Hebrew Myths (43 page)

(
j
) Others say that because Joseph embalmed Jacob’s body, as if God could not have preserved it, also letting Judah style Jacob ‘your servant’ without protest, he was outlived by all his brothers.
⁴³¹

***

1
. Jacob’s blessing gives mythological authority for the political future of Ephraim and Manasseh. It postulates an original tribe of Joseph consisting of several clans which, after invading Canaan under Joshua, formed a federation with the already resident Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah tribes. Joseph’s two most powerful clans then claimed to be independent tribes, each equal in rank with its new allies, and adopted the lesser clans—Joseph’s unnamed younger sons in the myth—as ‘sons’ of their own. Manasseh had originally been senior to Ephraim (or whatever the clan was first called which occupied Mount Ephraim—see 45.
2
), but now admitted itself junior. Similar shifts in tribal status and structure still occur among Arabian desert tribes (see 42.
4–5
and 50.
3
).

Jacob’s final blessing on his grandsons is repeated to this day by orthodox Jewish fathers each Sabbath Eve. Touching their sons’ heads, they say: ‘God prosper you like Ephraim and Manasseh!’

2
. Two early versions of the myth, one Ephraimite and the other Judaean, have here been somewhat carelessly combined, so that Jacob’s speech rambles in a manner attributable to a failing memory. Ephraim and Judah, of course, come off far better than the other tribes; and even the late priestly editor has refrained from converting Jacob’s curse on Levi into a blessing.

3
. Joseph’s funeral progress to Gilead with an armed escort suggests that he was asserting Israel’s sovereign claims over all Canaan; a hint exploited by late midrashim, which make him reconquer the country as far as the Euphrates. But that Atad’s threshing floor—
atad
means ‘camel thorn’—lay beyond Jordan, is a late gloss on the
Genesis
text, perhaps suggested by a misreading of ‘the stream’, namely the Torrent of Egypt (
Genesis
XV. 18),
alias
the River Zior, which formed the Canaanite-Egyptian frontier. In other words, Joseph’s followers performed the mourning ceremony at a Canaanite village just beyond the border.
Abel-Mizraim
means no more than ‘the Egyptian meadow’—
ebel
, ‘mourning’ is another word altogether. Syrian weddings and funerals are still celebrated on the level surface of threshing floors.

4
. The Cave of Machpelah has been for centuries hidden by an Arab mosque, to which neither Christians nor Jews are admitted, and its contents remain a holy secret. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Machpelah in 1163
A.D
., wrote that the six sepulchres occupied a third and innermost cave. According to Josephus, they were built of the finest marble.

5
. The ‘Shoulder’ bequeathed to Joseph was Shechem (see 49.
3. 5
).

6
. A midrashic embellishment of Jacob’s death-bed blessings attributes to him the first use of Moses’
Shema
, ‘Hear, O Israel!’ (
Deuteronomy
VI.
3
), which still remains the chief Jewish prayer.

(
a
) Before dying at the age of one hundred and ten years, Joseph had great-grandchildren to dandle on his knees. One day he told the brothers: ‘Our God will assuredly lead you back to Canaan, the Promised Land. Since I have now reached the end of life, pray take my body there with you, and He will repay your kindness.’

These were his last words. He was duly embalmed and laid in a sarcophagus on the banks of the River Sihor. All Egypt mourned him for seventy days.
⁴³²

(
b
) Some say that Joseph made the brothers swear to bury him near Shechem, where he had once gone in search of them; and to bury Asenath in Rachel’s tomb beside the road to Ephrath.
⁴³³

(
c
) Pharaoh also died. His successor reigned without a Viceroy and, when he saw Israel multiplying faster than the Egyptians, remarked: ‘A dangerous people! If Egypt should be invaded from the East, they might well choose to assist my enemies.’ He therefore treated even Joseph’s descendants as serfs, appointing taskmasters who forced them to build the treasure cities of Rameses and Pithom, and who made their lives a burden. This bondage continued for many generations, until Moses arose and led Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land, taking with him the bones of Joseph, in fulfilment of his ancestor Levi’s promise, and burying them at Shechem.
⁴³⁴

***

1
. The River Sihor (or Zior), is identified with the Torrent of Egypt (now the Wadi el Arish—see 60.
3
). Thus Joseph’s sarcophagus was placed as close to the Canaanite frontier as possible.

