

B: Right.

C: The chief cup bearer tells his dream to Joseph, which is, "In my dream, there was a vine in front of me on the vine were three branches. As soon as it budded, its blossoms came out and its clusters ripened with grapes. Pharaoh's cup was in my hand and I took the grapes, squeezed them into Pharaoh's cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand." And Joseph was like, "Hey, turns out that is a prophecy! In three days, like those three branches, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your position. You will put Pharaoh's cup in his hand the way you used to when you were a cup bearer. But when all goes well for you, remember that I was with you. Please show kindness to me by mentioning me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison."

C: So then the chief Baker comes up and that's the one that I read at the top of the show, because it's wild. 'Cause the chief Baker's like, "Oh, I also had a sweet dream that involved a bunch of numbers," and Joseph's like, "Oh, your dream sucks. And you're going to get decapitated." And then that is what happens.

B: This is very good word plays like, "Oh, don't worry. Pharaoh will also lift up your head - from off your body." When you're hanged and or possibly impaled - the translation is unclear. Either he's going to be hanged or impaled, but yeah, the birds will eat the flesh from off your body. Uh, sorry, Baker.

C: So it turns out the three days from then is a Pharaoh's birthday.

B: Yeah.

C: And so he has a big party and he's like, can't have a party without my chief cup bearer back. So we don't know why he's in prison, but whatever it is apparently not so bad that he can't be like, "Hey, we're having a party."

B: Yeah.

C: "Come on back."

B: Kind of like a Vlad Țepeș party because he's like, "we also need to impale someone at this party because it is lame here. Please bring out that Baker."

C: Oh, is this it, you know, it's almost Halloween. We could start talking about historical Dracula.

B: We could, but right now we're just going to have to settle for this, Baker piñata that Pharaoh had at his party.

C: Yeah, but it's all for naught because the chief cup bearer is like, "Joseph, I don't know that guy."

B: Yeah. Here's another meme. That Mariah Carey meme, which she's putting on sunglasses. I don't know him. There it is. Another verbal description of a meme, everyone.

C: Can we get a whole podcast out of describing memes?

B: Just saying memes out loud. Yeah.

C: Saying memes out loud.

B: Saying memes out loud. That's just the name of it.

C: When we form the Apocrypals network...

B: Yeah.

C: The bonus goat podcast network? Then that'll be our second show: we described memes.

B: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Chapter 41. Hey, some more, some more dreams. This time it's...

C: Yeah. Two years later!

B: Yeah.

C: If I had a dream and some dude was like, "Hey, you're going to get out of this prison," and I got out of prison, I would maybe mention that to Pharaoh before, uh two years had gone by.

B: The cup bearer completely forgets for two years until Pharaoh's having dreams.

C: Of all the dreams in here. They're all like very straightforward. Like, Oh, I had dreams about grain and I had dreams about grapes and I was, I had bread. This next dream feels like a dream. The Pharaoh or Pharaoh. The word Pharaoh is not treated as a title in the Bible. It is treated as a name.

B: Yes. Not, not just here, but anytime a Pharaoh shows up, it's treated like a name. Yeah.

C: Yeah. So, Pharaoh's dream is that he's standing beside the Nile when seven healthy looking, well-fed cows come up from the Nile and begin to graze. Then seven sickly cows come up from behind them. And then the sickly cows eat the healthy cows, but they never get any bigger. Then Pharaoh wakes up and has another dream about grain. And then seven heads of grain come up and they're healthy. And then seven scorched heads of grain come up and eat the other heads of grain.

B: You know how grain does, right?

C: And then he wakes up and these feel like dreams.

B: Yes.

C: This is like when I'm gonna go to my wife and I'm like, I had a dream where plants were eating each other.

B: Yeah.

C: That's terrifying.

B: So there were seven cows, but they were also heads of grain, if that makes sense.

C: And then the sick cows ate the healthy cows, but the sick cows were really small.

B: Yeah. So Pharaoh tries to get people to interpret his dreams. This should, this is very similar of course to Daniel as well. Although, you know, this is a little bit earlier than Daniel probably, although as we talked about, the Torah was probably compiled not too long before Daniel was written as well.

C: Yeah. So the Pharaoh was like, "Yo, did I tell you about these dreams about the cows who were also grain eating the cows who were also grain?" And then the cup bearer was like, "You know, I actually do know a guy who interprets dreams. I was supposed to mention him to you, uh, about 720 days ago. but...

B: I have been very remiss in remembering this guy who basically saved my life in prison.

C: Oh wow. Is it Tuesday already? I was supposed to tell you about this two years ago.

B: Yeah. Oh, I set it for 7:00 PM. My bad. So yeah, Pharaoah since for Joseph and bring him out of the dungeon, they shave him, change his clothes. He's shaved, which means probably both his face and his head. They changed his clothes, probably put him in a nice linen clothes. So between the shaved head and the linen clothes, he'd look like a real Egyptian courier. He goes to Pharaoh goes to interpret his dream. And Pharaoh repeats the dream with the cows and the grain.

B: And Joseph says, "Hey, those two dreams were actually one dream." He says, "They have the same meaning. So God has shown you what he's going to do. You're going to have seven years of great abundance. Those are the fat cows. Those are the plump grains. But then after those seven years of abundance, you're going to have seven years of famine and all the abundance will be gone. And the famine will devastate the land. The abundance in the land will not be remembered because the famine will be so bad. And that's what the dream means. So you should prepare."

