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Chapter 1: Method

When I read the story of Joseph in Genesis, I see how his

actions cross what would have been normal gender boundaries in

ancient Israel—and often cross gender boundaries in my own

American context. There are other texts in the Bible that show

characters crossing gender boundaries, but because Joseph's story

is both cohesive and consistent in its crossing of gender

boundaries, I see his text as the best place to start in order to

open up discussion about non-heteronormative and non-cisgender

persons and relationships within my sacred text. As well, I see a

great need for both gender non-conforming persons and cisgender

persons to see non-cisgender persons in the text. This need

arises because language is important. As Christie Cozad Neuger

writes, “Language generates imagery. Imagery is more powerful,

more lasting, and more integrative than are concepts; moreover,

we use imagery to store that which is most fundamental in our

knowledge systems.”1 When we limit our language to only

considering two conceptions of gender in our texts—gender as

1 Christie Cozad Neuger, “Image and Imagination: Why Inclusive Language Matters,” in Engaging the Bible in a Gendered World: An Introduction to Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Honor of Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, ed. Linda Day and Carolyn Pressler(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 155.

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linked to biologically male and biologically female, and so

generating only ‘man’ or ‘woman’—we leave out those who occupy

spaces in between or altogether forgo those gender constructions.

As such, I ask the question to see where we can find space for

those who do not conform to one of two gender categories. In

doing so, my goal is to aid in gaining new or perhaps lost

perspectives on gender within biblical interpretation. In the

process of questioning the text, I will first examine the state

of the question and how it impacts biblical interpretation, and

then lay out my method of research. Next, I will look at Joseph’s

gender constructions in relation to his initial robe, his

liminality, his beauty, his power and power constructions

surrounding him, his status as a dreamer and wise person, and his

relationships with his family members. In so doing, I hope to

break open my sacred text in order to begin uncovering gender

alterity within it, with the goal of inclusion in interpretation

for my transgender and genderqueer siblings.

This question works within Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

interpretive studies by fostering discussions about gender in our

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scriptures. Neuger writes, “There are ‘dominant gender

narratives,’ or gender discourses, within the culture that shape

the way we form our personal, familial, and social core

narratives and that have major influence on how we make meaning

in our lives.”2 These gender narratives have often been

reinforced via use of our sacred texts—either by sanctifying ‘he’

over ‘she’ or by displacing people who do not fit into particular

categories. Neuger continues, “People are subtly and blatantly

ordered in a hierarchy of value based on various essential

(defined more or less by birth) qualities like skin color,

ethnicity, sex, able-bodiedness, intelligence, sexual

orientation, and physical appearance.”3 I add gender to this list

—both gender identity (which might fall into that category of

‘essential (more or less by birth,’ being how we identify

ourselves as gendered) and gender expression (how we express our

gender, a cultural construct that might involve more conscious

choice than gender identity).4 Cisnormativity—that which places 2 Neuger, “Image and Imagination: Why Inclusive Language Matters,” 157.3 Ibid.4 Sam Killermann, “The Genderbread Person v3.0”

(itsprounouncedmetrosexual.com, April 2013), http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3c/99/44/3c994491875483e6c4b4fdc1107eb5a9.jpg. Killermann has an official Genderbread Person v2.0 on his site, itspronouncedmetrosexual.com. I like the 3.0 version better as it includes

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normative value on cisgender being and acting—functions in this

same hierarchical manner. Placing Joseph's story at the center of

discussions about gender and the Bible allows myself and others

to then reach out to other stories, both within and outside the

Bible, in order to see gender anew within the texts. In my field

and context (American), Hebrew Testament (HT) interpretation has

most often, until recently, been done by cisgender, heterosexual

white men who have not had the lens of non-cisgender perspective,

and so have left out and discounted many ways of reading the

texts. Thus, asking the question about reading Joseph as

transgender explodes open new ways of reading many different

characters and stories so that we can gain greater insight

through varied interpretations.

State of the Question

The state of the question remains open. Few people have

studied the gender-boundary-crossing of the Joseph of Genesis in

depth. Older studies of the Joseph narrative gloss over the

for a difference between sexual and romantic attraction, though neither of those pertain directly to either Joseph or transgender experience itself.

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‘princess dress’ he’s wearing. Some make a passing reference5 to

its connection to the 2 Samuel mention of Tamar’s robe, but do

not go beyond that mention.

I have found a few authors and scholars who have made

reference to Joseph’s often-feminized state. Cassell’s

Encyclopedia6 includes a section discussing the strangeness of

Joseph’s dress/presentation. Peterson Toscano7 has done some work

on what a feminine Joseph may have looked like to his

contemporaries. I will draw on some of his biblio-drama as I

write. Gershon Hepner has several chapters that focus on Joseph.8

Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.’s, work9 hits upon much of what I will

discuss, though he does not discuss the dream elements of the

Joseph narrative (I will discuss them). Lori Hope Lefkovitz makes

headway with gender and the Hebrew Testament, discussing Joseph

5 E. A. Speiser, “Joseph and His Brothers,” in Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, The Anchor Bible (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1964), 272–378.

6 Randy P. Connor, David Hatfield Sparks, and Mariya Sparks, “Joseph,” Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Lore (Bath, Great Britain: The Bath Press, 1997).

7 Peterson Toscano, “Peterson Toscano,” Professional Website, Peterson Toscano,October 1, 2013, http://petersontoscano.com/.

8 Gershon Hepner, Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 2010).

9 Theodore W. Jennings Jr., “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” in Jacob's Wound: Homoerotic narrative in the literature of Ancient Israel (New York: Continuum, 2005), 177–98.

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and masculinity in particular.10 I will draw on Kathleen

McCaffrey’s gender work in “The Female Kings of Ur.”11 For more

general discussion of gender as performance and as performed in

ancient Israel, Judith Butler’s seminal work in Gender Trouble12

and Phyllis Bird’s thorough work in Missing Persons and Mistaken

Identities13 will be used to further explore gender in Ancient

Israel and Mesopotamia, as well as to create a contemporary

connection.

So, though only a few authors and scholars have given

specific thought to the nearly whole-sale feminization of Joseph

in the Genesis narrative, much work has been done on gender in

the ancient world. This means that I will be adding significantly

to the conversation, while also not being left without resources.

Method

10 Lori Hope Lefkovitz, In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010).

11 Diane Bolger, ed., Gender Through Time in the Ancient Near East (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008).

12 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).

13 Phyllis A. Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997).

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To do this work, I will mainly use reader response method

(having a specific reader-oriented lens and asking questions

about how the characters in the narrative interact with one

another). While I will have other methods involved in various

parts of my thesis—historical-critical, text-critical, narrative-

critical—the reader response method will best suit my purpose of

looking at the text through the eyes of a specific reader/group

of readers. With my goal of inclusion of queer identities when

doing biblical interpretation, I have a specific lens through

which I am reading my texts. This trans*-inclusive reader lens

enables me to make connections within the narrative I’ve chosen,

within the wider Hebrew Bible, and extra-biblically that I and

others might not otherwise have made. I then turn to historical-

critical method to discuss what the text meant versus what it

means in historical and modern contexts, as well as how it

compares to other texts of the same period, and to text-critical

method specifically to show links via word usage, definitions,

and prohibitions within the text itself. These methods will help

inform the overarching reader response method for me.

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I choose to foreground reader response method, because if I

were to use historical-critical as my main method, my research

would have to change from having a specific audience in mind for

inclusion (as I do with the reader response method) to having an

audience of scholars interested in the interplay of gender in the

world of ancient Israel. Thus, my end goal—inclusion of queer

identities in the conversation of gender—would have to be met

through a different route of research. Instead of starting with

the ancient texts and working toward my current context, I am

starting with my current context as a lens for reading Scripture.

As well, reader-response suits my purposes specifically because

it “is not a conceptually unified criticism; it is a spectrum of

positions.”14 Because queer theory and queer criticism also

include a non-unified spectrum of critical styles, I find that

the two mesh well together. Ellen T. Armour writes, “to ‘queer’

is to complicate, to disrupt, to disturb all kinds of

orthodoxies….”15 I do seek to queer the text, disrupting 14 Edgar V. McKnight, “Reader-Response Criticism,” in To Each Its Own Meaning: An

Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application, ed. Steven L. McKenzie and Stephen R. Haynes (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 230.

15 Ellen T. Armour, “Queer Bibles, Queer Scriptures? An Introductory Response,” in Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship, ed. Teresa J. Hornsby and Ken Stone (Atlanta, Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 2.

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heteronormative and cisnormative16 readings of it. As I do this,

I find Jospeh Marchal’s take helpful. Marchal states, “it is

important to keep in mind that no definition and description of

queer theories can be exhaustive; in fact, any claim to be giving

the final and definitive version of what queer theories are or do

would itself be un-queer.”17 This does not, however, mean that

neither reader-response criticism nor queer theory lack

parameters within which each operates. Of reader-response method,

Edgar McKnight writes, “Such an approach is valuable for a

variety of reasons. First, serious interaction with the text is

facilitated by reader-response criticism…. Second, this reader-

response approach represents a victory for the reader. Readers

are freed to make sense for themselves.”18 This allows for

insights that readers have about the text to come to life, to be

explored, and to have weight and meaning alongside other critical

methods of reading the text. That is, it starts with the reader

and works back into the text as a method of interrogation. 16 Cisnormativity is that which privileges cisgender being and acting above

trans- and gender-non-conforming ways of being and acting. It functions in much the same way as heteronormativity.

17 Joseph A. Marchal, “Queer Approaches: Improper Relations with Pauline Letters,” in Studying Paul’s Letters: Contemporary Perspectives and Methods, ed. Joseph A.Marchal (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 211.

18 McKnight, “Reader-Response Criticism,” 240.

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Similarly, queer theory, as Marchal describes Ken Stone noting,

is “one whose starting point is to contest and interrogate

normalization, in all of its configurations, including with and

through the Bible.”19 In reading Joseph as transgender, starting

from my own context and working back into the text, I seek to

“interrogate [the] normalization” of Joseph that has taken place

both within the text and outside of it, by making note of the

queer manner in which Joseph’s story reads—from his first coat

through his death. Thus, my particular flavor of reader-response

is a queer stance, looking at how the text itself reads queerly

to me, in order to show that it can be read trans*-inclusively.

This stance must be held in check, of course, to keep away

from accusations that I am reading myself into the text—

practicing eisegesis rather than exegesis. While critiquing

reader response method, Cynthia Lewis notes that “Rosenblatt

views the text as central to the literary experience and finds

the focus on the personal advocated by other reader-response

critics (e.g., Bleich, 1974; Holland, 1985) too remote from the

19 Marchal, “Queer Approaches,” 218.

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experience of the text itself.”20 Louise Rosenblatt, Lewis notes,

is often cited as a source for reading the personal in the text,

and yet Rosenblatt seems to push against that notion as well.

While my reading of the text is necessarily personal—whose

reading would it be but mine?—it must also be accessible by those

who are not me, and thus held accountable via scrutiny using

other methods. Furthermore, McKnight notes that “[t]he Bible is

not literature in the conventional sense. A reduction of the

Bible to secular literature would seem to be illegitimate.”21 As

such, I will treat the text will care, respective to the truths

it holds for those who spoke it, wrote it, and preserved it, as

well as to the truths it holds for those who read it today.

For this scrutiny, I turn to historical-critical, text-

critical, and narrative-critical methods. David R. Law writes of

historical-critical criticism, “The first task is to establish as

accurate a text as possible…. The second task is to identify the

sources from which biblical texts were constructed.”22 This 20 Cynthia Lewis, “Critical Issues: Limits of Identification: The Personal,

Pleasurable, and Critical in Reader Response,” Journal of Literacy Reasearch 32, no. 2 (2000): 255, doi:10.1080/10862960009548076.

21 McKnight, “Reader-Response Criticism,” 247.22 David R. Law, The Historical-Critical Method: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York:

Continuum, 2012), 23.

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method takes into account not only the text itself but also the

culture from which the text comes and the use of the text within

that culture. I use this method to make sure I do not wander too

far from the text in my queer reader response. This serves as a

sort of anchor from which I can then examine the queerness of the

text both for its ancient audience and for us today. Text

criticism falls into a variety of methods (i.e., under the

heading of historical-critical23 and under its own heading24).

Paul D. Wegner states, “textual criticism is the science and art that seeks to

determine the most reliable wording of a text.”25 While I will not engage in

a deep study of text criticism, I will make use of it to note

that certain phrases occur only in certain instances, or that

others are more common, or that some apply to men and women while

others apply only to one gender or another. This works as an

underpinning for my queer reader response method, particularly in

light of how I use historical-critical method to explore the

social situation of the text both for ancient Israel and for us

today.

23 Ibid., 81.24 Paul D. Wegner, A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible (Downers Grove,

Illinois: IVP Academic, 2006).25 Ibid., 24. Italics in original.

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Each of these things—historical-critical and text-critical

approaches—will help to establish the narrative with which I

work. As such, they work well with narratology. Mieke Bal writes

of narratology, “What I propose we are best off with in the age

of cultural analysis is a conception of narratology that

implicates text and reading, subject and object, production and

analysis, in the act of understanding….a narrative theory that

enables the differentiation of the place of narrative in any

cultural expression without privileging any medium, mode, or

use.”26 She goes on to state, “The point is to ask meaningful

questions.”27 Such questions include “who speaks?” and “to what

is this a reply?”28 Determining the answers to these questions

takes both text-criticism and historical-cultural criticism, and

can be useful in examining reader response. These are questions

that speak to the use of language and its power. Claudia V. Camp

notes, “To speak of language and power means, inherently, to

speak of specific social-historical contexts.”29 Also confronting26 Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 3rd ed. (Buffalo:

University of Toronto Press, 2009), 227.27 Ibid., 228.28 Ibid.29 Claudia V. Camp, “5. Woman Wisdom and the Strange Woman: Where Is Power to

Be Found?,” in Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies: Identity and the Book, ed. Timothy K. Bealand David M. Gunn, Biblical Limits (New York: Routledge, 1997), 85.

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power in the text, Carole R. Fontaine notes that re-thinking

“gender makes more space in our heads for thinking about the

meaning of the gendered images and ideologies that are the Hebrew

Bible’s stock-in-trade, the icons of meaning out of which whole

theologies are fashioned.”30 Both of these authors point out,

through a feminist lens, what I hope to do with a trans*-

inclusive lens. Pamela J. Milne summarizes Bal’s stance well:

“What interests Bal most, especially when dealing with a

religious document like the bible [sic], which has been and

continues to be used to shape social reality in the Western

world, are the ethical responsibility for, and the political

consequence of, reading. The central issue is one of power…. For

Bal, neither the text nor the reader is innocent.”31 Narratology

bridges the gap, then, between text-critical and historical-

critical methods on one end and reader response method on the

other side. S. Tamar Kamionkowski notes, “Likewise, the redacted

Bible recognizes multiple truth claims and sets them side by

30 Carole R. Fontaine, “Response to Brenner’s ‘Identifying the Speaker-in-the-Text,’” in A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible: Approaches, Methods and Strategies, ed. Athalya Brenner and Carole R. Fontaine (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 152.

31 Pamela J. Milne, “What Shall We Do With Judith? A Feminist Reassessment ofa Biblical ‘Heroine,’” Semeia 62 (1993): 40.

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side, perhaps suggesting similarly that ‘truth’ on the human

level is indeterminable but that we must still strive to seek it.

This approach to reading…is the framework from which queer

readings may reach the most people.”32 This narrative examination

will help me shed light on the textual queerness of Joseph’s

story, with the hope of reaching “the most people”—inclusive of

those who read the text historio-critically, text-critically, and

from reader response perspectives.