2.
The
Genesis
myths suggest that Israel’s early religion compromised between ancestor worship and the cult of an Aramaean tribal war-and-fertility god, not much different from those of Moab or Ammon, whose
power could be effective only in the particular territory occupied by his people—thus Naaman the Syrian later imports two mule-loads of Ephraimite earth in order to worship the God of Israel at Damascus (2
Kings
V. 17). No references to any goddess are included, and in parts of the Joseph myth He is clearly equated with Akhenaten’s monotheistic conception of a supreme universal god (see 56.
4
).

3
. When a dead man had been duly mourned, he was thought to have joined the honourable company of his ancestors in Sheol, or The Pit, where they lay fast asleep (
Job
III. 14–19). Mourners who approached the clan’s burial ground removed their shoes (
Ezekiel
XXIV. 17), as before visiting places traditionally sanctified by the tribal god’s appearance (
Exodus
III. 5 and
Joshua
V. 15). The souls of the dead, however, did not slumber but were credited with powers of thought. They could be consulted by divination (1
Samuel
XXVIII. 8–19), and were called ‘the Knowing Ones’ (
Leviticus
XIX. 31;
Isaiah
XIX. 3) because aware of their descendants’ acts and fates. Thus Rachel mourns from the grave for her distressed children (
Jeremiah
XXXI. 15). The dead were, in fact, underworld deities, or
elohim
(1
Samuel
XXVIII. 13–20).

4
. Unless buried among his ancestors, a dead man was banished to an unknown part of Sheol and denied proper worship. Hence Jacob’s and Joseph’s repetitive demands for burial in Canaan, and the terrible punishment inflicted on Korah, Dathan and Abiram by God, when the earth swallowed them up without the obligatory funeral rites (
Numbers
XVI. 31 ff). Sheol was still considered to be outside God’s jurisdiction (
Psalms
LXXXVIII. 5–6;
Isaiah
XXXVIII. 18). But the body had to be complete, and even so the soul perpetually bore marks of its death, whether by the sword as in
Ezekiel
XXXII. 23 or by grief, as when Jacob feared that his grey hairs would go down in sorrow to the grave (
Genesis
XLII. 38). Esau’s loss of his head was considered a shameful calamity for Edom.

5
. The notion that God controlled Sheol too does not occur until about the fifth century
B.C
. (
Job
XXVI. 6;
Psalm
CXXXIX. 8;
Proverbs
XV. 11); nor does that of the soul’s resurrection until about a century later, when the unknown prophet whose words are included in
Isaiah
declared that all righteous Israelites should arise and participate in the Messianic Kingdom, quickened by God’s ‘dew of light’ (
Isaiah
XXVI. 19). Sheol thus came to be treated as a Purgatory where souls await the Last Judgement. This is still Orthodox Jewish and also Catholic belief.

This list does not include the Old and New Testaments, nor the standard Greek and Roman authors.

A

ABODA
ZARA
. A. tractate of the
Babylonian Talmud
. See B.

ABOT
DIR
(
ABBI
)
NATHAN
. Ed. by Solomon Schechter, Vienna, 1887. Photostatic reprint, New York, 1945. This edition contains both versions of the book, which is a midrash of Tannaitic origin with many subsequent additions. Quoted by page.

ACTS
OF
ST
.
THOMAS
. See
Gospel of St. Thomas
.

ADAMBUCH
.
Das christliche Adambuch des Morgenlandes
. Aus dem Äthiopischen mit Bemerkungen übersetzt von A. Dillmann, Göttingen, 1853. An apocryphal
Book of Adam
, preserved in an Ethiopic text of the sixth century.

ADAMSCHRIFTEN
.
Die Apokryphischen Gnostischen Adamschriften
. Aus dem Armenischen übersetzt und untersucht von Erwin Preuschen, Giessen, 1900. An apocryphal
Book of Adam
preserved in an Armenian text.