B: So he says, "You should pick, you know, some guy who's really wise. I don't, whoever you might think of some guy who might be, I don't know, good at interpreting dreams maybe, and put him in charge of everything." Basically, he says, you should store up as much grain as you can during the time of the abundance. And then you can have it to last during the period of famine. "The food will be a reserve for the land during the seven years of famine that will take place in the land of Egypt. Then the country will not be wiped out by the famine."

C: So that's how Joseph becomes president of Egypt.

B: Yes, exactly. And I need to point something out about this story. There was a very prominent person in the news a couple of years ago, 2016, you might remember him. His name is Ben Carson. He was running for president of the United States.

C: Is this what this was?

B: Yes, it is! If you remember the story where Ben Carson says that the pyramids were not tombs, they were actually grain storehouses. This is the story that he is referring to. He says the pyramids were actually built by Joseph so that they could fill them up with grain during the seven years of abundance and store the grain there during the seven years of famine. This is the story that Ben Carson was using to justify his understanding of the pyramids.

C: You know, we all contain multitudes.

B: We all do. We all absolutely do. We, and we all have paintings of ourselves being hugged by Jesus as Ben Carson does.

C: I would love if anybody is out there wanting a fan art project. I would love a picture of me. That would make me feel so good.

B: Yeah. Anyway, things go well for Joseph after this. Yeah. Joseph is basically made president of Egypt. It's the same situation three times in a row. Joseph becomes the head of Potiphar's household, becomes the head of the prison. Now he's the head of the entirety of Egypt and Pharaoh's just chilling and concerning himself only with the food that he eats. I assume.

C: He's basically, I mean, I say president because he's like below the Pharaoh, but he's basically like vice Pharaoh.

B: He's vice Pharaoh. Yeah. And he gets a new Egyptian name. He gets the Egyptian name, Zaphenath-paneah, which means "then God said, let him live," which that is a name. He gets a wife, Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, which might be Potiphar. He might marry Potiphar's daughter. It's the same name as Potiphar, so I don't know if it's the same person necessarily, but maybe. And then, Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt. That is he gained authority over the land of Egypt.

C: Which is not bad because this is when like he's 30.

B: He's 30 now.

C: So he is a 30 under 30 biblical luminary is Joseph.

B: Absolutely. 30 under 30 biblical luminary. Joseph: Vice Pharaoh of Egypt.

C: Levi's sweet baby brother.

B: Yeah. I'm your oldest brother, Reuben. I'm your secondest brother, Simeon. I'm your thirdest brother, Levi. Their podcast is much longer. The introduction alone is much longer.

C: Are you talking about, "My brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother and me"?

B: I am. That's the one.

C: MBMBMBMBMBMBM... I can't get through it. I can't get through it.

B: Yeah. And Jacob is absolutely the Clint. Absolutely. So yeah, there are other, there are other podcasts where all 12 of them play Dungeons and Dragons with Jacob.

C: Speaking of all of Joseph's brothers.

B: Yeah.

C: The famine hits after seven years. So, so this is Joseph is 37 now.

B: Yeah. So he's been gone 20 years. Remember cause he was 17 when they threw him in the pit. So he's now been in, he's been in Egypt 20 years. He was 30 years old when he was put in charge of Egypt and yeah, then you have the seven year famine.

C: So there's a famine going on and all across the world, I actually love this because people aren't necessarily going to Egypt. It says everyone came to Joseph.

B: Yeah.

C: Like Joseph is the connection.

B: Yeah. He's got all the food piled up in those pyramids.

C: Yeah. Which I do... like, I do not believe are hollow and therefore good for storing grain.

B: No, not entirely. I mean, obviously there's enough room for...

C: But there are chambers.

B: There's chambers. But yeah, I don't think they're hollow to the top. Like they're not just like some weird triangle shaped silo.

C: I feel like they're more designed to hold like say a body.

B: A body.

C: Like what was found in them.

B: And then some still alive slaves and a bunch of things you might need in the afterlife.

C: Yeah. Some canopic jars.

B: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

C: Word gets back to Jacob.

B: Yeah.

C: AKA Israel.

B: Yep.

C: And I like this, this is the first verse of chapter 42. "When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, 'why do you keep looking at each other?'" Cause these other 10 boys are just standing around going, "Oh boy."

B: "I've heard there's great in Egypt. Go there and get some. So we will live and not die." Those are usually the alternatives. Yes.

C: So some of the brothers come down. Is it all of them?

B: It's all.

C: I had a hard time. They're not really named because there's 11 of them.

B: Right? So this is all of the brothers except Benjamin, the, the youngest brother, Joseph's full brother and the youngest of the 12. So this is, this is the 10 oldest.

C: Yeah. They go down from the land of Canaan and Joseph recognizes him. But again, it's been 20 years. They do not recognize him. And I'm sure he introduces himself. Hey, what's up? My name is Zaphenath-paneah.

B: Yeah. And also he would look considerably different. His head would be shaved. He would probably be wearing that eye make-up, you know, he'd have kohl under his eyes or whatever. And so he would, he would look like an Egyptian. Additionally, he's speaking Egyptian and he's actually using a translator that he doesn't need in order to keep up the deception with his brothers. And so he's, he's intentionally keeping them from recognizing him at this point.