Chapter 2: Joseph, the robe, and comparisons

In Genesis 37, sibling rivalry takes some ugly turns, with

the plot revolving around Joseph and his coat. The story depicts

this coat (or ‘long robe with sleeves’ as the NRSV styles it, or

‘decorated tunic’ in the NJB) as a marker both for Joseph’s

favored state in his father’s eyes and as an object of hatred in

his brothers’ eyes. While the narrative references his dreaming

as one of the reasons buttressing the brothers’ hatred of Joseph,

32 S. Tamar Kamionkowski, “Queer Theory and Historical-Critical Exegesis: Queering Biblicists--a Response,” in Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship, ed. Teresa J. Hornsby and Ken Stone (Atlanta, Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 133.

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the text first mentions their hatred immediately after Jacob

gives him the robe—and from there through the rest of the

chapter, his brothers plot to kill him, then sell him off into

slavery, and then lie about his whereabouts to their father. I

asked myself why this robe would generate such hatred. Sibling

rivalry is nothing new—from Cain and Abel through today, siblings

squabble over many things, particularly parental affection. So

why did this tunic bring about enough hatred to prompt Joseph’s

brothers to want to kill him? What was its significance in

Joseph’s culture and in other biblical stories? And what might it

mean for us today? Reading the rest of Joseph’s story, it becomes

clear that clothing marks many of his transitional

moments33.These are important moments in Joseph’s life, but for

the purpose of this chapter of my thesis, I focus on this first

robe/coat. What is it, why does Jacob give it to Joseph, and why

do Joseph’s brothers destroy it? I argue that Joseph and his

‘long robe with sleeves’ gives hope not only to the ancient

Israelites in exile, who could see themselves and their situation

mirrored in the story of Joseph’s humiliation when his brothers

33 Victor H. Matthews, “The Anthropology of Clothing in the Joseph Narrative,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 65 (1995): 25–36.

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strip him, plot evil for him, and eventually sell him into

slavery, but also for transgender people today, who can look at

Joseph wearing this feminine ‘decorated tunic’ proudly and see

themselves in how queer the text really is.

The Hebrew for the robe Joseph wears at the beginning of his

story reads 34.םםםם םםם Looking the two words up separately

yields interesting but inconclusive results. ‘םםםם’ is widely regarded to refer to: a robe for priests, a robe for women, a

robe of skins, a long robe, a dress, a robe related to Assyria in

some fashion, a decorated robe, a tunic. The older Brown-Driver-

Briggs (1952) lists the three-letter root (םםם) as “clothe?” It

goes on to translate םםםם/kutonet as: “tunic with long skirts and

sleeves [specifically related to םם, Genesis 37:3, 23, 32]; of

woman (put off at night); of king’s daughter; rent, as sign of

grief.”35 The newer Brown-Driver-Briggs lists these definitions

34 K. Elliger and W. Rudolph, eds., Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1997), Genesis 37:3.

35 Francis, DD, DLitt Brown, S.R., DD, LittD Driver, and Charles A., DD, DLitt Briggs, “םםם,” A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Based on the Lexicon of William Gesenius as Translated by Edward Robinson (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1952). The definition includes multiple variations on ‘tunic,’ but for my purposes I focus in on those that relate most closely to my thesis.

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in the same manner.36 The oldest Koehler-Baumgartner (1953)

translates םםםם/kutonet as: “dress of layman [specifically related

to Genesis 37:3, 23]; …dress of women [2 Samuel 13:18].”37 The

newer Koehler-Baumgartner (1998) agrees,38 but the revision

including Stamm in 1995 includes more: “dress of layman

[specifically related to Genesis 37: 3, 23, 31, 33]; …dress of

women [2 Samuel 13:18].” As well, this revision cites the word

only as kutonet.39

on the other hand, has much more ambiguity attached ’,םםם‘

to it. Some of the lexical entries include question marks at the

end of the potential interpretations, and there is disagreement

as to whether the word should be included as ‘םם’ or ‘םםם’ amongst lexicons. The oldest Koehler-Baumgartner lists the lexical entry

as םם, meaning: “tablet; piece; flat (of foot); palm; spade.” It 36 Francis, DD, DLitt Brown, S. R., DD, LittD Driver, and Charles A., DD,

DLitt Briggs, “םםםם,” The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon withan appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979).

37 Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, “םםםם,” Lexicon In Veteris Testamenti Libros: A Dictionary of the Hebrew Old Testament in English and German; a Dictionary of the Aramaic Parts ofthe Old Testament in English and German (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1953).

38 Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, “םםםם,” A Bilingual Dictionary of the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament English and German (Boston: Brill, 1998).

39 Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob Stamm, “םםםם,” trans. MEJ Richardson, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament II: Tav - Ayin (New York: E.J. Brill, 1995).

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goes on to include under this entry space for םםםם םםם: “tunic

composed of variegated pieces?; tunic reaching to the ankles?”40

The 1998 Koehler-Baumgartner reiterates these translations41. The

1995 revision with Stamm includes more information under םם:

probably a primary noun; palm of the hand, sole of the foot,piece, tax; …tablet; part,

portion; Gn 37:3 2S 13:18 and ם' םם' Gn 37:23,32 2S 13:19: meaning disputed, with

uncertainty already in the versions, on which see especiallyDillmann, Genesis (1892); a

tunic made from different pieces of coloured material; םםם aword to indicate

decorative needlework on valuable garments; a robe reaching right down to the ankles;

more precisely, a garment reaching to the wrists and the ankles; a wrap-around garment,

the overlapping layers of which seem like ‘tablets.’42

Meanwhile, the older Brown-Driver-Briggs lists the word lexically

as םםם: “spread; םם tablet.” Under this heading, םם is further included as: “flat of hand or foot (palm, sole)—only םםםם םםם

40 Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, “םם,” Lexicon In Veteris Testamenti Libros: A Dictionary of the Hebrew Old Testament in English and German; a Dictionary of the Aramaic Parts of the Old Testament in English and German (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1953).

41 Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, “ םםםם םםם/םם ,” A Bilingual Dictionary of the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament English and German (Boston: Brill, 1998).

42 Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob Stamm, “םם,” trans. MEJ Richardson, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament III: Pe - Sin (New York:EJ Brill, 1996).

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tunic reaching to palms and soles Gn 37:3, 23, 32, 2S 13:18,

19.”43 The new Brown-Driver-Briggs (1979) agrees with this

translation44.

While each lexical entry lists ‘tunic’ as a translation for

םםם/םם kutonet and a combination of ‘palm/sole’ for/םםםם , each

also includes a space specifically for the phrase םםםם םםם,

highlighting both the rareness of the phrase and the ambiguity

with which it is interpreted. Each lexical entry also makes

special mention both of Joseph’s first robe and of Tamar’s robe

in 2 Samuel. None explicitly states that a םםםם םםם is for women,

though the text in 2 Samuel makes this clear.

To learn more about the phrase—and the connection between

its use in Genesis 37:3 and 2 Samuel 13:18-19—I turn to

commentaries. Some commentators do not even discuss the

connection between Tamar’s robe and Joseph’s robe. Everett Fox

writes of the robe, “ornamented: Hebrew obscure; B-R uses ‘ankle-

43 Francis, DD, DLitt Brown, S.R., DD, LittD Driver, and Charles A, DD, DLittBriggs, “ םם/םםם ,” A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Based on the Lexicon of William Gesenius as Translated by Edward Robinson (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1952).

44 Francis, DD, DLitt Brown, S.R., DD, LittD Driver, and Charles A., DD, DLitt Briggs, “םםם,” The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon with an appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979).

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length’”45. Here, there is no discussion of what this obscurity

might be, whether it might be connected to garments from other

cultures, or even that the two-word phrase occurs elsewhere in

the Hebrew Bible. Other commentators on Genesis, and specifically

on this section of Genesis, note that there is a connection

between this robe and Tamar’s, but do no more than note that.

That Joseph is wearing feminine clothing is not examined in

detail. E.A. Speiser notes:

“...an ornamented tunic. The traditional ‘coat of many colors,’ and the variant ‘coat with sleeves’ are sheer guesses from the context; nor is there anything remarkable about either

colors or sleeves. The phrase, Heb. םםםם םםם occurs aside from this section (also vss. 23, 32) only in II Sam xiii 18 f., where it describes a garment worn by daughters of kings.Cuneiform inventories may shed light on the garment in question. Among various types of clothing listed in the texts, there is one called kitu (or kittunu) pisannu (cf. JNES 8[1949], 177). The important thing here, besides the close external correspondence with the Heb. phrase, is that the article so described was a ceremonial robe which could be draped about statues of goddesses, and had various gold ornaments sewed onto it. Some of these ornaments would occasionally come undone….”46  

45 Everett Fox, “Part IV. Yosef(37-50),” in In the Beginning: A New English Rendition of the Book of Genesis (New York: Shocken Books, 1983), 151.

46 E. A. Speiser, “49. Joseph Sold Into Egypt (xxxvii 2b-36: J, /E/a),” in The Anchor Bible: Genesis, The Anchor Bible (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., n.d.), 289–90.

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Speiser’s commentary then continues to describe the decorations

on the tunic, as a means of connecting it with the Akkadian

garment.  Though he twice makes mention of the robe being

connected with women’s garments, he does not delve into the

possibilities this brings up in terms of gender. Adrien Bledstein

notes, “  Dr. A. Dillmann mentions the link between the robe in

Genesis and the robe in 2 Samuel, but then leaves off examining

that link.”47 Dillmann writes, “םםםם םםם—only here, including vv.23 and 32, and 2 Sam. Xiii. 18 f., where it is the garment of a

princess. It is not , tunica polymita, parti-coloured garment,

but , , , tunica talaris, a sleeve and ankle

garment, i.e. one reaching the ankles, and with sleeves to the

wrists, contrasted with the ordinary םםםם, which extended no

farther than the knees, and had no sleeves. םם (in Aramaic) is the extremity of the hand or foot.”48 Even here, where the robe 47 Adrien Janis Bledstein, “Tamar and the ‘Coat of Many Colors,’” in Samuel

and Kings: A Feminist Companion to the Bible, ed. Athalya Brenner, 2nd ed. (Sheffield,England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 65–83.

48 Dr. A. Dillmann, “V. The History of Jacob, XXXVII.-L. : A. From the Time When Joseph Was Sold into Egypt until His Preferment There, Chs. XXXVII.-XLI. : 1. Joseph Is Sold into Egypt, Ch. XXXVI. 2-36; by R, from B and C,” in Genesis: Critically and Exegetically Expounded, trans. WM. B., B.D. Stevenson, vol. Volume II (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 38 George Street, 1897), 334.

23

is specifically mentioned as a princess dress, Dillmann does not

explore further to see what it means for Joseph to be wearing a

garment the text specifically describes in this manner. As late

as 2002, commentators have remarked upon Joseph’s robe as linked

to Tamar, but have failed to address whether Joseph’s wearing of

a princess dress has special gender significance. Ron Pirson

notes, “Thus, here one can notice a similarity between Tamar and

Joseph: both Tamar and Joseph are unmarried. Perhaps the robe

should be understood in this respect: its wearers are not

married.”49 This is unconvincing to me, as many persons who are

unmarried are also clothed throughout the Hebrew Bible, without

using the same phrase as used for Joseph’s and Tamar’s robes. As

well, though the Second Samuel description includes ‘unmarried,’

that is not the only descriptor used. To focus on it ignores the

rest of the description, which includes ‘daughters’—a distinctly

feminine marker.

Taking all of these varied definitions into account—

especially those the scholars have related to Genesis 37 and 2

Samuel 13—a theme emerges: separately, these two words mean some

49 Ron Pirson, The Lord of the Dreams: A Semantic and Literary Analysis of Genesis 37-50 (New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 35.

24

distinct things having to do with garments (being of linen, being

worn by various people at various time [םםםם]; being a method of

wrapping the garment or length of the garment or look of the

garment [םם]); together, no one seems to know what to make of

these words. I find this interesting, particularly in light of

the definition/description of this two-word pairing being given

in the text itself, in 2 Samuel 13:18: “(Now she was wearing a

long robe with sleeves; for this is how the virgin daughters of the kings were

clothed in earlier times.) So his servant put her out, and bolted the

door after her”50 (emphasis mine). So why do we have so much

confusion over this two-word phrase in our lexical entries and in

the footnotes of various commentaries covering, in particular,

the Genesis 37 passage focusing on this robe? I argue that the

confusion comes in because Joseph—a male protagonist—is wearing

something that our text elsewhere defines as being specifically

for women. Though it is true that separate from one another these

words are used to describe many garments worn by many people, it

is also true that these two words are only paired in two of our

50 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Second Samuel,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 18.

25

narratives, one of which specifically names this two-word phrase

as being in reference to a garment worn by unmarried women.

I see this use of a phrase in only two place in the text as

meant to raise notice. Language, as noted earlier, has the power

to create the imagery within which we construct meaning. If the

image of a םםםם םםם is that of a garment a royal woman would wear, then it should be confusing to see a male-bodied person—a

person the text norms as ‘man’ by referring to Joseph as ‘he’

throughout the story—wearing this article of clothing. Theodore

W. Jennings writes, “But this dress is that of daughters; it is a

woman’s dress, or rather a girl’s dress (the virgin daughters of

the king), that Joseph’s father gives him to mark him as

specially loved. What are we to make of this curious case of

transvestism?”51 As part of Joseph’s narrative, it may have

functioned as one among a series of ways of ‘othering’ him. As a

modern queer reader looking in, that ‘othering’ can take the form

of seeing a young Joseph as transgender. Furthermore, if Joseph

is deliberately crossing gender boundaries of personal expression

51 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 180.

26

—as I argue he is—then it makes sense that he might proudly have

worn a garment meant for women. It makes sense that Jacob,

himself a gender-boundary-pusher, might have bestowed such a

garment upon his favored child.  

I agree with this interpretation because of the usage of

these two words. While we do see םםםם used elsewhere in our Hebrew biblical texts, the only other narrative to include this

particular phrase–םםםם םםם --is that of King David’s daughter, Tamar. When Tamar is raped by her brother in 2 Samuel 13:18,52

she tears her robe. The same phrase is used to describe her robe—

and here, it is specifically described as a robe or a dress that

a virgin princess would wear. With the multiple times that

clothing is described, often in great detail, when it is

mentioned in our Hebrew biblical texts, it seems unlikely to me

that this attention to detail would have escaped the author(s) of

Joseph’s narrative. I agree with Theodore Jennings, Jr., that

52 Attridge, “Second Samuel.”

27

this phrase--the same as the phrase for Tamar’s robe--was used

purposefully to describe Joseph’s attire in this instance.53

The robe’s importance continues all the way through its

destruction and presentation to Jacob. Prouser notes, “The

removal of clothing is as important as the donning of [it] by the

recipient.”54 Thus, that Joseph wears the robe is important, but

how it is removed is also important. In Tamar’s case, “she rips

the splendid garment she wore. The cloak was a sign of her status

as princess, and its rending is a sign of mourning over the loss

of her position and future.”55 In Joseph’s case, the initial robe

is removed in an act of violence, totally stripping him of

autonomy and power. He doesn’t even speak in this scene—he is so

silenced that he is not allowed to even cry out in his own

defense, in fear, in pain. By contrast, even Tamar rips her own

robe, a type of removal of clothing. Thus, the narrative shows

that Joseph’s cross-dressing offers a huge threat to Israel’s

gender status quo. This robe is much more than a ‘valuable

53 Jennings Jr., “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 180.54 Ora Horn Prouser, “Suited to the Throne: The Symbolic Use of Clothing in

the David and Saul Narratives,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 71 (1996): 32.

55 Prouser, “Suited to the Throne: The Symbolic Use of Clothing in the Davidand Saul Narratives,” 35.

28

garment.’ It represents, to Joseph’s brothers, a threat to how

they view gender, and so they destroy it rather than selling

it.56

If this is the case, it reframes the story of the plot to

murder Joseph, selling him into slavery, and destroying his coat.