AGADAT
BERESHIT
. A late Hebrew midrash containing homilies on
Genesis
, based mainly on the
Tanhuma
(see
Tanhuma Buber
). Edited by Solomon Buber, Cracow, 1903. Photostatic reprint, New York, 1959.

AGADAT
SHIR
HASHIRIM
. A tenth-century midrash on
Canticles
. Quoted by page of Solomon Schechter’s edition, Cambridge, 1896.

AGUDAT
AGADOT
. Ed. Ch. M. Horowitz, Frankfurt a. M., 1881.

ALPHA
BETA
DIBEN
SIRA
. Two versions, one (
a
) in Aramaic and one (
b
) in Hebrew, of alphabetically arranged proverbs with explanations, attributed to Jesus ben Sira, author of the apocryphal
Ecclesiasticus
, but in fact a much later compilation. Quoted by folio of Steinschneider’s edition, Berlin, 1858; or, if so stated, by page and column of
Otzar Midrashim
(q.v.).

ANET
. See Pritchard.

APOC
.
OF
ABRAHAM
. An apocryphal book written originally in Hebrew or Aramaic in the late first century
A.D
. Ed. by George Herbert Box, London, 1918.

APOC
.
OF
BARUCH
, or 2 Baruch. An apocryphal book, written originally in Hebrew by orthodox Jews of the first century
A.D
. Extant in a Syriac version. See Charles,
The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
, Oxford, 1913, Vol. ii. pp. 470–526.

APOC
.
MOSIS
.
Apocalypse of Moses
, ed. L. F. C. von Tischendorf, in his
Apocalypses Apocryphae
.

APOC
.
OF
MOSES
. Ed. Charles. See R. H. Charles (ed.),
The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
, Vol. ii. pp. 138 ff.

APPU
FROM
SHUDUL
. A Hittite myth. Summarized by Th. H. Gaster in his
The Oldest Stories in the World
, New York, 1952, pp. 159–67, under the title ‘Master Good and Master Bad’.

ARABIAN
NIGHTS
, or the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Original title:
Alf Layla Walayla
(‘A Thousand and One Nights’). A huge Arabic collection of early mediaeval folk stories.

ASCENSION
OF
ISAIAH
. An apocryphal book composed of three parts: the Martyrdom of Isaiah, the Vision of Isaiah, and the Testament of Hezekiah. The first of these is of Jewish origin from the first century
A.D
.; the other two were the work of Christian writers. See Charles,
The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
, Vol. ii. pp. 155 ff.

ASENATH
,
PRAYER
OF
. See
Joseph and Asenath
.

AZULAI
,
ABRAHAM
,
HESED
LEABRAHAM
. A kabbalistic work of a sixteenth-century commentator. Printed in Wilna, 1877.

B

B
.
Bavli
(Babylonian). The
Babylonian Talmud
, compiled in Babylonia around 500
A.D
. Written partly in Hebrew, but mostly in Aramaic. Quoted by tractate (whose title follows the abbreviation B.) and folio.

BABA
BATHRA
. A tractate of the
Babylonian Talmud
. See B.

BABA
KAMMA
. A tractate of the
Babylonian Talmud
. See B.

BABA
METZIA
. A tractate of the
Babylonian Talmud
. See B.

BARAITA
DIMASS
.
NIDDA
. See Tosephta Atiqta.

BARAITA
DIMAASE
BERESHIT
, ed. Chones, in Buber,
Yeri’ot Shelomo
, Warsaw, 1896, pp. 47–50. Photostatic reprint, New York, 1959.

2
BARUCH
. See
Apoc. of Baruch
.

BATE
MIDRASHOT
. A collection of minor midrashim, compiled and edited by Shelomo Aharon Wertheimer, Jerusalem, 1914. Quoted by page of the second, 2-vol. edition, Jerusalem, 1953.

BEKHOROT
. A tractate of the
Babylonian Talmud
. See B.

BERAKHOT
. A tractate of the
Babylonian
and of the
Palestinian Talmud
. See B. and Yer.

BERESHIT
RABBATI
. A midrash on Genesis, abridged from a longer lost midrash compiled by Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan in the first half of the eleventh century at Narbonne. Quoted by page of Hanoch Albeck’s edition, Jerusalem, 1940.