C: Yeah. So these, these 10 brothers show up and they're like, "Hey, we were 12 brothers. The sons of one man, living in Canaan the youngest is back home with our father and the other one is no longer alive." And Joseph calls them spies.

B: Yeah.

C: And has them arrested, which is pretty great.

B: What Joseph really wants is he wants to see his, he wants to see his brother. So yeah, he charges them with being spies. He's like, "I don't believe that you guys are brothers. That's ridiculous. Prove it by bringing me your other brother, and then I won't kill you." And so then they're talking to each other and they say, "obviously we're being punished for what we did to Joseph. And Reuben is like, "Yeah, idiots. I told you not to do that." Good one, Reuben. "You wouldn't listen now we must account for his blood." And yeah, they didn't realize that Joseph could tell what they're saying to each other because they didn't know that he spoke Hebrew. And so, very tricky on Joseph's part.

C: So Joseph frames them for another crime.

B: Yes. Because they brought all the money to pay for the grain. He gives them the grain, but he also puts all their money back in their bags. So when they get home, they have all the grain and all their money. So it hundo-P looks like they stole the grain. Yeah. And so obviously Jacob is pretty upset with that. He's pretty upset with his son's continuously doing crimes.

B: First you murder a whole city, then you murder your brother probably. And now this, you steal all this grain from Egypt. That's a powerful country.

C: Yeah. The last sentence of verse 36 here in chapter 42 is, "Everything happens to me," which Jacob was saying to his kids.

B: Yeah. You've deprived me of my sons. Joseph has gone and Simeon has gone. 'Cause Joseph keeps Simeon the second oldest brother. He keeps him as a hostage basically as collateral to make sure that they come back. And so Joseph has gone. Simeon has gone. Now you want to take Benjamin. "Everything happens to me." Poor old Jacob.

C: Yeah. "Look, I never did anything like this when I was your age and I was conning my brother out of his birthright."

B: "I absolutely, absolutely did not become the most successful con man in history by conning my brother and also my father-in-law. I did not do..."

C: And doing sheep magic...

B: "...sheep magic in order to become the wealthiest man in Canaan. Absolutely not."

C: "Where did you learn this?"

B: "Yeah. I learned it from watching you."

C: They get Benjamin. They go back down to Egypt and Jacob/Israel, because this book cannot decide whether to call him Jacob or Israel. Is that a source thing? That can't be like a source thing though? Because he is called that in adjacent sentences.

B: It can be sometimes because sometimes the fragments are that small, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. Every time that that happens. I don't think that's the reason. I think it's just, yeah, it's an inconsistency kind of thing. Yeah.

C: Israel here is very worried that things are going to go sour on him. So he goes, "Look, go back down there and take the money of course, but also take some balsam, some honey, some fruit stripe some fruit by the foot, some fruit roll-ups."

B: Yeah.

C: "All of the pistachios, almonds."

B: Yeah.

C: "And twice as much..."

B: "Take the premium planters mix that's pistachios, almonds, and whole cashews. Take that down there. Also the money, also twice as much money. Because we absolutely do not need Pharaoh to come down here and kill all of us the way that you killed the city of Shechem. Remember that don't do that."

C: "I would prefer to not have my entire city murdered because that's apparently how we do things."

B: Also here we see Judah being good, right? Judah takes account for Benjamin. He says, "Send the boy with me. I'll take responsibility for him." So here we see Judah stepping up as being a trustworthy son, which again, is basically Southern propaganda at this point. But yeah, so they send Benjamin back to the other brothers and they go back to Egypt with double the amount of money and all of these delicious snacks.

B: Joseph sees Benjamin. He said to his steward, "Take these men to my house to have a feast." Joseph finds himself kind of overwhelmed with emotion when he sees his younger brother. And one thing I should point out, like, this is a story I saw a lot in my Bible stories when I was a kid, you know, storybooks and animated versions of this and all sorts of stuff. And in almost every version that I've seen, you see Joseph in his Egyptian garb and then Benjamin comes up and Benjamin's a little kid. And he's like hugging on this eight year old kid. Benjamin absolutely has to be in his thirties at this point. Like there's no way mathematically that this works out. Rachel died a long time ago. Benjamin here, who's like, "Aww, my sweet baby brother" is absolutely in his thirties at this point. He has to be. And so it's really wild to me to go back and read this story and think about all those pictures I saw of like little baby Benjamin. And it's like, no, no, no, no. He's a man. He's a full on man at this point.

C: So they go back down, they meet up with Joseph again, they have dinner. Joseph is like pretending he doesn't speak the language here. Then he frames them for theft.

B: Yeah, this is his final test. They're going to leave again, and this time when they leave, he tells a steward "Fill the men's bags with as much food as they can carry and put each one's money on the top of his bag." So that same trick again, "but also put my cup the silver one at the top of the youngest one's bag, along with his grain money." And this cup, it says is a special cup that Joseph uses for divination, that is telling the future, right? He uses it as a means of some kind of cup-omancy, a proper Israelite would not be practicing divination as that is a big time sin. Do not do that. That's the thing that wizards do. So of course there's an explanation for that, that either that was part of the deception, right? That he didn't actually use the cup for divination because he had his prophetic dreams given to him directly by God. So the explanation is that he doesn't actually use it for divination. That's just what he tells them as part of the ruse.