Where I grew up hearing that this plot and destruction comes from

Joseph’s brothers’ jealousy of their father’s favoritism of

Joseph, I now see a story of brothers threatened by a male-bodied

sibling who publically wears women’s clothing. I had always

questioned why the brothers would destroy the coat instead of

selling it, if its symbolism lay primarily in its value. The

destruction of the coat makes more sense to me as a crime of

passion or hate.  As well, as Jennings states, though the

traditional explanations for the brothers’ hatred have to do with

Joseph being so young, Joseph’s lone defender—Reuben—is his

oldest brother.57 Reuben is not threatened by Jacob’s favoritism

of the youngest son. “Hence, the gender trouble, rather than

Jacob’s favoring the younger son, may be much more to the

56 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy.”57 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Genesis 37-50,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised

Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition, NRSV (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 59–82, 37:21-30.

29

foreground.”58 This construction renders a potential reading of

the story as that of the first recorded cisgender-on-transgender

hate crime.59

If the robe was only given to Joseph by Jacob—and not

specially made by Jacob for Joseph—then where did it come from?

Some scholars have posited that this robe may have belonged to

Rachel.60 As Clayton Koelb dissects Thomas Mann’s “Coat of Many

Colors,” he notes the important literary connections Mann draws

between the םםםם םםם and the people who wear it. In Mann’s rendition of Joseph’s narrative, the robe is Rachel’s, given to

her as a gift by her father, Laban, as a wedding present.61

However, this robe has an important distinction: “the coat is not

simply a robe, but it is a veil as well…. Rachel is associated

with Ishtar, the goddess of sacred prostitution who descended to

the underworld, unveiling herself as she went, in her attempt to

rescue Tammuz from death…. Since Joseph is symbolically equated

58 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 181.59 Ibid., 182.60 Connor, Sparks, and Sparks, “Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol,

and Spirit.”61 Clayton Koelb, “Thomas Mann’s ‘Coat of Many Colors,’” The German Quarterly 49,

no. 4 (Nov. 1976) (November 1976): 473.

30

with Tammuz later in the novel, Mann is able to exploit the

mythic identity of the veil of Ishtar and Joseph’s coat—indeed

his coat is the Ishtar-veil of his mother’s wedding day.”62

Cassell’s Encyclopedia also includes a note that others have seen

this type of a connection between Joseph’s robe and his mother’s

wedding dress.63 Koelb notes, “Rachel’s robe is therefore not

only a ‘coat of many colors,’ though it certainly is that; it is

also the erotic veil of Ishtar and the mysterious veil of maya,

symbol of everything that belongs to this world, especially that

which is deceptive and illusory.”64 Joseph, as feminine dreamer,

is seen by his brothers as deceptive; dangerous. This connection

with Maya is apt, as is the hostility his brothers feel toward

him based upon his dreams and his femininity.

Of Tamar, Koelb writes, “Indeed, like Rachel, she must first

become an enitu before she may become the virgin princess. And

once again a holy deception involving a םםםם is decisive in the inheritance of blessing.”65 This robe, then, functions to place 62 Ibid.63 Connor, Sparks, and Sparks, “Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol,

and Spirit.”64 Koelb, “Thomas Mann’s ‘Coat of Many Colors,’” 474.65 Koelb, “Thomas Mann’s ‘Coat of Many Colors,’” 479.

31

Joseph in a feminine realm much the same as the one Tamar

occupies, as Mann perceives it. Koelb argues that Mann makes this

connection “precisely because it is an important symbol of

Joseph’s belonging to the maya-world, just as the םםםם of Rachel was.”66 This is the connection Mann makes between Rachel’s robe

and Joseph’s: that as a dreamer, as one who belongs to that maya

category, Joseph must have this same robe. In bestowing the robe

on Joseph, Jacob recognizes in Joseph the same thread of maya

that was present in his mother, Rachel. Later, Koelb writes,

“Joseph does not inherit the blessing of Israel. He has embraced

the veil of Maia-Maya-maya, and he is properly arrayed in the

splendor of this world. He is heir, not of the blessing, but of

the םםםם םםם, the coat of many colors.”67 In this interpretation,

Rachel was a priestess or cultic functionary in Canaan before she

and Leah and Jacob fled from Laban. This narrative has Rachel

bringing the article of clothing with her—perhaps along with the

family idols?68—which Jacob then hands down to Joseph (his 66 Ibid.67 Ibid., 483.68 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Genesis 25:19-35:29,” in The HarperCollins Study Bible:

New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 39–58, 31:19.

32

favorite).  Maud Oakes and Joseph L. Henderson note that “Thomas

Mann has collected evidence for believing that the famous coat of

many colors was really Rachel’s wedding garment. For Joseph to

possess this enraged his brothers much as a group of college

students [in 1963] would be enraged if one of their number

appeared in women’s clothes and expected to have his

transvestitism accepted.”69 Thus, Joseph’s possession of this

coat—which may have been Rachel’s priestess garb or wedding dress

—would have marked him as being gendered differently and against

the grain of the status quo. This difference may have been the

catalyst for the violence his brothers committed against him,

rather than jealousy over favoritism.

Other scholars have offered their own ideas that Joseph’s

robe was Rachel’s dress. Beatrice Brooks writes, “In general,

eunuch-priests wore female dress; so the galli of Asia Minor, the

calavim of Palestine and Phoenicia and the kulu, kurgaru, or assinu

of Mesopotamia. Albright believes that the famous םםםם םםם of Joseph was of this nature and that his father gave it to his 69 Joseph L. Henderson and Maud Oakes, “III. Death and Rebirth as Cycles of

Nature: The Descent of Inanna,” in The Wisdom of the Serpent: The Myths of Death, Rebirth, and Resurrection (New York: George Braziller, 1963), 20.

33

favorite to keep him at home occupied with girlish pursuits, as

Aphrodite attempted to keep Adonis at home, away from dangers.”70

Here, Brooks likens Joseph to eunuch-priests, in that his

feminine attire—the םםםם םםם—matches the feminine attire worn bymale eunuchs of surrounding cultures. She goes on to state, in

her footnote: “The same term is used of Tamar, 2 Sam 13:18. May,

AJSL, XLVII, 86 mentions that the same garment was worn by

priests in Ex 28:4 and by the maiden in Cant 5:3, but in both

instances we note that only the word םםםם is used, as is the casein the several other passages: Gen 3:21; Ex 28:4, 39, 29:5,

39:27, 40:14; Lev 8:7, 13, 10:5, 16:4; Ez 2:69; Neh 7:71; 2 Sam

15:32; Cant 5:2, the majority of which refer to attire for the

Aaronic priesthood.”71 Thus, we see a number of instances in

which the word םםםם is used by itself in our text, and we see that it mostly relates to some sort of priesthood. Brooks

continues in the same footnote, “Albright (JBL, XXXVII, 111ff.)

70 Beatrice A. Brooks, “Fertility Cult Functionaries in the Old Testament,” Journal of Biblical Literature 60, no. 3 (September 1941): 250.

71 Ibid., 250–1. Footnote 19

34

interpreted Joseph as a depotentized fertility god originally

worshipped at Shechem, and one who was at times thought of as a

castrated deity. W. E. Staples (AJSL, LV, 47) finds analogy to

the garment worn by Joseph and by Tamar the princess as

‘suspiciously like the veil worn by the virgin-goddess

Ishtar.’”72 This links back to Koelb’s understanding of Thomas

Mann’s own research: Joseph and Tamar both wear a garment that

seems similar to the Assyrian goddess Ishtar.

Josephus (Antt., III, 7) described the garment as of linen (so-called from root meaning, see Gesenius) and as being tight-fitting, long, reaching to the ankles and having sleeves tied fast to the wrist. There are only two instances

of םםם occurring with this word; in reference to Joseph’s coat and the dress of Tamar the princess. Josephus, Antt., VII, 8, in the account of the Tamar story explains that in ancient times the virgins worse loose coats tied at the hands and let down to the ankles, that the inner coat might

not be seen. The root םםם means ‘expand’ and when used with the םםםם evidently indicated a looser, more flowing garment.The םםםם םםם therefore may have been a special robe worn by virgins and by eunuchs of the cult since the latter customarily wore feminine attire.73

Thus, Brooks notes that the robe may relate to virgins and

eunuchs, since both Joseph and Tamar—and only Joseph and Tamar—72 Brooks, “Fertility Cult Functionaries in the Old Testament,” Footnote 1973 Ibid., 151. Footnote 19

35

are noted as having worn this specific garment. Though Brooks

connects the םםםם part of this robe with eunuch-priests—specifically in instances where priests wore feminine clothing as

part of their demarcation apart from non-cultic functionaries—I

point out that even in those instances, the priests are regarded

as wearing only the םםםם, without the added descriptor of the

This being the case, I think it is more likely still that .םםם

Joseph is wearing an article of clothing meant for women rather

than one meant for priests.

In his assessment of Joseph’s robe, W. F. Albright connects

Joseph with various deities of the time, with the end goal of

stating that Joseph himself was a worshiped deity.74 He supports

this by connecting Joseph to various deities in surrounding

cultures, through actions, place, and dress, and focuses a great

deal on Shechem, where Joseph weeps and where Albright contends

Joseph was worshiped.75 Though I do find the tale of Potiphar’s

Wife retold in various cultures—to the point that it has its own

74 W. F. Albright, “Historical and Mythical Elements in the Story of Joseph,”Journal of Biblical Literature 37, (1918): 111–43.

75 Albright, “Historical and Mythical Elements in the Story of Joseph,” 115.

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Folklore category76—I do not think the text means to portray

Joseph as a worshiped deity, because of the text’s emphasis on

heno- and monotheism. It seems more likely to me that Joseph is

portrayed as one among many tricksters, particularly in his

placement in Genesis, with mother Rachel and father Jacob, both

notable tricksters themselves. Thus far, I am unconvinced that

the commonalities Albright lays out are enough to say Joseph was

a deity, though I find his analysis of Joseph in comparison to

other cultures’ deities useful. In his process, Albright writes,

“Like Attis and Kombabos, presumably also Tammuz, Joseph wears a

םםם) a tunic reaching to the ankles and wrists ,םםםם םםםconnected with םםם, Heb. םם, ‘palm, sole’), the regular garb of

the םםםם attached originally to the cult of Joseph, and thereforeascribed to him, just as Ishtar is usually represented in the

costume of her םםםם or hierodulae (kadishati, shamhati, kizreti, harmeti).”77

76 Susan Tower Hollis, “The Woman in Ancient Examples of the Potiphar’s Wife Motif, K2111,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 28–33.

77 Albright, “Historical and Mythical Elements in the Story of Joseph,” 116.

37

Here, he links Joseph to Ishtar, likening one to the other via

manner of dress—much as Brooks and Koelb note that Thomas Mann

does. Albright continues writing that those in service to the

deities of Asia Minor, Palestine, Phoenicia, and Mesopotamia

“all…wore female dress.”78 Thus, whether Joseph acts as a

functionary or as a deity, Albright points out that it is

expected that Joseph would be in feminine dress. Furthermore,

Albright notes, “The aetiological reason given for Joseph’s coat

is interesting. He receives it from his father as a mark of

special favor, and also, evidently, to keep him at home, pursuing

girlish occupations which would not take him from his father’s

sight, just as Aphrodite attempts to keep her favorite, Adonis,

at home, away from the dangers that beset an intrepid youth in

more manly pursuits.”79 Here, Albright makes this connection in

his own pursuit to place Joseph as one of the worshiped deities

of the time. I see it in a different light. Rather than

connecting Joseph to deities,80 I see the connection to

femininity. If the robe was indeed as Brooks described it—an 78 Ibid.79 Ibid.80 I find the idea of Joseph as a deity to be an interesting topic, but not

one that pertains to my thesis. As such, I will save the pursuit of this topic for a later paper.

38

article of clothing that would restrict movement—and if it was

indeed intended to keep the person wearing it close to home, then

it makes sense that this particular article of clothing would

have been worn by women who were not involved in labor that

required quick or easy movement. This would explain why Joseph

was not tending sheep with his brothers—the robe would have been

too restrictive. It would also explain why the robe would have

been worn by women of the upper class—daughters of kings, who may

not have been as involved in strenuous labors as their lower-

class counterparts. This robe then would be a marker of privilege

—a certain form of favor, when seen as having it bestowed upon

the recipient. The queerness, then, is that this marker of

privilege, meant for women, was bestowed upon Joseph—a male-

bodied person.

Gershon Hepner gives yet another possible understanding of

Joseph’s םםםם םםם. In a discussion of how Joseph, among others,

acts as a biblical scapegoat, his narrative reading of the text

links Joseph’s robe yet again to feminine clothing. He writes,

“Joseph is its paradigm par excellence. Indeed, the םםםם םםם,

ornamental tunic (37:3), which his father gives him may imply that

39

he is destined to act as scapegoat because it links him with the

woman who was dressed in finery, apparently as substitute for the

king, in the Hittite Ritual of Ashella in which she was required

to drive rams across the border, acting as a buffer between the

king and the rams that were contaminated with an evil plague.”81

That is, Joseph would take both the place of the actual scapegoat

—the thing being driven out—and the person doing the driving out,

the woman who drives the goats out. Furthermore, as Hepner

explores this narrative link, he notes, “Joseph’s guilty brothers

take off his םםםם םםם, multicolored tunic (Gen. 37:32), a garment

that may be linked to the kitu pisannu, a ceremonial robe draped

about statues of goddesses.”82 I note that Hepner describes the

םםםם םםם in a variety of ways, which underscores the difficulty indirect translation shown by the lexicons above. Furthermore,

Hepner’s links demonstrate how this tunic serves as a garment for

women not only in an ancient Israelite context but also in the

context of those cultures surrounding the ancient Israelites.

81 Gershon Hepner, Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 2010), 527.

82 Ibid., 552, n63.

40

If Jacob made the robe for Joseph, a whole new set of

connotations and assumptions come into play. Why would Jacob make

an article of women’s clothing for his son? It seems plausible

that Jacob would have this skill set, given what we are told of

him in his narrative. He’s described as being ‘of the tents’—of

sticking close to the tents83 where the women stayed.84 Given the

scenarios set out above—that such a robe would have been a marker

of privilege, that it was feminine in nature, that it related in

some way to priesthood or maya status, that it may have equated

Joseph with feminine deities, that it may have a link to Rachel—

and given Jacob’s own complex gender construction as

performatively male later in life but ‘of the tents’ earlier in

life, it is possible that Jacob may have made such a robe for

Joseph in recognition of Joseph’s own early femininity. If Jacob

saw in Joseph some of himself in the feminized sense and some of

Rachel in the maya/priest sense, he may have made the robe to

purposefully set Joseph apart, as W. F. Albright suggests.85 The

connotation here is that Jacob recognized Joseph’s gender non-

83 Attridge, “Genesis 25:19-35:29,” 25:27.84 I will visit considerations of the text’s gender construction of Jacob

later in this paper.85 Albright, “Historical and Mythical Elements in the Story of Joseph.”

41

conformity and celebrated it. In this context, the text reads

this feminine dress/robe positively at first. Prouser states,

“The giving of clothes is a positive and loving act, as seen in

Jacob’s gift to Joseph of the cloak (Gen. 37.3), and Hannah’s

yearly gift of a garment to her son Samuel (1 Sam. 2.19.).”86

Notably, Samuel’s cloak—which Saul covets—is a very masculine

thing: “Samuel’s לללל, ‘cloak’, is the only external attribute

ascribed to him in the book of Samuel. It is both a princely

garment and a symbol of his calling and dignity.”87 As such, if

clothing is a marker of gender—such as Samuel’s cloak as a

masculine marker—then Jacob’s gift of a feminine robe to Joseph,

whether made or passed down, denotes a positive affirmation of

Joseph’s femininity.