C: So he waits for them to leave. Then he sends some guys after them. And when he gets there, he's like, "Hey, you stole my master's cup." And to their credit, the very frustrated sons of Israel go, "Look, we tried to pay you for this grain twice now. So obviously we brought all the money back for both shipments of grain and we brought you presents. None of us, I guarantee you 100%, none of us has this silver cup. And if one of us does have it, we'll just - here's how confident I am that none of us has this silver cup that you are accusing us of taking. If you do find it, we will put the person who has it to death, even if it is my brother Benjamin."

B: "And we'll also become your slaves if you find it, I'm so confident that you won't find that cup. You find that cup, I'll be your slave. We'll all be your slaves."

C: "Even if you need to murder my brother, Benjamin, who is the one that everybody likes, you can kill him. And also we will be slaves. That's how confident I - oh, what is that? Oh, that's the cup. Yeah. Yikes."

B: "Uh, let me walk that back a bit." Uh, yeah. And so we get Judah again, Judah stepping up to the plate here. We know he's not the oldest son. He's the third oldest son, probably? Judah's the fourth of course. Yeah. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah. So the fourth oldest son here, but he's the one stepping up to the plate, taking responsibility. He's the one that talks to Joseph and he's the one that makes the plea for Benjamin. And so this is again, making the founder of the tribe of Judah look good, thereby making the entire nation of Judah seem good as well.

B: Joseph, once he makes his case, Joseph's able to see that Judah and his other brothers have changed. They've become better people. This is what he was looking for. They passed the test. "You've solved my cup riddle! And he forgives them. He reveals his identity. And he's like, "Hey, it was me, your dead brother all along." They're terrified in his presence. He's like, "I'm Joseph. Is my father still alive?" And they could not answer him because they were terrified in his presence. He has them compare his eyes with Benjamin's eyes.And he says, you can see that it's me. Presumably has to wipe all this Pharaoh makeup off. He's like, "Come here, come live nearby in the land of Goshen, which is one of my favorite Southern minced oaths. So this here's the origin of that, right?

B: So the land of Goshen is an area in Egypt near, near where he is. And he says, come live here and go get dad and you can live out the famine. "And Joseph threw his arms around Benjamin and wept. Benjamin wept on his shoulder. Joseph kissed each of his brothers as he wept. And afterwards his brothers talked with him."

C: Yeah. Let me tell you something, 20 years can apparently heal a lot of wounds because that's how long Jacob is away from Esau who wanted to murder him. And that's also how long Joseph is away from his brothers who threw him in a hole and sold him into slavery.

B: Yeah.

C: I feel like I would hold a grudge.

B: You'd hold that 20 year grudge.

C: I think I would.

B: Yeah. Okay.

C: I'm a grudge holder.

B: I could see that. I try not to be, I try very hard not to be, but you never know.

C: You should try it. It's great.

B: Yeah. Okay. I'll give it, I'll give it a shot.

C: It's also very, very good for your mental health.

B: I'll take it for a walk this week. I'll just see how holding grudges goes for me. Yeah. They go back and they get Jacob and he's very excited that his son is still alive. Joseph's still alive and he's ruler over all the land of Egypt. "Jacob was stunned for, he did not believe them." I wouldn't either, Jacob, to be fair.

B: Do you think they told him, "Hey, it turned out Joseph wasn't eaten by a wolf. He's somehow - somehow! - wound up in Egypt, we don't know how.

B: "We don't know. Yeah. I don't know, what was that dead body we brought back. That's weird. That could have, could have been anything."

C: Or do you think it was more like a, "Hey, good news, bad news, good news situation. Get ready for a rollercoaster. Uh, good news. Uh, your kid's not dead. Joseph is very much alive. Bad news. Your other 11 sons did attempt to murder him.

B: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

C: "Uh, but mainly we threw him in a hole and sold him into slavery and then lied to you. But the good news is he is alive and he has a lot of food to get us through this."

B: Yeah. And so Jacob leaves for Egypt and we get a list of his entire family, everyone that goes with him, it's a total of some 70, 75 people or so, 70 to 75. I think the list here contains 71 descendants. Acts chapter seven says 75 people. Um, so that might include more descendants, but anyway.

C: Yeah. I saw this. I saw that it was a list of names and I figured you would tell me if any of them were important.

B: Yeah, that's fair. You can see at the end that they, they total up to number 66 and 70 - that math doesn't work out. So, there's a lot of debate about the significance of the number 66 and 70 because there's 71 people on the list. Dinah's not included Ur and Onan as we know, they died before they came to Egypt. Probably. Manasseh and Ephraim, we're going to see them in a second.They're Joseph's children. They got mentioned before, but we're going to see them come back in a big way later.

B: So anyway, this is how, if you're wondering, how does the nation of Israel end up in Egypt for the book of Exodus? This is it. They go and they live in the land of Goshen to escape the famine. And Joseph advises them that when Pharaoh says, "Hey, nice to meet you, Joseph's dad. Um, what do you do?" Joseph says, "absolutely say that you're a shepherd because Pharaoh hates shepherds and he'll just leave you alone in Goshen." And so he does that and it works. Pharaoh asked his brothers, what is your occupation? "And they said to Pharaoh, your servants, both we and our fathers are shepherds. And Pharaoh was like, who we've come to. And they said to him, we've come to live in the land for a while because there's no grazing land for your servant sheep since the famine in the land of Canaan has been severe. So please let us settle in the land of Goshen."