Each construction must necessarily bring us to ask about the

prohibition against cross-dressing in Deuteronomy 22:5. Here,

cross-dressing is called an abomination—men are instructed not to

wear women’s clothing, and women are instructed not to wear men’s

clothing, according to some commentaries. A Women’s Commentary on

86 Prouser, “Suited to the Throne: The Symbolic Use of Clothing in the David and Saul Narratives,” 30.

87 Ibid., 29.

42

the Torah agrees with this interpretation. In its note on this

verse, the commentators write, “The prohibition on cross-dressing

is not explained, except to note that it is abhorrent to God.

This rule perhaps was intended to prevent unacceptable sexual

practices or pagan cultic practices. More likely, it aims to

maintain gender boundaries, analogous to the laws against

forbidden mixtures in 22:9-11, thus preventing confusion about

the public presentation of a person’s gender identity.”88

However, other commentators disagree with this interpretation of

the text. Harold Torger Vedeler notes that the Hebrew used in

this verse is just as troubling as the placement of this verse.

After discussing various interpretations of the key words in the

text (םםם, םםם-םםםם), he writes:

It occurs between a set of commands to assist one’s neighborin matters of animal husbandry and other property (22:1-4) and rules governing the treatment of birds and the use of their eggs for food (22:6-7), followed by a law requiring the construction of a parapet on a house to prevent an accidental fall and the blood-guilt that this might bring (22:8). Only in Deut. 22:9-10 are there prohibitions againstmixing (of agricultural seed, the types of animals used in

88 Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea L. Weiss, eds., The Torah: A Women’s Commentary(New York: Women of Reform Judaism, Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, URJ Press, 2008), 1170.

43

plowing, and mixed-fiber garments) that might be considered similar to 22:5. Another approach is clearly required.89

This approach must take into account both the surrounding

cultures and the context of the verse itself, as well as the key

words in the verse. Vedeler notes that “evidence of both

transgender behavior and/or mythology does exist in the

neighboring cultures of Canaan, Mesopotamia, and Egypt.”90 If

Deuteronomy is modeled after an Assyrian Vassal Treaty, complete

with the Israelites making themselves female in the light of

YHWH’s ultimate maleness,91 then one layer of this might be to

instruct the Israelite cult functionaries not to dress in cross-

gender fashion as a result of this self-feminization.

As well, if Deuteronomy is a product of response to Assyria,

then how the Assyrians worship—with cultic functionaries who are

performing seemingly at odds with their ontologically implied

genders92—it makes even more sense to include such a separating-89 Harold Torger Vedeler, “Reconstructing Meaning in Deuteronomy 22:5:

Gender, Society, and Trasvestitism in Israel and the Ancient Near East,” Journal of Biblical Literature 127, no. 3 (2008): 460.

90 Ibid., 465.91 Cynthia R. Chapman, “Chapter Two: Without Rival: The Royal Performance of

Masculinity in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions and Palace Reliefs,” in The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, ed. Peter Machinist, Harvard Semitic Museum Publications: Harvard Semitic Monographs 62 (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 20–59.

92 Martti Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, trans. Kirsi Stjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).

44

out clause about how to worship and perform worship as

Israelites: in this case, by not cross-dressing while performing

such duties. Vedeler notes, “We have more references to the

actual practice of cross-dressing from Canaan and Mesopotamia,

virtually all of it in cultic settings, and there are numerous

terms for individuals whose gender does not appear to have been

specifically male or female….”93 If almost all of the references

to cross-dressing in the surrounding cultures indicate cultic

cross-dressing, then this verse may not actually relate to day-

to-day cross-dressing. Vedeler writes, “This is crucial: if only

cultic transvestitism was socially acceptable in the broader

culture of the ancient Near East, it would indicate that the םםםם

from Deut 22:5 describes a cultic abomination rather than םםםםםan ethical one…. Deuteronomy is consciously trying, in other

words, to make Israel different from its neighbors, particularly

in regard to the official religion, which was a central feature

of national culture throughout the Near East during the first

93 Vedeler, “Reconstructing Meaning in Deuteronomy 22:5: Gender, Society, andTrasvestitism in Israel and the Ancient Near East,” 465.

45

millennium B.C.E.”94 Thus, the prohibition against cross-dressing

may have more to do with separation from neighbors—attempting not

to be like the Assyrians (even while Deuteronomy mimics the

Assyrian Vassal Treaty)—than with a concern over keeping men and

women separate. Vedeler points out that םםם has been defined as “‘a male person who distinguishes himself from others by his

strength, or courage, or uprightness, or some other quality.’”95

By making this distinction—focusing on a certain kind of man—the

verse seems even more to be concerned with separating Israel out

from its neighbors. Men who were closely involved with YHWH,

distinguished by their uprightness or piety or devotion—men who

were involved in cultic work within Israel—should not cross-

dress, in opposition to their neighbors’ cultic practices.

 If this is the case, then it might make sense for the

Deuteronomic redactionists to have taken out obvious mention of

Joseph’s clothing being female (and thus linked to Rachel), as

94 Vedeler, “Reconstructing Meaning in Deuteronomy 22:5: Gender, Society, and Trasvestitism in Israel and the Ancient Near East,” 468.

95 Ibid., 472.

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the ‘םםםם’ already has links to Assyria and Akkadian.96 In order to

make the text conform, the redactionists may have taken out

anything that explicitly linked this robe to feminine clothing,

leaving only the ‘bare bones’ description of ‘םםםם םםם.’ On the

other hand, if the redactionists were primarily concerned with

making sure that worship was done properly--and thus if they

primarily sought to change those things that related to worship—

then they may have seen no need to redact a feminine link in

Joseph’s clothing. He wasn’t wearing it to worship or in the

Temple; he was wearing it to go find his brothers in pasture with

their sheep. Thus, Deuteronomy may not be concerned with cross-

dressing in general, and may only be concerned with cross-

dressing as it relates to how cult functionaries appear and dress

in relevance to YHWH.

The importance of dressing in identity in these texts cannot

be downplayed. Within our own Hebrew canonical texts, we have the

stories of Esther and Jezebel. Dressing—or being dressed—play

central parts in how they come to and fall from power,

96 Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. Walter Baumgartner and Johann Jakob Stamm, Study Edition, vol.I, 2 vols. (Boston: Brill, 2001).

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respectively. Jennings points out that both Esther and Joseph are

dressed by eunuchs who favor them.97 In Joseph’s case, this

eunuch is Potiphar, who gives him new clothing, evidenced by the

robe Joseph loses to Potiphar’s wife if not by enslavement in

Potiphar’s household itself.98 Similarly, Esther is favored by

the eunuch Hegai: “The girl pleased him and won his favor, and he

quickly provided her with her cosmetic treatments and her portion

of food, and with seven chosen maids from the king’s palace, and

advanced her and her maids to the best place in the harem.”99

Just as Joseph’s shift in clothing signifies a new station in

life, so also does Esther’s. And just as Esther uses her station

to help her people, so also (eventually) does Joseph.100

By contrast, it is no accident that the text portrays

Jezebel as dressing herself, despite the presence of eunuchs

(apparently powerful, as they assist in her death): “When Jehu

came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; she painted her eyes, and

97 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 184.98 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Genesis 37-50,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised

Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition, NRSV (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 59–82, 39.

99 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Esther 2:1-18,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 683–84, 2:9.

100 Lefkovitz, In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities, 60.

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adorned her head, and look out of the window.”101 The text does

not approve of Jezebel—she is an interloper, and how she gets

dressed portrays this. As well, she occupies a masculine space—

that of rulership—even seemingly over Ahab, who ruled beside her

until his death.102 Judith McKinlay notes, “The writer wants his

[sic] reader to understand that…this is one who has not acted her

part as woman in Israel, and women who do no behave like women—

according to this narrator’s gender construction—must fall from

their place.”103 Thus, even though the text does not approve of

Jezebel, it does highlight how she crosses gender boundaries—in

dressing herself and in acting as ruler. These stories showcase

how clothing creates identity for speakers, writers, and hearers

of these ancient texts. This syncs with what Matthew posits for

the importance of clothing in Joseph’s narrative.104

Apocryphally, Judith’s story also highlights the importance

of dressing. In Judith’s case, she plays up her femininity in

101 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Second Kings 9:30-37,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 533, 9:30.

102 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “First Kings,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 476–518, ch 21-22.

103 Judith E. McKinlay, Reframing Her: Biblical Women in Postcolonial Focus (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2004), 81–2.

104 Matthews, “The Anthropology of Clothing in the Joseph Narrative.”

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order to accomplish her goal of killing Holofernes. “So she

proceeded to dress herself in all her woman’s finery.”105 Her

feminine dress is the guise in which she completes a masculine

act—which queers how her clothing choice functions. It no longer

has the ‘simple’ symbolism of femininity, but also of masculinity

via bringing about death.106 After dressing as femininely as she

can, Judith then beheads the general of the army threatening her

branch of Israel. Here, Judith has a choice of clothing—which

Joseph seems to lack. She is not dressed by eunuchs (though

perhaps is helped by her maid). And yet, how she is arrayed helps

her bring down power. Thus, how Judith queers her clothing choice

mirrors how Joseph queerly wears a princess dress, and how her

clothing choice affects power reflects how Joseph’s clothing

images his own power structures or lack thereof.

Similarly, an Assyrian text—the epic of Aqhat and Anat—

includes a part where Aqhat’s sister sets out to seek vengeance

105 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Judith 12:10-13:10,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition, NRSV (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 1327–28, 12:15.

106 Milne, “What Shall We Do With Judith? A Feminist Reassessment of a Biblical ‘Heroine,’” 46. I note here that Milne points out that even while Judith occasionally seems to break patriarchal boundaries, she does not function as a boundary-crosser, per se. Rather, she fits into patriarchy asa femme fatale, which I will discuss later in more detail as I look at how Judith’s beauty functions in relation to Joseph’s.

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for the death of her brother. This sister, Pughat, begins her

journey by ritually bathing, putting on make-up, putting on male

clothing, and then over that putting on female clothing. The text

reads, “She washed in the sea,/using a sea dye she put on

rouge,/applied special cosmetics from the sea./ She put on a

hero’s clothes,/she placed a knife in her sheath,/she placed a

sword in her scabbard;/ and over all this she put on women’s

clothes.”107 She wears masculinity and femininity in layers, quite

literally. Her goal is to kill Yatpan, the man who carried out

the goddess Anat’s desire to murder Aqhat. In so doing, Pughat

sets out to do what a goddess apparently could not: she sets out

to kill a man by her own hand. Anat went through a man to do so;

Pughat wears male clothing closest to her skin in order to

accomplish her goal. Clothing plays a key role in the

characterization and ability of Pughat. And again, Pughat queers

her clothing by appearing feminine but being also masculine and

acting masculinely. She puts on male cosmetics, male clothing,

and then female clothing. From a queer reader response

perspective, this entire scene reads very queerly.

107 Michael David Coogan, ed., “Aqhat,” in Stories from Ancient Canaan (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1978), 46.

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As well, it points to an existing cultural idea: cross-

dressing happened, for various reasons. She uses her outward

femininity, as a femme fatale, to gain entry to Yatpan’s tent,

presumably to kill him as vengeance for her brother’s murder.

Hendel writes, “She will kill her brother’s killer; in order to

do so she will dress in a warrior’s garb, while dressed outwardly

as a woman.”108 Arguments have been made about what, exactly,

Pughat’s dress represents (does she wear the feminine garment

only to shed it as she makes her get-away, escaping notice by

being masculine? Does she dress to look like a prostitute for

Yatpan’s camp?109 Does she dress to look like Anat,110 whose action

she seeks to subvert?111). No matter what, the text stands with

Pughat presenting femininely at the moment in which she would

kill Yatpan—very similarly to Judith and Holofernes. And yet she

wears masculine clothing beneath. David P. Wright notes that the

108 Ronald S. Hendel, The Epic of the Patriarch: The Jacob Cycle and the Narrative Traditions of Canaan and Israel (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1987), 90.

109 Parker, “Death and Devotion: The Composition and Theme of AQHT,” in Love & Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope (Guilford, CT: Four Quarters Publishing Company, 1987), 80–81.

110 Miriam Lichtheim, “The Two Brothers (1.40),” in The Context of Scripture: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, ed. Wiliam W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr.,vol. 1 (New York: Brill, 1997), 355, n 135.

111 David P. Wright, “Chapter 18: The Wine Service for Yatupan,” in Ritual in Narrative: The Dynamics of Feasting, Mourning, and Retaliation Rites in the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2001), 206–20.

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obscure Ugaritic wording might also refer to “‘hero clothing’

(line 44) that Pughat wore is what Anat wore, something that

marked her ‘manly’ nature, to which Il referred when she

threatened him (1.18 I 16).”112 Being both feminine and masculine,

then, can be read as a threat to the status quo. Where Joseph is

normed by his culture as masculine despite his initial

presentation as feminine and the text’s continued queering of his

presentation, Judith, Jezebel, Esther, and Pughat act in socially

masculine manners while presenting as very feminine. Thus, how

Joseph is dressed can be seen, to varying degrees, in how Judith,

Jezebel, Esther, and Pughat either dress themselves or are

dressed—both in terms of gender and agency.

Chapter 3: Joseph and Eunuchs

The Hebrew Bible contains numerous mentions of eunuchs—

notably in both Joseph’s and Esther’s stories. While I do not

think nor wish to posit that Joseph was a eunuch, I do think that

he often occupies a similar liminal space as eunuchs and that his

association with eunuchs reflects upon the narrative’s gendering

of him. To begin, Janet Everhart gives a brief definition of 112 Ibid, n 23.

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eunuchs/eunuchism: “First, despite cultural variations, the

phenomenon of eunuchism is remarkably stable over time. Second,

eunuchs are typically located near the heart of political and/or

religious networks. Third, eunuchs are liminal, crossing

thresholds that present barriers to both men and women; their

liminality is often a source of power.”113 Joseph fulfills the

second and third parts of these requirements: later in life, he

sits at the heart of the Egyptian empire, and throughout his life

he crosses gender lines. Everhart continues to define eunuchs,

noting that “…it is reasonable to view these individuals as

nonprocreative (usually through castration) men who constitute a

distinct gender.”114 Here, Joseph fails the test—the text notes in

Genesis 41:50 that Joseph has two sons. As such, based on textual

evidence, Joseph fails the test of being a eunuch himself. Thus,

I argue that Joseph’s liminal space can be read queerly.

Eunuchs figure prominently in Joseph’s story just as they do

in Esther’s. Everhart notes, “Eunuchs are particularly prominent

in the biblical foreign court stories of Esther, Daniel, and

113 Janet S. Everhart, “Jezebel: Framed by Eunuchs?,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72 (2010): 692.

114 Ibid., 693.

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Joseph…. In all three stories, the eunuchs help the ‘Jewish’

character overcome a position of extreme vulnerability and rise

to power at the foreign court.”115 In Esther’s story, eunuchs—

particularly Hegai—help her with her cosmetic treatments so that

she will become the favorite of the king.116 For Joseph, it is the

“[r]emembered conversations [that] prompt the eunuchs to have

Pharaoh recall Joseph from prison.”117 Without such help, Joseph

may never have made it from prison to Pharaoh’s court. As well,

Everhart notes, “Jewish midrashim on the Joseph story, in fact,

suggest that the advances of Potiphar’s wife toward Joseph might

be connected with her husband’s inability to have procreative

sex.”118 Others have noted that Potiphar may have castrated

himself after having a daughter, Asenath, so that Potiphar and

Potiphera are the same person referred to with different names to

note the differing gender status. Gershon Hepner notes:

A problem with the suggestion that Potiphar was a eunuch is the implication made by Gen. 41:45 that he had a daughter whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as a wife: the name of םםםםםם, Potiphar, resonates with םםםם םםם, Potiphera. B.T. Sotah 13b,

115 Ibid., 694.116 I will discuss Esther’s rise to power via eunuchs in more detail in my

sections on Beauty and Power. Here, I think it sufficient to note that her reliance on eunuchs mimics Joseph’s.