B: Pharaoh's like, "now that your father and brothers have come to you, the land of Egypt is open before you settle your father and brothers in the best part of the land." Good. Everything is working out.

C: Yeah. We get another thigh promise.

B: Yeah, when we saw that before with Abraham, it seemed that the hand under the thigh was somehow related to the sexual nature of the promise, right? It was like, I'm definitely going to find a wife definitely going to get an heir, right? But here there's no, there's no sexual nature to the putting your hand under the thigh. So,I guess that's just what you did. This was the, this is the pinky swear of Genesis.

C: Jacob's life is winding down here, and he is now so old that he can no longer see. And his son is bringing him some people for their blessings. So we get a nice little reprise of that. But this time, of course, Joseph is like, Oh, these are my sons. He doesn't try to like do it all weird. He does do some weird stuff with like just moving his arms around in weird ways and making sure like somebody is on the right side. So they get a better blessing.

B: So what's happening here is that Jacob is actually blessing Joseph's sons to take the place of Simeon and Levi, or even actually Reuben and Simeon, because, because of their role in the murder of the entire town of Shechem. They're kind of being disowned from being his main primary heirs. He's making Joseph's two sons his oldest two sons, his own grandchildren. And so, Joseph brings them to be blessed and he leads them in the way that the older son would be by Jacob's right hand and the younger son would be by Jacob's left hand. But instead, Jacob wants to give the younger son Ephra'im or Efrem or Ephra'um or however you personally pronounce it. I like Efrem 'cause of our good boy, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. I like Efrem, but Ephra'im, I think, is probably a little closer.

B: And then, Manasseh, which we also saw was the name of a later King of Israel. We saw he was the one that got mixed up in the - he's the one that murdered Isaiah. These are just two different people with the same name, but this is the, this is the Ephra'im that the tribe is named after, so when we talk about the, the Syro-Ephraimite war, Ephraim here is named after this Ephraim. His tribe becomes so prominent in the Northern kingdom that his name becomes synonymous with the entire Northern kingdom of Israel. This is the one, this is him. And so, Jacob crosses his hands so that the younger son Ephraim gets the right hand blessing, the superior blessing. And Manasseh gets the lesser left hand blessing.

C: The blessings are so complicated.

B: But yeah, here he's adopting his grandsons as his sons. That's, that's what's going on here, and making them his true heirs.

C: All right. So then, Jacob calls all his kids around and we get Jacob's last words and I'm just going to read maybe about 10 verses of this, 'cause it is fully bananas.

B: Yeah. Some of these are definitely better than others, right? You can tell who are the good sons, who are the weak sons. And we'll talk about each individual thing in a second, but yeah, go ahead.

C: "Come together and listen. Sons of Jacob, listen to your father, Israel, Reuben, you are my firstborn, my strength and the first fruits of my virility, excelling in prominence, excelling in power, turbulent as water. You will no longer excel because you got into your father's bed and you defiled it."

C: He got into my bed.

C: "Simeon and Levi are brothers. Their knives are vicious weapons. May I never enter their council. May I never join their assembly for in their anger they kill men, and on a whim they hamstring oxen. Their anger is cursed for it is strong and their fury for it is cruel. I will disperse them throughout Jacob and scatter them throughout Israel."

C: "Judah, your brothers will praise you. Your hand will be on the necks of your enemies. Your father's sons will bow down to you. Judah is a young lion. My son, you return from the kill."

C: This is a bananas set of last words to be like, "Hey, first of all, you, I used to be really proud of you. Now you suck. I hate these two Judah. You rule."

B: Yeah. And so these things, you know, obviously from a historical point of view, the book of Genesis is written considerably later. Even if you hold to the traditionalist view, this was written by Moses, which would still be hundreds of years later. So there's a little bit of benefit of hindsight, but what's going on here with Jacob's last words to each of his sons is he's basically making prophecies that will then apply to the tribes that are then descended from those sons, right? And so in the case of Reuben, he's the first born he's strong, but if you remember, he slept with his father's wife that happened back in chapter 35, right? Reuben slept with Bilhah. And so as a result, he's replaced by Ephraim as the number one son, right?

B: Simeon and Levi, they were the ones that killed the entire village of Shechem. So as a result, they are disowned. Simeon is replaced by Manasseh. So historically, they don't get land, right? Simeon and Levi, their land is taken away from them altogether, right? Each of these tribes for the most part are going to have allotments of land throughout the land of the promised land, once they finally end up there, right? The tribe of Simeon and the tribe of Levi, don't. The tribe of Simeon, his land allotment, is shared with Judah. And then the tribe of Levi, that's the Levites as in "Leviticus". And then also the Levite who was grossed out by the blood of the guy on the side of the road and the good Samaritan story, right? There are priestly class and the Levites never get their own region. And so they live in other tribes' cities. And so this prophecy here is applying to what's actually going to happen to the tribes of Simeon and Levi.

B: Judah, of course, the fourth born son who we've seen really get built up over the last couple of chapters as being the good one, the responsible one. So he gets like the dopest one. He is the lion. And of course we get the term lion associated with Judah a lot. The lion of Judah is a term used for Jesus. It also applies elsewhere. But yeah, Judah is referred to as a lion. He crouches, he lies down like a lion or, or a lioness. It could be either way. And of course we know Judah is going to be the biggest powerful kingdom after the divided kingdom. Judah is the big tribe.