117 Everhart, “Jezebel: Framed by Eunuchs?,” 694.118 Ibid.

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cited by Rashi on Gen. 41:45, resolves this problem by declaring that Potiphar castrated himself only after his wife had conceived Asenath, giving the reason for the castration his attempt to control his lust for Joseph with whom he wished to have homosexual relations.119

Whichever the case may be, Potiphar is named as a eunuch by the

text, and he remains one of the eunuchs who figures into Joseph’s

narrative rise to power.

As well, both Esther and Joseph have their ‘men’ or eunuchs.

Everhart writes, “Esther has her own eunuchs.”120 She uses these

eunuchs to breach the barriers between her world and the king’s

after she is made queen, and to get messages to Mordecai.

Likewise, Joseph has a “steward of his house,” who he uses to

torment his brothers.121 Everhart notes, “The identification of an

individual as a eunuch is often accompanied by information

concerning the individual’s function, a pattern that continues in

the biblical material.”122 Thus, even though the text does not

specify Joseph’s steward as a eunuch, it is possible to

accurately read a person in such a position in this narrative as

being a eunuch. Likewise, Kathryn Ringrose notes, “Although

119 Hepner, Legal Friction, 559.120 Everhart, “Jezebel: Framed by Eunuchs?,” 695.121 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 43 and 44.122 Everhart, “Jezebel: Framed by Eunuchs?,” 693.

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Western society tends to establish gender categories based on

choice of sexual object, many other societies, including

Byzantine society, emphasize occupation and appearance in

determinations of gender status while rarely mentioning sexual

object choice.”123 The occupation alone may be enough to identify

a person in ancient texts as a eunuch. Esther and Joseph both

uses eunuchs to move between various gendered locations in their

narratives.

Just as these eunuchs occupy liminal spaces, so does Joseph.

During the narrative of Joseph eating with his brothers before he

reveals himself to them, the text notes the Egyptians “served him

by himself, and them by themselves, and the Egyptians who ate

with him by themselves, because the Egyptians could not eat with

the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians. When

they were seated before him, the firstborn according to his

birthright and the youngest according to his youth, the men

looked at one another in amazement.”124 Both Joseph and the

Egyptians highlight Joseph’s in-between status—the Egyptians by

123 Kathryn M. Ringrose, “Chapter One: Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium,” in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dymorphism in Culture and History, ed. Gilbert Herdt (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 95.

124 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 43:32-3.

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serving Joseph apart from both themselves and his brothers, and

Joseph by making sure his brothers were seated properly according

to Hebrew custom. Joseph’s liminality, in this case, is that of

being both Hebrew and Egyptian, party to both worlds—

unrecognizable as Hebrew by his brothers but too Hebrew to be

fully Egyptian in terms of eating and seating.

Furthermore, as I will show in more detail in later sections

on Beauty, Power, Family, and Dreams, Joseph seems to fulfill

some of the liminal approaches to gender. Kathleen McCaffrey

discusses several cases of gender ambiguity in terms of

appearance. She notes that one

example of gender incongruity is the representation of an Assyrian royal on ninth century tile fragments recovered from Nineveh (Fig. 4). The reconstructed join of two fragments from the same archaeological locus depicts a figure wearing the crown and the long plaited hair typical of an Assyrian queen. The Nineveh queen, however, stands apart, both because she wears a weapon at her waist and because the second, smaller tile adds a long, dark beard.125

The liminal appearance of this queen may be a move for power on

her part. She is sexed as female, but portraying male—a move that

125 Kathleen McCaffrey, “Reconsidering Gender Ambiguity in Mesopotamia: Is a Beard Just a Beard?,” in Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 47th Recontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2-6, 2001, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, Part II (University of Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project,2002), 382.

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may have granted her more authority in a time and place where

masculinity ruled. Furthermore, in terms of appearance, McCaffrey

writes of another found figure, “The Hansanlu figure represents a

reverse example where male physiology is juxtaposed with female

dress.”126 As such, Joseph’s gender liminality may not have been

entirely unusual. Indeed, McCaffrey notes that such figures

“invite the hypothesis that the gender taxonomies of the ancient

Near East may have possessed more than two gender categories, and

that it may indeed have been possible with this worldview for men

to change into women and women to change into men.”127 Being so

liminal in terms of gender may put Joseph on a level with the

eunuchs, taxonomy-wise, without making him into a eunuch.

In terms of function, Joseph may also have found himself in

a similar cultural status as eunuchs. Everhart notes, “In Esther,

the eunuchs are literally liminal; 2:21 describes them as

‘watchers of the threshold,’ as they occupy the transitional

space between two different spheres.”128 Joseph’s various

functions may have afforded him this same threshold space. His

126 Ibid.127 Ibid., 391.128 Everhart, “Jezebel: Framed by Eunuchs?,” 695.

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function as a dreamer and interpreter of dreams put him on the

threshold between waking and sleeping, between signs and

interpretations, and between cultic functionaries/prophets and

those who were not cultic functionaries. Of a similar class of

people in the wider culture, Martti Nissinen writes,

“Mesopotamian sources from Sumerian times down to the Neo-

Assyrian period know assinnu as belonging to the worship of Istar.

Characteristic of the people under this designation is their

wavering gender; the corresponding cuneiform sign is UR.SAL which

means a ‘man-woman.’”129 Similarly, eunuchs held a space of

liminal gender. Ringrose notes that “eunuchs were believed to be

able to change their psychological affect and share attributes of

two genders.”130 Such gender-swapping, on a mental or physical

level, would have allowed Joseph and the eunuchs to stay in this

threshold space.

As well, Joseph occupies a space in first Potiphar’s and

then Pharaoh’s courts. Though Joseph’s roles in these places may

not have been that of a eunuch,131 his roles do seem to be 129 Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, 28.130 Ringrose, “Chapter One: Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in

Byzantium,” 92.131 I will touch upon this in later sections, particularly in terms of Beauty

and Power and Dreams.

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liminal. Ringrose notes, “Traditionally the emperor and the

empress each had his or her own corps of household eunuchs. In

the emperor’s household they fulfilled female roles as

caregivers, and sources, especially those hostile to eunuchs,

often hint that they were sexual partners for the emperor.”132

Joseph’s initial purchase by Potiphar may have placed him in that

role of being a potential sexual partner or sex slave; his

‘rescue’ from prison by Pharaoh winds up with Joseph occupying a

feminine seat of power next to Pharaoh.133 As such, though Joseph

does not appear to be a eunuch, he does seem to occupy a similar

liminal space, both in terms of gender and function.

Chapter 4: Joseph and Beauty

The Hebrew Bible does not contain many mentions of personal

or individual beauty overall. Michael Avioz notes, “From a

broader viewpoint, it should be indicated that external

descriptions of people are rare in the Hebrew Bible, and are

132 Ringrose, “Chapter One: Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium,” 96.

133 I will revisit both of these themes in later sections, particularly Beautyand Power.

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usually presented as part of the construction of the plot.”134

Claus Westermann agrees, writing, “It is a striking fact that

major sections of the Hebrew Bible do not have anything or hardly

have anything to do with beauty.”135 As such, how Joseph’s beauty

is portrayed, and how it links to other portrayals of beauty in

the Hebrew Bible, is textually and narratively important.

Joseph’s beauty has functioned differently over time,

depending on who has been reading the text. Some authors and

scholars have looked at Joseph’s beauty as a means for explaining

his near-rape by Potiphar’s wife. Macwilliam, in discussing how

commentators and rabbinic texts have looked at Joseph’s beauty,

notes:

Midrashic commentary offers another interpretation. One strand interprets the whole episode as a test of Joseph’s self-control: Joseph has asked for the test on the grounds that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had undergone similar experiences (T.B. Sota 36B). Underlying this interpretation is an assumption of temptation…. Beauty then signifies danger—the danger of temptation. Yet the text does not expressly say that Joseph is tempted; that interpretation isadded by the reader, perhaps in line with what is ‘naturally’ expected in performativity.136

134 Michael Avioz, “The Motif of Beauty in the Books of Samuel and Kings*,” Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009): 342.

135 Claus Westermann, “Beauty in the Hebrew Bible,” in Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies: Identity and the Book, ed. Athalya Brenner and Carole Fontaine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 585.

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According to some Midrash, then, beauty can be equated to

temptation. In this line of reasoning, Joseph’s beauty is a test,

something he must overcome in order to be a patriarch.

Furthermore, Macwilliam continues, “Nor indeed does the text

easily support another Rabbinic interpretation: that is that

Joseph’s suffering is a punishment for his vanity.”137 In this

interpretation, Joseph purposefully makes much of his beauty, and

thus he ‘deserves’ his downfall. But the text does not seem to

support that Joseph was especially vain. Interestingly, this

particular Rabbinic description of Joseph seems to queer him

(perhaps unintentionally): “Free from anxieties, he turned his

attention to his external appearance. He painted his eyes,

dressed his hair, and aimed to be elegant in his walk.”138 This

sounds very similar to a description of Joseph in Queer Bible

Commentary: “Twirling, mincing, in rainbow garb and with painted

eyes, Joseph is a flaming young queen.”139 In both cases, the

authors describe a Joseph who queers masculinity at the very

least—or perhaps performs femininity in a male body. As 136 Stuart Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” Biblical

Interpretation 17 (2009): 273.137 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 273.138 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 273.139 Ibid.

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Macwilliam says, “Joseph’s beauty runs counter to the norms that

dictate how masculinity is to be performed.”140 Already, even with

the relatively few mentions of beauty in the text, Joseph’s

beauty in particular is cause for much speculation and comment

amongst scholars.

Others have looked at Joseph’s beauty as a part of his

specialness, as making him closer to God. Hameen-Antilla notes,

“First, Sufis used the story [of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife] as

an allegory for mystical love. Zulaykha, with all her

imperfections, was equated with the aspirant Sufi, or his soul…

and her overwhelming love for Joseph symbolizes the mystic’s love

for God.”141 This puts Joseph in the position of God,

allegorically. Hameen-Antilla continues, “Joseph became the

paragon of beauty….male Sufis had no problem in writing amatory

verses on Joseph. It was not Zulaykha who was the beautiful

beloved, but Joseph.”142 So in Sufism, Joseph’s beauty takes on a

characteristic of specific closeness to God.

140 Ibid., 275.141 Jaakko Hameen-Anttila, “The Story of Joseph in Islamic Literature,” in

Rewritten Biblical Figures (Abo Akademi University: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 278.142 Hameen-Anttila, “The Story of Joseph in Islamic Literature,” 278.

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Though both Avioz143 and Macwilliam144 take care to note that

the text does not paint a clear binary picture of masculine and

feminine beauty, I think it will be helpful for discussing

Joseph’s beauty to attempt to pull apart a few of the markers

that fall mostly into masculine or mostly into feminine beauty

camps in the text. Masculine beauty in the text often indicates

chosenness145, but it also has its own set of problems.146 Looking

specifically atםםם , fair or beautiful, Stuart Macwilliam takes

on the task of classifying men who the text calls beautiful. He

writes:

I suggest that male beauty is uncomfortable for male writers and readers, because it runs counter to a proper performative function. Appreciation of it by other males is problematic, because on the one hand it places the object ofthe male gaze in a female, passive position, and on the other it puts the male gazer under suspicion of illicit desire…. My suspicion is that their various attempts to explain away the sexual desirability of the male body are (unconsciously) driven by an ideologically masculinist agenda, which leads them to overlook some plausible alternative exegetical insights.147

That is, the dominant heteronormative assumed writing and reading

of the texts—particularly where male beauty is concerned—has 143 Avioz, “The Motif of Beauty in the Books of Samuel and Kings*.”144 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible.”145 Avioz, “The Motif of Beauty in the Books of Samuel and Kings*,” 345.146 Ibid., 359.147 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 271.

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potentially led to some oversights in how this beauty has been

interpreted. As such, attempts to explain male beauty have led to

convoluted reasoning rather than toward other, potentially

simpler reasoning.

Saul’s beauty functions both to show his chosenness to rule

and to compare him against his successor, David. The text refers

to Saul’s height in both 1 Sam. 9:2 and 10:23, repeating that he

was/stood “head and shoulders above everyone else.”148 This

stature is meant to indicate—at least to the people—that Saul

will make a good king. Avioz notes, “The description of Saul’s

beauty prepares the reader for a description of his anoinment as

king. We find, in several places, that one of the traits

attributed to the king was his beauty (Ps. 45:3-4).”149 As such,

when the text rejects Eliab, it does so more as a point against a

man like Saul than as Eliab per se: “Actually, more than the

story wanting to say the [sic] God rejected Eliab, it wants to say

that God rejected Saul, whom Eliab resembles.”150 This prepares

the reader, to borrow Avioz’s phrase, for YHWH’s rejection of 148 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “First Samuel,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised

Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 413.

149 Avioz, “The Motif of Beauty in the Books of Samuel and Kings*,” 346.150 Ibid., 349.

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each of Jesse’s sons, up until David enters the scene. And yet,

the text uses the same wording to describe Saul’s beauty as it

eventually does David—though not in as much detail as it does for

David. The Hebrew word used to describe Saul’s beauty is םםם,

meaning ‘good’ in its most basic sense and used twice in the

verse to describe Saul.151 This does not match the intensity nor

the wording that the text uses to describe Joseph’s beauty, and

only somewhat resembles that of David’s beauty.

King David’s beauty is described as a means of setting him

apart, speaking to his chosenness. He is ruddy,152 like Esau,153

and though he is described as looking different than his handsome

brothers, his beauty functions ultimately as a marker of his

power and stature. Immediately after describing David’s

appearance, the text reads: “The LORD said, ‘Rise and anoint him;

for this is the one.’”154 Though David’s beauty is an unexpected

beauty—he is not tall like his predecessor, nor like the brothers

151 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 1 Sam. 9:2.152 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “First Samuel 16:1-13,” in HarperCollins Study Bible:

New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 413, 16:12.

153 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Genesis 25:19-35:29,” in The HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 39–58, 25:25.

154 Attridge, “First Samuel 16:1-13.”

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Samuel thinks he is sent to anoint—it is still a marker of his

chosenness. Macwilliam notes, “But the general sense of youthful

beauty seems clear enough, and its inclusion at this point in the

narrative does seem to indicate that David’s beauty is a key

factor in his selection as king.”155 YHWH marks David as meant to

rule. Interestingly, the text goes into more detail about David’s

beauty than about Saul’s or Eliab’s. Each of these men are

referred to as beautiful by dint of their tall stature. But as

Macwilliam writes, "It is the hyper-masculinity of Saul (and

Eliab) that seems to be subverted in v. 12, a subversion

underlined by Goliath’s downfall.”156 That is, David’s beauty is

seen by the text and some readers as not as masculine as Saul’s

or Eliab’s, and so there could be an emphasis on subverting

traditional power structures in YHWH’s selection of David via his

own particular beauty. Even so, the Hebrew used to describe

David’s beauty is 157,םםםםםם םם-םם םםםםם םםםם םםם “he was ruddy

with beautiful eyes and good (in) appearance.” The wording is

nothing like either Joseph’s or Rachel’s beauty descriptors and

155 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 276.156 Ibid., 278.157 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, First Samuel 16:12.

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is more like Esau’s, at least insofar as ruddiness is concerned.

Hence, though David’s beauty is not quite as masculine as Saul’s

or Eliab’s, it does seem to function more masculinely than does

Joseph’s.

Absalom’s beauty is also a marker of his masculinity, though

his vanity becomes a part of his downfall. He is quite hairy,

which is a masculine trait, but his hair ends up getting him

killed.158 Still, before his death, this beauty was a marker of

his power. Macwilliam writes that the text “makes it clear that

this is the beauty of a mature and virile male.”159 As in Saul’s

and David’s cases, the text sets the reader up to see Absalom as

the next king by presenting his beauty.160 However, the text also

presents Absalom’s beauty as a vanity: “When he cut the hair of

his head (for at the end of every year he used to cut it; when it

was heavy on him, he cut it), he weighed the hair of his head,

two hundred shekels by the king’s weight.”161 From a reader

perspective, this seems incredibly vain—much more so than the

supposed vanity of Joseph as described by Midrashic commentary.