B: We've got this bit here about some of the prophecies. Of course, Christians see some Jesus in this. Jesus, like I said, referred to as the lion of Judah. So the scepter and the staff, symbols of kingship in ancient Israel foretold the establishment of the Davidic dynasty as Israel's Kings. So the, "he" and "him" in verse 10b, you'll notice the HCSB capitalizes those, "the scepter will not depart from Judah or the staff from between his feet until he whose right it is comes and the obedience of the people belongs to him." Christians of course think that means Jesus. They think everything is Jesus spoilers.

B: Then we get Zebulon. He's going to live by the seashore except the tribe of Zebulon absolutely did not live by the seashore. The land allotment to Zebulon was landlocked. So, who knows?

C: Next up we get, Issachar. And this is literally what it says in the Bible. This is a chapter 49 verse 14, "Issachar is a strong donkey."

B: Yep. Lying down between the saddlebags. "His resting place was good, and that the land was pleasant. So he leaned his shoulder to bear a load, became a forced laborer." It's probably a reference to the tribe of Issachar, being enslaved by foreign invaders and also their own leaders possibly.

C: Here's the thing I like about Jacob's last words. Reuben gets a good paragraph about what he did. Simeon and Levi get vicious weapons and cursed anger. Judah obviously gets a long paragraph. Then, Jacob has so many kids that he clearly gets bored halfway through this. And he's just like, "Zebulon is going to live by the ocean. Issachar, I don't know, you're a donkey. I wait for your salvation, Lord. I'm very tired of doing this. I don't know. Gad's going to be attacked by raiders. Asher makes food. Can I just skip to Joseph?"

B: Yeah. He kind of wants to.

C: He gets through like four kids real quick.

B: There's some wordplay here on Gad on in [verse] 19, "Gad will be attacked by raiders, but he will attack their heels." So yeah, Gad is a seventh born son, associated with good fortune. Remember his name means good luck. But the, the wordplay here is,"Gad gudud yugadinnu" and that means "Gad would be attacked by raiders." So there's some good little, I don't know, consonance, alliteration going on there. And that's a reference to the land allotment for Gad [which] is vulnerable because of its location. But the Gadites are going to be strong and perseverant people who fight back against their oppressors.

C: So we finally get down to Joseph. "Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine beside a spring. Its branches climb over the wall. The archers attacked him, shot at him and were hostile towards him. Yet his boat remained steady and his strong arms were made agile by the hands of the mighty one of Jacob. By the name of the shepherd, the Dwayne Johnson of Israel."

B: Yes. So, obviously good things for Joseph. He gets the longest blessing, 61 words in Hebrew, a large number of variety of references to God, mighty one of Jacob, shepherd of rock of Israel, God, the father almighty.

C: And then like very like right here at the end we have, "Benjamin is a wolf. He tears at his prey in the morning. He devours his prey and in the evening he divides the plunder."

B: This is interpreted as meaning that Benjamin's descendants are dangerous fighters, but also ones who provide benefits for others. So, Benjaminites: fighting skills. We'll see those come back into play in the book of Judges. And of course, King Saul and Jonathan, are powerful military leaders who are descendants of Benjamin. So we'll see those guys later.

C: So then Jacob dies. So they embalm him and they take him back to Canaan to bury him, 'cause he did not want to be buried in Egypt. And then Joseph also dies, but he is buried in Egypt.

B: Right. And I should say Jacob's body is carried back to Canaan in all honor. There's a huge parade and everyone in Canaan flips out over this giant Egyptian parade coming through the desert as Jacob's body is being brought back to the cave where Abraham and Isaac are buried in their land in Canaan. And yeah, Joseph dies. So Jacob lived what? A hundred and 130, 150 years or something. Joseph lived to 110, but he lived long enough to see his grandsons and some great grandsons. He says, I'm about to die to his brothers. I don't know why he's about to die, but his other brothers are still alive somehow. "'God will certainly come to your aid and bring you up from this land to the land He promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' So Joseph made the sons of Israel take an oath. 'When God comes to your aid, you are to carry my bones up from here." Joseph died at the age of 110, embalmed him and placed him in a coffin in Egypt." But yeah, of course he wants to be, in the land of his forefathers or literally his father's, his grandfather's grandfather and so on. And we will see that that does happen.

B: Who do you think, Chris, might have to be the one to take Joseph's body out of Egypt into the promised land?

C: I bet it's going to be somebody who spends a lot of time getting there.

B: Yeah, you're right. Yeah, of course it's, it's Moses. Moses and his peeps, of course, we know Moses doesn't make it all the way to the promised land, but, oh, spoilers, I guess for, for the rest of the Torah, if anyone doesn't know.

C: So the last verse of Genesis is, as you said, "Joseph died at the age of 110, they embalmed him and placed him in a coffin in Egypt," and that's it. That's the end of Genesis. Here's what I wrote right into that: "Well, everything seems fine for our Hebrew pals here in Egypt. Pharaoh loves them and they're all happy together." So I'm pretty sure that is going to be maintained as we move eventually into the book of Exodus. It's smooth sailing.

B: Yeah. Everyone is very familiar with the longstanding amicable relationship between the Israelites and the Egyptians. They're very famous for it.

C: It seems to be going very well.