158 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 280.159 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 279.160 Avioz, “The Motif of Beauty in the Books of Samuel and Kings*,” 352.161 Attridge, “Second Samuel,” 14:26.

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And yet, this verse comes immediately after the lavish

description of Absalom’s beauty: םםםםםםםם םם-םםם םםם-םםם

Now as“ 162,םםם-םםםםם םםםם םםם םםם םםםם םםם םםםםם םם-םםם םם םםם

Absalom there was not a man as beautiful in all Israel to be

praised so much, from the sole of his foot up to his skull163

there was not a spot/blemish/injury on him.” Notably, the text

describes Absalom’s beauty with more words than it uses for

Saul’s or David’s—or even Rachel’s or Joseph’s—beauties. However,

just as notably, the text does not use םםם, ‘good,’ as it does

for Saul and David,164 and does not use the same form as it does

for Rachel and Joseph when it uses םםם. Thus, though the text

paints a picture of external beauty for Absalom, it seems

approving neither of his internal character (as with Saul and

David) nor with his external beauty as image of his internal self

(as with Rachel and Joseph). Interestingly, Absalom’s beauty does

put him in danger. He ends up dying due to his long hair,165 which

162 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 2 Samuel 14:25.163 The 2001 Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon notes that םםםם םםם can be read as

‘crown,’ or as “‘the hair-covered skull,’ denotes mankind with a hairy skull.” This may be yet another way to emphasize Absalom’s hairiness, an over-emphasization which may be meant to give the reader a foreshadowing ofhow Absalom’s masculine beauty is set apart from previous masculine beauties such as Saul’s or David’s.

164 Avioz, “The Motif of Beauty in the Books of Samuel and Kings*,” 352.165 Attridge, “Second Samuel,” 18:9-15.

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he had prized so much. Joseph’s beauty also puts him in danger—

Potiphar’s wife nearly rapes him—but where Absalom dies, Joseph

escapes.

By contrast, Sarah’s beauty puts Abraham in danger when he

assumes a foreign king would kill him to take his beautiful wife.

The text presents this as happening twice, so fearful was

Abram/Abraham due to Sarai/Sarah’s beauty. The first instance

reads,

םםםם םםםם םםםםם םםםם םםםםםם םםםםם םם-םםם םםםם םםם-םם םםםםם םם םםםםםם-םםםם םם, םםםם םם-םםםם םםם םםםםםם םםםםם םםםם םםם םםםםם םםם

166םםםם םםםם

“And it was just as he advanced to enter Egypt he said to Saraihis wife, ‘Please look, I know/knew because/that you (are) a

woman beautiful in appearance; and so when the Egyptians see youthey (will?) say this (is) his wife/woman, and they (will?) kill

me and/but they will let you live.’”

As Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes notes, this statement of Sarai’s

beauty “is not the introduction of a dialogue between lovers…but

a statement of potential risk.”167 The risk to life is to Abram’s

life. Abram states that the Egyptians will ‘let’ Sarai live. When

Pharaoh takes Sarai, he is endangered, despite not knowing what

166 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Gen. 12:11-12.167 Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes, “Sarai’s Exile: A Gender-Motivated Reading of

Genesis 12.10-13.2,” in A Feminist Companion to Genesis, Feminist Companion to theBible, 2nd ed. (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 227.

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he’s doing—and the text presumes that if he had known, he would

not have put himself in such danger.168 Furthermore, van Dijk-

Hemmes notes “that Sarai remains speechless,”169 similar to

Joseph’s speechlessness as his brothers decide his fate and his

silencing at the hands of Potiphar and Potiphar’s wife. Sarai is

not allowed to speak, like Joseph; her beautiful appearance

endangers the men around her—both like and unlike Joseph.

Joseph’s beauty endangers himself, but his appearance in general

endangers his brothers’ status quo. As well, the words used to

describe Sarai’s beauty are later echoed and expounded upon in

the descriptions of both Rachel’s and Joseph’s beauties:

The story repeats itself—without explicit mention of .םםם-םםםם

Sarah’s beauty—in Genesis 20. Sarah’s beauty functions as a thing

that puts other people in danger. The text repeats this theme

with Rebekah and Isaac.170 Feminine beauty seems to function in

the text, then, as something that endangers the men around the

168 Attridge, "Genesis," 12:17-20.169 van Dijk-Hemmes, “Sarai’s Exile: A Gender-Motivated Reading of Genesis

12.10-13.2,” 230.170 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Genesis 25:19-34,” in The HarperCollins Study Bible: New

Revised Standard Version, with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition, NRSV (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 39–40, 26:6-15.

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beautiful person, and seems to be a part of silencing the

beautiful person.

Similarly, Judith’s feminine clothing and presentation

presents a threat to men—and in particular one man—in her text.

She’s a widow who is praised for her insight and wisdom.171

However, her femininity is a danger to masculinity. Milne writes

that some take-away from Judith’s story might be that

“‘femininity,’ ‘female beauty and behaviour’ are a woman’s

weapons.”172 She continues, “In Judith, beauty and deceit are

fashioned into a woman’s weapon against men so successfully that

she appears to some as a female warrior. While this may not be

problematic for the character herself, it has serious

consequences for the image of women it projects, and, hence, for

the impact it has on women.”173 Judith’s beauty—the point at which

she looks and acts the most feminine—results in death for

Holofernes. She is a femme fatale, as Milne points out. Though the

text celebrates that she uses her femininity to bring an enemy

low, to the point of death, the point of it is that the enemy is

171 Attridge, “Judith.”172 Milne, “What Shall We Do With Judith? A Feminist Reassessment of a

Biblical ‘Heroine,’” 45.173 Ibid., 47.

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tricked by a woman, a person of lesser status than a man in both

ancient Israelite and ancient Assyrian contexts. Furthermore,

she’s an Israelite woman—who is a feminine member of a nation

that has been feminized by its Assyrian master and seeks to

feminize itself instead in relation to YHWH.174 She’s one of the

lowest of the low, striking a blow against one who would present

as one of the highest of the high. Her femininity, then, is part

of the butt of the joke. Her feminine beauty is a threat to the

man who is near her, and by association to the men who make up

his encampment—she uses it to overthrow the status quo, much as

Joseph’s brothers are afraid his beauty will upset the status

quo.175 However, Judith’s beauty is something she puts on herself,

174 Cynthia R. Chapman, “Chapter Two: Without Rival: The Royal Performance of Masculinity in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions and Palace Reliefs,” in The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, ed. Peter Machinist, Harvard Semitic Museum Publications: Harvard Semitic Monographs 62 (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2004).

175 Tim Teeman, “Will Jordan Davis Become the First Transgender Miss England?,” News, Opinion, Information, The Daily Beast, February 28, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/28/will-jordan-davis-become-the-first-transgender-miss-england.html. I link this story here as one example, among many, of how beauty and transgender persons’ lives intersects and throws off while maintaining the status quo. That is, the story of this person’s beauty would not be of international interest were she not transgender—throwing off the status quo; but her beauty falls in line with that which is expected of feminine beauty, thereby maintaining the status quo.

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and she retains agency with her beauty—making her beauty

dissimilar to Joseph’s in these senses.

Culturally, the story of Pughat from the epic of Anat and

Aqhat shows this theme again—where feminine beauty, even over

masculine dress—represents danger to the point of death. Parker

notes that she uses “sex appeal enhanced by toilet and

wardrobe.”176 Her text makes it clear that Pughat is an attractive

woman. Coogan notes, “The figure of Pagat is an attractive one.

Three times she is described by the formula: ‘She gets up early

to draw water,/she brushes the dew from the barley,/she knows the

course of the stars.’”177 This begins the portion of the narrative

wherein Pughat moves to kill Yatpan as vengeance. Though Pughat

makes her way into the camp with masculine clothing on, she

presents outwardly as feminine, with feminine garments and beauty

over the top of the masculine garb. Hendel notes, “The rouge is

part of the symbolism of the scene: Pughat is dressed as a woman,

but she is prepared to kill Yatpan as an animal is killed.”178

176 Parker, “Death and Devotion: The Composition and Theme of AQHT,” 81.177 Coogan, “Aqhat,” 30.178 Hendel, The Epic of the Patriarch: The Jacob Cycle and the Narrative Traditions of Canaan and

Israel, 94.

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Thus, the cosmetic treatment is not that of femininity, but one

of masculinity. Wright writes:

Anat’s washing and use of anhb can be seen as ritual performances: in the first example she cleanses from having done battle, and in the second case she prepares for a ritual meal. It is reasonable, then, to view Pughat’s washing and reddening as ritual activities…. They might be in preparation for the feasting that will take place with Yatupan, but it seems that, in view of her intentions and deceit…she would hardly bother with the etiquette of the occasion.179

As such, Pughat’s use of rouge in this specific manner seems to

indicate one more piece of masculine clothing/attire/cosmetic in

her outward appearance. Pughat’s most outward beauty, then, is

queered by the mix of feminine attire and masculine cosmetics.

Once again, Pughat—like Judith—chooses her cosmetics and

clothing; like Joseph, she is described as inherently attractive

by the text. Like both Judith and Joseph, Pughat’s beauty

endangers a man, though Pughat’s beauty has both masculine and

feminine elements.

However, feminine beauty also can be a path to power outside

of vengeance, and can in its own way denote chosenness. Esther is

made more beautiful through a variety of treatments over months,

179 Wright, “Chapter 18: The Wine Service for Yatupan.”

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and she becomes queen180—arguably second in command. When the

narrative introduces Esther, it reads:

םםםם םםם םם-םםםם םםם םםםם, םם-םםם םם םםם םם םם םםם, 181

םםםםםם םםם-םםם םםםםם םםםםAnd he was a guardian (to) Hadassah, she (is) Esther,

daughter of his father’s brother, because she had neither afather nor a mother; and the young girl (was) beautiful in

appearance and good in sight.

Even before Esther receives cosmetic treatments, the texts notes

her as beautiful—both in the manner associated with Sarai,

Rachel, and Joseph, and in the manner associated with Saul and

David. She has both outer and inner beauty. In the same chapter,

Esther has beauty put upon her by others—notably, a eunuch, who

worked for the king. Such treatment reads similarly to how

Potiphar182 and Pharaoh183 both arrayed Joseph. Jennings writes,

“But what is remarkable about Joseph’s subsequent career is that

he survives by being taken under the wing of a succession of more

powerful males. He first comes to the attention of Potiphar….”184

The same could be said of Esther: she survives first by coming to

180 Attridge, “Esther 2.”181 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Esther 2:7.182 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 39.183 Ibid, Gen. 41:42.184 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 183.

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the attention of Moredecai, then Hegai, and then the King,

because of her beauty.

Furthermore, her beauty serves as her chosenness—though she

is chosen by men rather than by YHWH, similarly to Joseph being

chosen by Potiphar and Pharaoh and dissimilarly to Saul and David

being chosen by God. Fontaine writes, “What is unusual is that

Joseph is male, not female, but we are put in mind of Esther,

coerced one way or another into a foreign harem, where only her

beauty (Esth. 2:7) qualifies her for any kind of life at all in a

world where her ethnicity puts her at risk.”185 Esther’s and

Joseph’s stories—particularly as they frame and are framed by

beauty—follow incredibly similar paths. For each, their natural

beauty leads to men taking them under protection, which leads to

each having beauty put upon them as they rise in power.186

Contrastingly, Tamar’s beauty functions to lead to her rape—

taking away her autonomy. The text reads: םםםם םםםם-םם םםםםםםםם

(And it was)“ 187,םם-םםם םםםם םםם םםםם םםם םםםםםם םםםםם םם-םםם185 Carole R. Fontaine, “‘Here Comes This Dreamer’: Reading Joseph the Slave

in Multicultural and Interfaith Contexts,” in Genesis, ed. Athalya Brenner, Archie Chi Chung Lee, and Gale A. Yee (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 141–2.

186 I will visit the similarities between Joseph’s and Esther’s power in a later section in more detail.

187 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 2 Sam. 13:1.

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after then Absalom son of David (had) a sister fair/beautiful and

her name (was) Tamar, and Amnon son of David loved her.” The word

used to describe Tamar’s beauty is the same used to describe

Joseph’s, Rachel’s, Esther’s, and Sarai’s: םםם. Tamar’s beauty,

then, falls into the larger scheme of naming female beauty, while

also serving as another textual reminder that Joseph’s beauty is

feminine. Furthermore, this is unchosen, natural beauty—also

following the patterns of Joseph, Rachel, Esther, and Sarai, as

well as the unchosen aspects of Pughat’s and Judith’s beauties.

Tamar’s beauty leads to notice by men—in particular Amnon—which

fits with both Esther’s and Joseph’s narratives. However, unlike

Esther and Joseph, Tamar’s beauty does not lead to an increase in

power, position, and reputation. Rather, it leads to rape.188

While the text does allow Tamar a voice in her time of disaster,

it winds up being ineffective. No matter what she says, her

autonomy is stripped from her. Her beauty, then, endangers

herself—much like Joseph’s endangers him, in an eerily similar

manner (the difference being, of course, that Joseph escapes).

However, Tamar’s beauty—again similar to Joseph’s—also endangers

188 Attridge, “Second Samuel,” 13:14.

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Amnon, the man near her. First, he uses it as an excuse to rape

her, and based on that action, Absalom kills Amnon.189 As such,

Tamar’s beauty follows the pattern of feminine beauty endangering

herself and the men around her, and sets up another example for

viewing Joseph’s beauty through a transgender lens.

Jezebel’s beauty is also linked to endangerment of herself.

Just before her death, “she painted her eyes, and adorned her

head, and looked out of the window.”190 This comes on the heels of

Jezebel having assumed authority after the death of her husband,

King Ahab, in the previous book—and, to some extent, even before

that. Everhart writes of the incident with Naboth’s vineyard,

“Jezebel promised her despondent husband that she would secure

Naboth’s vineyard for him; to do so, she wrote letters in his

name and sealed them with his seal (1 Kgs 21:8). The men to whom

Jezebel wrote did as she commanded, and when Naboth was dead,

‘they sent to Jezebel,’ who in turn instructed her husband to

take possession of the vineyard (1 Kgs 21:14-15).”191 Jezebel

commanded power not only over the people within her court but

189 Ibid, 13:20-29.190 Attridge, “Second Kings 9:30-37” 9:30.191 Everhart, “Jezebel: Framed by Eunuchs?,” 689.

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also over her husband and thus the country. Everhart notes,

“Eunuchs, who continually cross the threshold between the worlds

of men and women as mediators at the royal court, highlight

Jezebel’s power as a monarch in Israel.”192 She rose to the

highest status—and then was quite literally pushed from it.193

Though the text is not friendly to Jezebel because she is a

foreigner, it is doubly unfriendly to her because she is female

and in the seat of highest power. Her death is particularly

grisly.194 If the text cannot allow for a woman to be in the

highest seat of power, then it should stand as little surprise

that a feminized Joseph made it to second-in-command but not

higher.