B: Yeah. And I think it will continue that way. So this is how the Israelites end up in Egypt. And when we eventually get to Exodus, we, which we are absolutely not doing next, when we get to Exodus, it's going to be hundreds of years later and the Israelites have been there for hundreds of years. They just never went back. And of course, well, the relationship has shifted with Joseph gone. And so we have to get a new hero, Moses, to help the Israelite people who are trapped in Egypt. And that's what the rest of the Torah basically is about. That and very, very many laws.

C: And that's it.

B: That's Genesis.

C: That's Genesis.

B: Yeah. It took, it took what, like, what are we up to now? Like seven hours or something?

C: Quite a bit.

B: Yeah.

C: Quite a bit.

B: And you know what? It's because we're so thorough, and you know what, Chris, they should call us, they should call us Henry and David. You know why? Cause we're so thorough.

C: [Mumbling sadly] We're so thorough.

B: Yeah. We're Henry David thorough. Yeah.

C: Uh, we're going to do a whole episode, kind of wrapping up Genesis with our very first guest, David Wolkin. That's going to be coming up in our next one. Our first episode where we are not going to be going through scripture, but just sort of talking about biblical themes. But right here, I do want to say when we started this, I didn't want to go through the book in canon order.

B: Yeah.

C: Primarily because I wanted to mix in the Apocrypha and I wanted to not just read the Bible cover to cover.

B: Right.

C: And I'm really glad that we did that, 'cause I think moving around the way that we have has really revealed some things and some patterns that I think we maybe wouldn't have noticed, or maybe we wouldn't have highlighted.

B: Sure.

C: Like doing Isaiah before we did the gospels for instance, was really interesting. And then doing the things that we did after the gospels and going back and having that context. I'm really glad we did not start with Genesis 'cause for it to be the first book of Bible, it is buck wild.

B: Yeah.

C: I don't, I think sitting down and reading starting with Genesis is a truly bizarre undertaking. It's a weird, weird book.

B: It really is. Yeah. Um, and it's also very long. I feel like it would have been easy for us. We would, I feel like it'd be easy for us to get discouraged if we had started, you know, with the Pentateuch, just because Genesis and Exodus are two of the top five longest books of the Bible. And it would have been, I think when we were starting off, I think we would have felt more compelled to try and cover everything in an episode or two, I think. And we might've gotten bogged down a little bit and it would have been kind of discouraging. So I think it's good that we were able to bounce around and hit a couple of different genres before we got into something as involved as this. So.

C: Well, there's so much weird, like... it doesn't feel like a cohesive unit in the way that even like the gospels do, You know? 'Cause it really is divided up. You've got Adam stuff.

B: Yep.

C: And then you've got Noah's stuff and Abraham stuff.

B: Yeah.

C: And then Jacob and Esau and then Joseph, like there's so much going on by the end of this book. Like the story of Joseph does not at all read like the story of Adam and Eve, right?

C: Yeah, it feels like it was written in an entirely different time period, right?

C: I mean, it barely, honestly, it barely reads like the story of Jacob, which if you'll recall just has like, it will seem like a pretty reasonable narrative and then go, "Oh, also he went and hung out where, uh, where there's a portal to heaven."

B: Yeah.

C: And then he wrestled God.

B: Yeah.

C: And then he did sheep magic.

B: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the earlier stories are a lot more episodic. So the story of Jacob feels very, very much more cohesive. Like we said, other than the diversion into the story of Judah and Tamar, it's pretty much A to B to C to D to the end. Right? It's a very clear linear story.

C: There is no talking serpent.

B: Yes.

C: For instance.

B: Yes. Also apart from, apart from prophetic dreams, there's not really that much supernatural stuff in the story of Joseph.

C: Yeah. This is the same book where God was hanging out, eating five gallons of bread.

B: Right.

C: And that is a very... I feel like trying to get through all of that at the start of things. And I know that like, there are several people who have actually sat down and cover to cover read the Bible, but I don't know how you would't be stymied by Genesis at the start of things.

B: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think we did well to kind of bounce around like we did, and kind of hit some high points, to hit more easier to digest kind of stories first. I think was a, was a good plan on our part, even though it was a little bit play it by ear, but there was a little bit of method to the decisions there at the beginning. So I think it's worked out for us. And of course I think we're going to continue to bounce around a little bit. I think, I do think once we do get to Exodus, we'll probably follow things linearly for a while because it is kind of a continued narrative of the story of the people of Israel, once you get Moses. I mean, there's some things that will jump back, like Deuteronomy repeats some stuff from the earlier books of the Torah and then the books First and Second Chronicles are a different version of kind of a recap of the things that happen in books of Samuel and Kings and that kind of stuff. But for the most part, Exodus through second Chronicles and honestly even Ezra and Nehemiah is kind of a sustained narrative that goes more or less chronologically. And so I think once we do hit Exodus, we'll probably try and go in order with a few exceptions there.

B: I think we'll probably do Ruth at a different time. We might do Esther at a different time because those are kind of standalone stories that we can provide the context for. But otherwise, I think once we do get into Exodus, I think we're going to lock into that pattern a little bit, but maybe that'll change. But in my thoughts right now, once we do finally decide to hit Moses, we'll kind of carry on from him through the exile basically.

C: So have we decided what we're going to do as our next reading selection?