Joseph’s beauty sits between these masculine and feminine

treatments, though I argue that his beauty sits most comfortably

on the feminine side of things. When his beauty comes up, it is

described more femininely than masculinely, though the danger is

upon Joseph himself rather than upon another person. Macwilliam

notes, “except for the gender of the adjectives, the description

192 Everhart, “Jezebel: Framed by Eunuchs?,”689.193 Attridge, “Second Kings 9:30-37,” 9:33.194 Ibid.

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of Joseph, (םםם-םםם םםםם םםםם) at Gen. 39:6, is word for word the

same as that of his mother Rachel at Gen. 29:17 ( םםם-םםם םםםם

The gender of the adjectives may not play an active 195”.(םםםם

role in determining the gender of the persons or actions being

described.196 Macwilliam continues, “We may be justified in simply

complying with convention by viewing the repetition of the beauty

formula as a sign that Joseph inherits, as it were, the divine

favour bestowed upon his mother…. But the recalling of Rachel’s

beauty recalls also the immediate difficulties that her beauty

caused her (just as Sarai and Bathsheba, two other favourites of

Yhwh, were faced with danger in the short term).”197 Thus, where

masculine beauty often denotes favor in the eyes of YHWH,

Joseph’s beauty seems to connect more with the idea of feminine

beauty, in which the person who is beautiful will experience

hardship.

195 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 274.196 In Hebrew grammar, attributive adjectives must agree in gender and number

and definiteness with the noun which they describe. Predicate adjectives must agree in gender and number with their antecedents. As such, an adjective describing a sword will have a feminine ending, because the word for sword in Hebrew (םםם) is grammatically feminine. Thus, for the moment, we can overlook the gendered endings of the adjectives, because they denotegrammatical gender rather than a sense of ontological gender or performative gender.

197 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 274–5.

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His beauty puts him in danger—reflected back upon him

rather than upon anyone else in the immediate scene.198 When the

text introduces Joseph’s beauty, it immediately precedes the

story of Potiphar’s wife attempting to seduce and then rape him.

If, as pointed out by Lefkovitz, to be Egyptian is to be encoded

as feminine, then how much more feminized does this make Joseph,

to be nearly raped by an Egyptian woman, from a reader response

perspective? Of Potiphar’s wife’s attraction to Joseph, Hepner

writes, “Genesis Rabbah 84:7 also highlights Joseph’s femininity by

claiming that Joseph attracted Potiphar’s wife by ‘pencilling his

eyes, curling his hair and lifting his heel.’”199 By this account,

Joseph’s feminization attracts Potiphar’s wife and causes her to

attempt to remove his agency and autonomy (echoing Tamar, Sarai,

and Esther).

However, other traditions have it differently. Egypt

presents the tale of the brothers Bata and Anubis; in this tale,

Anubis’ wife attempts to seduce Bata. The tale makes no mention

of the wife attempting to rape Bata, but it still

emasculates/feminizes Bata. When Anubis comes to accuse Bata

198 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 39:7-23.199 Hepner, Legal Friction, 555.

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(after hearing his wife’s false allegations), Bata tells him the

real tale. The text notes, “Then he took a reed knife, cut off

his phallus, and threw it into the water; and the catfish

swallowed it.”200 Here, then, the unwelcome attentions result in

the feminization of Bata. In either case, culture dictates that

the wrongfully accused be feminized, as seen in the comparisons

between Bata and Joseph.

And yet, many scholars over time have tried to have Joseph

retain his autonomy, by making his beauty—and his almost-rape—his

fault. Lefkovitz notes that the Koran attempts to justify

Joseph’s actions by rewriting some of the details of the scene

and adding in new ones, so that even Potiphar’s wife cannot be

wholly to blame: Joseph is simply too beautiful to resist. She

writes, “The women see Joseph and bleed. Although Potiphar’s wife

is not vindicated in the eyes of posterity, a silent consensus is

reached among the court women as Joseph’s heavenly beauty

justifies her lust.”201 Instances such as these seem to be an

attempt to have Joseph retain his masculinity—but I argue that it

200 Lichtheim, “The Two Brothers (1.40),” 86.201 Lori Hope Lefkovitz, “Coats and Tales: Joseph and Myths of Jewish

Masculinity,” in In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities (New York: Rowman& Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2010), 93.

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is instead yet another instance of Joseph losing his autonomy by

ignoring his experience. This is a theme common to trans*

persons: the experience of having their previous experiences

washed away or re-explained by cisgender/cissexual persons.202 As

such, these very explanations can, from a queer reader response

perspective, be read as one more element of transgender

experience in the life of Joseph’s narrative.

Returning to a focus on Joseph’s narrative, Jennings notes:

First, Joseph has no apparent desire for the woman who throws herself at him. He resists her attempted seduction, even rape. Indeed, the position seems to be that of gender reversal, with Potiphar’s wife playing Amnon to Joseph’s Tamar. To be sure, the narrator provides Joseph with an anachronistic alibi: sleeping with another man’s woman is a sin against God (39:9). But Joseph’s resistance contrasts strongly with the actions of other males such as Reuben, David, and Amnon.203

The tale of Potiphar’s wife, then, can be read as a complete

gender reversal, strongly showing Josephs as transgender in light

of Potiphar’s wife’s actions. And if Joseph is transgender in

this account, then what do we make of the attentions of the

202 Cristan Williams, “Interview With an Actual Stonewall Riot Veteran: The Ciswashing of Stonewall Must End!,” activism, awareness, information, The Transadvocate, February 18, 2013, http://www.transadvocate.com/interview-with-an-actual-stonewall-riot-veteran-the-ciswashing-of-stonewall-must-end_n_8750.htm.

203 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 188–9.

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powerful men paid to Joseph? “This notice [of Joseph’s beauty]

presumably serves to motivate the unwelcome attentions of

Potiphar’s wife even if we are entitled to wonder to what extent

it will also explain the attention of Potiphar himself as well as

subsequent male attentiveness to Joseph.”204 That is, it’s

possible that Potiphar was attracted to Joseph, and that perhaps

other men were, as well. Because sexual attraction and

orientation are complexly linked with whether a person identifies

as transgender,205 it is interesting to note that men who were

apparently heterosexual as we understand the term today (such as

Potiphar, having a wife and potentially a daughter, Asenath,

depending upon whether Potiphar and Potiphera are the same

person) may have been attracted to the feminized Joseph. It is

also interesting to note that, if Potiphar was indeed attracted

to Joseph, either the text or Potiphar himself (or both?) show

some shame about that, as Potiphar throws Joseph into jail rather

than communicating with him; such an attitude of shame for

204 Theodore W. Jennings Jr., “Transgendered Israel,” in Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel (New York: Continuum, 2005), 183.

205 Sam Killermann, “Sexual Orientation for the Genderqueer Person,” information, activisim, awareness, news, It’s Pronounced Metrosexual, February 2012, http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2012/02/sexual-orientation-for-the-genderqueer/.

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heterosexual and cisgender/non-transgender men being attracted to

trans* persons also exists today.206

In addition to putting Joseph in danger, his beauty also

does not reflect his chosenness by YHWH but rather by men, which

puts him in contrast with Absalom, David, Saul, and many of the

other men whose beauty is explicitly mentioned, and puts him on

the side of Tamar, Sarai, Rachel, and Esther.

Chapter 5: Joseph and Power

Initially, power is a troubling thing for Joseph. His power

over his brothers—as his father’s favorite—lands him in trouble

with them. The text seems to indicate, as I noted in the chapter

about Joseph’s first robe, that both Jacob’s favoritism and the

brothers’ hatred seem to be related to Joseph being more feminine

than masculine, and wearing a princess dress. Sandwiched between

the verse in which Joseph brings “a bad report of [the brothers] 206 Janet Mock, “How Society Shames Men Dating Trans Women & How This Affects

Our Lives,” information, awareness, opinion, reflection, Writings & Reflections byJanet Mock, September 12, 2013, http://janetmock.com/2013/09/12/men-who-date-attracted-to-trans-women-stigma/.

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to their father” and the verse in which the text states the

brothers’ hatred for Joseph likes the verse in which Jacob gives

Joseph the 207.םםםם םםם Various reasons have been given for the

brothers’ hatred: envy of Joseph’s skills and recognition by

Jacob,208 linking the hatred to Joseph’s dreams and Jacob’s

favoritism while omitting mention of the robe,209 playing up

Joseph’s vanity and youth, as well as the ‘ill reports’ he

brought against his brothers,210pushing it all onto Jacob’s

favoritism,211 and so on. But reading this text through a

transgender lens shows that none of these explanations can be

wholly satisfactory. The brothers’ hatred of Joseph follows the

text’s narration of Joseph’s ‘bad reports’ and Jacob’s favoritism

and the giving of the robe. These things therefore need to be

read together. In such a reading, Joseph has power—the power to

report on his brothers—and favoritism, and is also flaunting

gender roles with the approval of Jacob. Perhaps the brothers

were aware of Jacob’s own gender indeterminacy212 and were 207 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 37:2-4.208 Maren Niehoff, The Figure of Joseph in Post-Biblical Jewish Literature (New York: E.J.

Brill, 1992), 65–6.209 Ibid., 89–92.210 Ibid., 112–117.211 Pirson, The Lord of the Dreams: A Semantic and Literary Analysis of Genesis 37-50, 35.212 I will discuss Jacob’s gender fluidity in the chapter on family.

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uncomfortable with it, and were angry to see their father

continuing what they saw as problematic in their younger sibling.

Perhaps they perceived this as a threat that made Joseph’s

reports more problematic than they would have been otherwise.

Whatever the case may be, all three things seem to work together

to increase the brothers’ enmity toward Joseph.

When Joseph then relates his dreams of being above not only

his brothers but his whole family, the incident ends with another

report of the brothers’ jealousy.213 The text notes, “So they

hated him even more because of his dreams and his words,” which

implies that it could not have been only his words that inspired

their enmity in the first place. The brothers and Jacob both draw

the conclusion that Joseph seeks more power over them, and all

recoil from such a notion. Pirson notes of the first dream,

however, “In the larger part of the occurrences of םםם in

Genesis, it has a connotation of respect, and sometimes fear…. It

is especially true, in view of Gen. 33, in which Jacob and his

family prostrate themselves before Esau (םםם occurs four times)

and Esau and Jacob are reconciled, that the reader ought to know

213 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” 37:5-11.

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that bowing down and subservience are not necessarily the

same.”214 Similarly, though Jacob himself is a dreamer, he seems

to misinterpret Joseph’s second dream as a dream of power, and

the brothers remain jealous.

When Joseph’s brothers decide to throw him in the pit—first

with the idea to kill him, then with the idea to sell him—they

make the decision when they see Joseph coming. Based upon the

previous verses, the reader could conclude that the brothers did

not want this femininely-dressed younger brother to bring back

yet more bad reports about them to their father. The text can be

read as making oblique reference to Joseph’s distinctive style of

dress: “They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to

them, they conspired to kill him.”215 Like Peterson Toscano, I

read this as the brothers being able to distinguish Joseph’s

feminine appearance from a distance.216 The dress would most

likely have looked out of place in the shepherding areas, out

away from the spaces women normally occupied, as demonstrated by

214 Pirson, The Lord of the Dreams: A Semantic and Literary Analysis of Genesis 37-50, 49.215 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 37:18.216 Toscano, “Peterson Toscano.”

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both Carol Meyers217 and Phyllis Bird.218 Further, immediately

after the text notes that the brothers begin their conspiring,219

they refer to Joseph’s dreams, which they have erroneously taken

to mean that the femininely-dressed, father-favorited Joseph

seeks more power above them. Thus, for Joseph’s early life, where

power and gender non-conformity intersect, it creates problems

for the brothers who feel their status quo threatened and then

for Joseph as a result of the brothers’ fear.

Under Potiphar, his position renders him powerless next to

Potiphar’s wife, whom Potiphar chooses to believe over Joseph. At

first, Joseph’s hard work inspires Potiphar to feel comfortable

giving Joseph’s more power. The text notes, “So he left all that

he had in Joseph’s charge; and, with him there, he had no concern

for anything but the food that he ate.”220 And yet, when Joseph

refuses Potiphar’s wife’s advances and escapes her grasp,

Potiphar takes his wife’s side against the well-trusted Joseph.

Notably, after Joseph leaves Potiphar’s wife’s presence, he has

217 Carol Meyers, “The Family in Early Israel,” in Families in Ancient Israel, ed. DonS. Browning and Ian S. Evison, The Family, Religion, and Culture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 1–47.

218 Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities.219 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 37:19.220 Ibid, Gen. 39:6.

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no voice. Despite being trusted to take care of all of Potiphar’s

affairs, Potiphar does not even consult Joseph for a differing

view.221 Reading from a queer lens, I am reminded of Sarai’s lack

of voice at Abram’s request/command to her to lie on his behalf,

and again when she is taken by a second ruler, as noted by van

Dijk-Hemmes.222 Just as Sarai/Sarah gets no voice—and no choice—so

also Joseph lacks a voice in the matter. Here, power affords him

no protection.

Similarly, Queen Vashti’s position as second-in-command

affords her neither protection nor voice when the King deposes

her.223 Interestingly, the text uses the same words to describe

Vashti’s beauty as it does Sarai’s and Joseph’s, as well as those

of good rulers: 224,םם-םםםם םם-םםםם םםםם םםם “her beauty because

she (was) good in appearance.” In the cases of both Vashti and

Sarai, their beauty is part of the cause of their silencing and

loss of autonomy. So it is for Joseph: the text nominally excuses

Potiphar’s wife’s actions—made from a position of power, as she

is the wife of his boss and therefore also Joseph’s boss—by 221 Ibid, Gen. 39:11-20.222 van Dijk-Hemmes, “Sarai’s Exile: A Gender-Motivated Reading of Genesis

12.10-13.2.”223 Attridge, “Esther 1.”224 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Esther 1:11.

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referring to his beauty.225 Beauty and power—particularly feminine

beauty and power—go hand-in-hand for Joseph, and lead to his

downfall at the hands of men.

Furthermore, though Joseph had a measure of power in

Potiphar’s house, he may have been brought in at least partially

as a sex slave. When Potiphar’s wife accuses Joseph—first to her

household and then to her husband—she uses the word םםםם, which

can mean “to laugh,” “to joke,” or “to dally with, fondle.”226 The

first meaning, “to laugh,” does not make much sense in the

context of an accusation, which leaves either “to joke” or “to

dally with, fondle.” Once again, “to joke” does not make much

sense—if Potiphar brought Joseph in to joke with the family, then

it would not make for much of an accusation. This leaves the

reader with “to dally with, fondle” as a possible translation

here. In this context, Potiphar may have brought Joseph in in

order to have sex with his wife; Joseph’s refusal to do so, then,

would render such an accusation plausible. Jennings notes, “While

we may suppose that finding favor in the sight of someone is but a

225 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 39:6-7.226 Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old

Testament, ed. Walter Baumgartner and Johann Jakob Stamm, Study Edition, vol.II, 2 vols. (Boston: Brill, 2001).

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metaphor, it also—like the similar phrase that indicates his

relation to Potiphar (39:4) and even Potiphar’s wife, who ‘cast

her eyes’ on Joseph (39:7)—is suggestive of erotic attraction. In

the latter case, no doubt exists as to the connection between

sight and sexual desire; should we dismiss this in the case of

masculine vision?”227 Joseph may have been bought as a sex slave

for both Potiphar and his wife. With the double meaning of the

word, if Joseph refused to have sex with Potiphar’s wife, he very

well may have made a joke of her. Hepner writes, “Potiphar’s wife

tells her slaves: ‘See, he has brought us a Hebrew man םםםם םםם,

to sport with us. He came into me to lie with me and I called out in

a loud voice.’ (Gen. 39:14).” In this interpretation of the term,

the double entendre can be made clear. Pirson notes, “It was

Potiphar’s intention to bring Joseph to them so that he could

sleep with his master’s wife…. So, this might support the idea

that Joseph has a role comparable to Hagar, Bilhah and Zilpah.”228

If this is the case, Joseph’s story once again maps with that of

many transgender individuals today (as seen both in health

227 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 183.228 Ron Pirson, “The Twofold Message of Potiphar’s Wife,” Scandinavian Journal of the

Old Testament 18, no. 2 (January 1, 2004): 256.