B: Nope. We sure haven't, but I do know this. It will be Christian and it will be very weird. That's all I know so far. We'll let you know for sure. And next week's episode, there's no reading assignment for next week. Just be ready to hear us talk to our friend David Wolkin, who's going to talk about, who's going to help present a Jewish perspective. So you're not just hearing two jugs of milk all the time. And he's going to talk to us about Genesis and the Torah, a little bit about documentary theory, his ideas, his life experiences and how he connects with this material. We'll have all that stuff next week. So no reading assignment this time, but we'll let you know next time for sure. Whatever weird New Testament apocrypha we'll be reading next time.

C: And I do not know if we'll have time to like really get into this, but given that this is our first time doing a discussion with someone else, if you have something from the book of Genesis that you'd like to hear us talk a little more about, maybe go into themes, then by all means, get in touch. Let us know.

B: Yeah, absolutely.

C: Which you can do by just hitting us up on Tumblr at apocrypals.tumblr.com, where we also post a bunch of different stuff, or just shouting at us directly on Twitter, using the hashtag #apocrypals. We would love to know what you would like to hear us discuss in these episodes where we're going to do like different perspectives on the things we've talked about.

B: Right. So if you have questions, that you'd like us to ask our guest, David Wolkin, keeping in mind that he's more of an expert on this stuff than we are. Also he's going to have a Jewish perspective. So if you'd like to hear more about that, or if you want to know more about, I don't know, Jewish stuff, go ahead and ask him, 'cause I feel like he'll have no problem speaking for an entire community. So, hit us up with some questions. Just let us know that you've got a question for David, and we'll try and save those and ask him if we get a chance to on a next week's episode. We have no idea, I think what the shape and format of that episode is going to be, 'cause we haven't done a guest yet. So we'll see how, we'll see how it goes. It could be really interesting as we kind of find our footing as we determine what our format for guests is going to be, I guess.

C: Yeah. He's also been reading Knightfall lately. So if you have any questions about like Bane or Jean-Paul Valley, AKA Azrael, we can talk to him about that as well.

B: Yeah. That's a Jewish thing. Let's talk to him about Azrael cause that's a Jewish thing. So, any questions you might have for him, hit us up, use the hashtag apocrypals. You can find Chris on Twitter @theisb, B as in boy, B as in Bane, B as in bread, B as in Bible. There it is. You can find me at Benito underscore Cereno on Twitter. A lot of you guys managed to find us and use the hashtag, which we really appreciate. And as Chris mentioned, the Tumblr, apocrypals.tumblr.com, you can find us there.

B: Also as long as we're doing this kind of stuff, if you like the show, you want to help support us, you want to help us pay for hosting and other expenses we have for the show, you can make a donation to us at, K O dash F I dot com slash apocrypals, ko-fi.com/apocrypals. It's a site where you can just make a donation in increments of $3. The idea is that is approximately the cup of a cup of coffee. It's the Holy days. If you want to hit us up with $18, the number of life, super dope. We appreciate everybody who's made donations to the show. You can do as much or as little as you want. It's not a recurring donation. Although you can donate as often as you want. So we've got that.

B: Oh, here's one. We keep forgetting to mention Chris. People, you can also find us on Spotify, not, not the podcast. You gotta be a famous podcast to have your podcast on Spotify, but there is a playlist on Spotify that you can find that includes all the music that Chris has included in the show, not only at the top and at the end of the show, but also any other kind of beat or needle drop that he's done in the show has made it to that playlist. Is it just called Apocrypals? Chris is it just the Apocrypals? i

C: It's just called the Apocrypals playlist. Yeah. I need to put in all the slow jam.

B: We had very many slow jams in the last episode, so I think once you add those, but yeah, if you're interested in the music that we've played here, if you didn't recognize a song or you wanted to know more about it, you can find it there. You can hear the whole thing. And hopefully one day we'll be famous enough that we can be included as a podcast on Spotify. We are on Stitcher now, by the way, we got added on to Stitcher about a month ago. And we forgot to mention that. So if you know somebody who that's their preferred podcast platform, if that was somehow a stumbling block to them getting into the show, let them know that we are on stitcher and they can find us that way. But we are of course also on Apple podcasts. And if you like us, the best thing you can do, if you can't donate to us on Kofi is to go onto Apple podcasts leave us a rating or review or rating and a review. We appreciate that because the more reviews we get, the more likely we are to be featured, even though we're the only Bible podcast on the internet, somehow we're still not number one, help us get featured, help us rise up those Christian comedy charts 'cause that's what we are, I guess. Uh, leave us a review on Apple podcasts. We'd really appreciate it. Uh, what about you, Chris, where can people find you if they're looking for your business?

C: You can just go to the-isb.com and find links to everything that I do around the web. We've got some comics coming out next month. Both of those are featured in the Army of Darkness Halloween special, just did the lettering pass on that today. And it's going to be a lot of fun. If you want to see Ash fighting black beard as a zombie in Charleston, South Carolina, and who doesn't, then pick that one up. It's also got a story by Benito in the back. And of course, my writing partner and I, Chad Bowers and I are doing some Sleepwalker stuff coming up with artist Todd Nauck. And that's going to be great. That's going to do it. I mean, we're done with Genesis, but we're not done talking about Genesis, but I feel good having been through the book. That's another one down - our wrap up of the book of Genesis with a special guest, David Wolkin until then for Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Peace be with you.

[Music: "Coat of Many Colors" by Dolly Parton]