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concerns229 and socio-cultural concerns230). Fontaine notes that

“Joseph’s story is often called out as an example of slave trade

of human trafficking in the Bible.”231 From a reader response

perspective, back with textual and narrative criticisms, it

appears that Joseph’s ‘power’ under Potiphar may not be power at

all, and may instead be the non-autonomy of a sex slave, making

his refusal to have sex with Potiphar’s wife a potential rallying

cry for those individuals—transgender and cisgender alike—who are

sex workers and wish to be free of it.

Nevertheless, Potiphar puts Joseph in prison, taking power

from Joseph and highlighting that Joseph’s ‘power’ wasn’t really

his. After a time,232 Joseph manages to impress not only his

fellow prisoners but also his prison guard.233 As such, Pharaoh

pulls Joseph from the prison to serve him. The text notes that

Joseph “shaved himself and changed his clothes,”234 which Hepner

229 “Addressing Sex Work, MSM and Transgender People in the Context of the HIVEpidemic: Information Note” (The Global Fund, February 2013), http://asapltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Core_SOGI_InfoNote_en.pdf.

230 Juliet Jacques, “‘No Wonder Many Transsexual People End up in Sex Work,’” TheGuardian, August 25, 2010, online edition, sec. Life & style, http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/25/transsexual-people-sex-work.

231 Fontaine, “Here Comes This Dreamer,” 135.232 I will examine Joseph’s dreaming in a later section.233 Attridge, “Genesis,” 39:21-41:13.234 Attridge, “Genesis,” 41:14.

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wants to make out to be that Joseph was treated as a fair

captive.235 I am not as convinced by this reading, because

Hepner’s translation of the verbs in question relies upon pual

vowel pointing, when the Hebrew text maintains piel vowel

pointing—pual would mean that Joseph was shaved and was clothed,

whereas piel indicates that Joseph shaved and clothed himself.

Regardless, Joseph once again acquires new clothing at a shift in

his life.236 Interestingly—and perhaps more in line with Hepner’s

interpretation—the word for the clothing Joseph puts on, םםםםםם,

“his cloak,” can have a meaning of “the dress of the attractive

woman captured as a spoil of war.”237 However, as Joseph was not

captured as a spoil of war but rather rescued from a dungeon,

this interpretation does not seem to fit. Instead, this garment

might stand in stark contrast to the feminine garb Joseph wore at

the beginning of his narrative. As well, Jennings makes use of

the fact that Joseph does these things to himself: “When Pharaoh

summons Joseph to himself to undertake the interpretation of a

dream, he takes the precaution of presenting his notorious beauty

235 Hepner, Legal Friction, 428.236 Matthews, “The Anthropology of Clothing in the Joseph Narrative.”237 Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 2001.

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to best advantage…. The combined result of Joseph’s now mature

beauty and his wisdom…[is] Joseph’s being made once again the

favorite of a more powerful male.”238 Here, Joseph’s agency

remains: he dresses himself attractively, angling at the least to

get out of prison; he winds up being taken, once again, to a

second-in-command position.

After Joseph impresses Pharaoh with his abilities, Pharaoh

dresses him again and states, “You shall be over my house, and

all my people shall order themselves as you command; only with

regard to the throne will I be greater than you…. See, I have set

you over all the land of Egypt.”239 As a mark of this power,

Pharaoh gives Joseph a garment of fine linen, a gold chain about

his neck, and Pharaoh’s signet ring. Jennings writes:

As at the beginning of his career as a male ‘favorite,’ so also here at the summit of his success: the special status of Joseph is made clear by his being decoratively dressed bythe man who favors him…. Thus, it seems that at every phase of his career, Joseph is carried upon a wave of masculine desire. The consequence of this desire is the designation ofJoseph as a kind of surrogate for the male, almost as a kindof wife substitute.240

238 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 184.239 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible," Gen. 41:40-41.240 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 184.

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Joseph sits as second-in-command, bringing to mind Sarai/Sarah—

wife of the patriarch of no fewer than three religions—Vashti and

Esther, and even Jezebel and Ahab.

As part of his power, Joseph takes on the collection and

storage of grain in Egypt. The text reads, “He gathered up all

the food of the seven years when there was plenty in the land of

Egypt, and stored up food in the cities; he stored up in every

city the food from the fields around it. So Joseph stored up

grain in such abundance—like the sand of the sea—that he stopped

measuring it; it was beyond measure.”241 At the time, the people

in charge of storing grain were typically female. Women were the

people who took charge of their families’ stores of grain. Carol

Meyers notes, “Common female tasks in frontier farm settings

involved keeping the home in order, caring for small children…,

tending gardens and small animals, producing textiles, and taking

responsibility for food preparations and preservation.”242 The

last word—preservation—is my concern here. While men typically

did the sowing and reaping in early Israelite family encampments,

women were in charge of both preparing and preserving what was

241 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 41:48-49.242 Meyers, “The Family in Early Israel,” 25.

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reaped. While Meyers notes that these small family villages did

not have public granaries,243 she does allow that the families—and

particularly the women—stored up food as they could. Joseph,

then, is in charge of women’s work, almost a symbol of womanly

work at the level of the empire.

Furthering this idea, Penelope Weadock’s study on giparus may

shed more light on Joseph’s activities. In her study, she defines

the giparu as a space in which the entu-priestess lives and takes

charge over the productivity of the land: “…the giparu proper

which was the official dwelling of the entu-priestess, with its

annexe, the cemetery for the former entus; and the sanctuary in

which the entu prayed for the life of the king, her father or

brother, in the hope that the gods would bestow prosperity upon

the land through the king, their human regent.”244 She notes that

the entu would often take on a role of sacred marriage as part of

her duties—which fits with Jennings’ idea of Joseph as fulfilling

a sort of wifely role—and continues: “Further there is evidence

that the name for the very place where the sacred marriage took

place, the giparu, may have a more original meaning of

243 Ibid., 12.244 Penelope N. Weadock, “The Giparu at Ur,” Iraq 37, no. 2 (Autumn 1975): 124.

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storehouse.”245 Joseph is very much in charge of the storehouses

of grains in Egypt. When the famine hits and the people come to

Pharaoh for food, Pharaoh sends them to Joseph, who has final say

over what happens with the granaries.246 Meyers notes, “Thus, in

their managerial roles, senior females gained authority—the

recognized right to control—by virtue of having more people with

whom to interact.”247 The text notes that Joseph travelled through

all the lands of Egypt, which puts his gained power in a feminine

light.248 As well, aside from the sacred marriage issue, Weadock

also writes of the entu’s duties: “There is, finally, a side to

the entu’s life which was quite separate from her religious

duties and is only hinted at in the inscriptional material—that

of the entu as the manager of the vast estates belonging to the

giparu.”249 Joseph fulfills many of these roles—as manager of the

estates of Pharaoh, particularly the land; as pseudo-wife; and,

as I will discuss later, as a sort of wise woman or priestess.

245 Ibid., 102.246 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 41:55-57.247 Carol Meyers, “Women and the Domestic Economy of Early Israel,” in Women’s

Earliest Records: From Ancient Egypt and Western Asia, ed. Barbara S. Lesko, Brown Judaic Stuides 166 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 276.

248 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 41:46.249 Weadock, “The Giparu at Ur,” 103.

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It is in this position of power that Joseph’s brothers find

him. Here, Joseph has power over more than just their family—he

has power over the entire land, both Egypt’s own and those which

Egypt has taken over. The family which originally denied him

comes seeking him—unknowingly—in order to eat and survive. Joseph

receives them joyfully enough, particularly his father, but he

also makes sure they know that he has power over them before he

reveals himself to them.250 This theme of the denying family

relying on the transgender person for security finds root in

current contexts, as well. Jennings notes, “From transgendered

prostitutes in Mexico to eunuchs in royal courts, the family that

despises the transgendered person may also have to rely upon the

one they despise to keep the wolf of hunger from the door. The

story of Joseph may indeed be one in which they recognize

themselves.”251 As such, when Joseph’s family finally recognizes

him in his position of power, as the person he is and has been

all along, some of them may do so grudgingly, out of need. Even

here, Joseph’s power is not independent of his gender status.

Fontaine writes, “Maybe Joseph’s later behavior in his successful

250 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 42-46.251 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 195–6.

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food aid project betrays a knowledge on his part that he is being

used as a front man for the unpleasant choices the Egyptian

leaders do not want to be seen as making themselves. Or perhaps,

as suggested in the names of his children, he accepts that he is

socially dead to his father’s house and is eager to serve his new

lineage in Pharaoh’s court in the land that has treated him well

(Steiner 1954).”252 Either way, Joseph gains more power by acting

as the storer and provider of grains during the famine.

Furthermore, Joseph makes the people buy back the grain which he

took from them. Fontaine writes, “When their money is gone, they

offer themselves as slaves for the grain rations that were taken

from them in the first place, while Jacob’s household, under

Joseph’s protection, is living large in the eastern delta!”253

Joseph, then, becomes both slave-holder and the person—whether as

front man or due to a desire to turn his fortunes around or

through good intentions with unforeseen consequences—who sets in

motion the events that play out in the exodus. This does not seem

to be, in itself, a gendered thing—but it is worth noting that

Joseph does this from a seat of power that is second-in-command,

252 Fontaine, “Here Comes This Dreamer,” 143.253 Fontaine, “Here Comes This Dreamer,” 143–4.

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and while keeping in mind all the gendered acts, apparel, and

nuances that led him to this point.

Joseph’s rise to and use of power is strikingly similar to

Esther’s. She has a second-in-command position, as a Hebrew woman

in an empire not entirely friendly to Hebrew persons, similar to

Joseph’s position. She attains her position, as I noted in my

section on beauty, by gaining the attention of successively more

powerful men because of her beauty. Unlike Joseph, Esther’s rise

to power is relatively quick and smooth. The text takes very

little time to take Esther from an orphaned girl to queen of an

empire. Fontaine writes of Esther and Joseph:

Everyone likes a pretty slave, and modest, docile ones—well the God of the Masters is certainly with them!... A ring on the finger in the form of a legitimate marriage into a single household is the ultimate prize for the earnest female sex worker, or sometimes the escape is made through rising through the ranks of the exploited to serve as an overseer and manager of other newly trafficked victims.254

The text tells us that Joseph is sold into slavery and Esther is

placed into a harem, from which the King chooses his new Queen.

At the end of each of their narratives, Joseph and Esther both

have families at high-ranking levels and are both in charge of

254 Ibid., 142.

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the care and welfare of their entire people. Jennings notes,

“Subsequently, she advances in the business of finding favor with

more powerful men, eventually being brought to the attention of

the great King Ahaseurus after a year of cosmetic treatment to

enhance her already notable beauty. In consequence, she is made

queen in place of Vashti and decorated with a crown (2:17).”255

Such decoration echoes Joseph’s own treatment at the hands of

Pharaoh. As well, Jennings notes, “These stories serve as

bookends for the history of Israel in relation to the empires.”256

Narratively, then, Joseph’s story might be feminized in relation

to Esther’s story, as one serves as the mirror of the other

across the march of empires through Israel. Lefkovitz notes more

similarities between the two stories, particularly in the

unmasking both of Joseph and Esther. She writes:

As it is, Joseph could have given them food and sent them away…. Theoretically, he could have chosen not to out himself as Hebrew. But the comfort of the text lies in the clear implication that he has no choice…. Queen Esther is queen of the realm when her people of origin come under a death sentence. She is told that she can reveal her Jewish identity to the king as part of the plan to save her people or someone else will have to save the Jews. Performing as sex

255 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 185.256 Ibid.

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object, she choose in this guise to out herself as a Jew, though again the text implies that she has no choice.257

As such, both Joseph’s and Esther’s stories can map to much

transgender experience today, where both passing258 and coming out

of the closet259 play important roles. As well, each mirrors the

other, showing yet another way in which Joseph’s experience of

power can be read as feminine and therefore transgender.

Chapter 6: Joseph and Dreams

The text includes several accounts of Joseph either dreaming

or interpreting dreams. These accounts take place from his early

life through his time in Egypt under Pharaoh. Though the text

does not specify, it is possible to imagine that Joseph both

dreamed and interpreted more than those times that the text gives

the reader. Because Joseph’s interpretations of dreams caused

Pharaoh first to pull him from prison and then to establish him

257 Lefkovitz, In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities, 60.258 Dana Taylor, “On ‘Passing’ As A Woman,” news, information, activism,

awareness, The Transadvocate, September 22, 2013, http://www.transadvocate.com/on-passing-as-a-woman_n_10218.htm.

259 Matt Kailey, “Coming Out FAQ,” blog, information, advice, opinion, Tranifesto, accessed April 12, 2014, http://tranifesto.com/transgender-faqs-and-info/coming-out-faq/.

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as governor of Egypt,260 the reader can easily imagine that

Pharaoh calls upon Joseph for further interpretations as part of

Joseph’s role as second-in-command. I argue that these two things

could be read together as further placing Joseph in a sort of

entu role, particularly in light of Joseph overseeing the

granaries/food collection and storage in Egypt.

Acts of prophesy take several forms. Stefan M. Maul notes:

Deities could speak directly through the medium of a prophetor ecstatic, or appear in dreams, in order to convey their wishes and directives. They also announced their will by a plethora of signs that had to be read like a written text. Such unsolicited signs, which appeared spontaneously in the sky, on earth, and even on people, were not immediately intelligible by themselves but needed to be read by a trained interpreter of signs who had spent many years learning the highly sophisticated act of divination.261

While the narrator does not specifically say that the dreams came

from YHWH, Joseph and the people he encounters in Egypt speak of

them as revelations from God. “Then Joseph said to Pharaoh,

‘Pharaoh’s dreams are one and the same; God has revealed to

Pharaoh what he is about to do.’”262 By the time Joseph makes

these interpretations for Pharaoh, he has spent years fine-tuning260 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 41:9-46.261 Stefan M. Maul, “Chapter Twenty-Five: Divination Culture and the Handling

of the Future,” in The Babylonian World, ed. Gwendolyn Leick (New York: Routledge, 2007), 362.

262 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 41:25.

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his interpretative approach. As such, Joseph’s interpretations,

at the very least, could be part of a function of serving as a

priestess type figure for the eunuchs and Pharaoh.

Weadock notes that the entu served as the earthly wife of a

deity for the area in which the giparu existed.263 While the text

contains no evidence that Joseph served in such a capacity with a

non-corporeal deity, the reader may keep in mind that Pharaoh put

Joseph in much the same position in which King Ahasuerus placed

Esther, and that, as Mario Attilio Levi writes, “The King of

Egypt was God.”264 Joseph—as noted by Jennings—occupies a sort of

wifely space next to Pharaoh, this god-figure. Noting the robe

Joseph wore earlier in his life, Adrien Janis Bledstein writes,

“Though Speiser and Oppenheim connect the ornamented garment of

the goddess Nana with Joseph’s, they do not spell out the

implications for the biblical texts in which Joseph and Tamar

wear the apparel of a goddess.”265 This early robe may be

narrative foreshadowing, then, of Joseph’s later role serving as 263 Weadock, “The Giparu at Ur,” 102.264 Mario Attilio Levi, “Chapter 1: The Law of the State and the Law of the

Gods,” in Political Power in the Ancient World, trans. Jane Contello (The New American Library, 1965), 1, http://faculty.byuh.edu/troysmith/BYUH/Classes/Popular%20Government-Ancient%20and%20Modern/Levi--law%20of%20state%20and%20gods.pdf.

265 Bledstein, “Tamar and the ‘Coat of Many Colors,’” 68.

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goddess stand-in next to the Pharaoh-god. As such, the reader can

see how Joseph’s experience might parallel that of Enheduanna,266

one of the more famous entu-priestesses.

Furthermore, the text seems to place special emphasis on

Joseph’s dreams in a cultic manner throughout his narrative. In

the beginning of Joseph’s story, he wears the םםםם םםם, which the

text places immediately before relating his first dream. While

the םםםם םםם most likely is a garment worn by women, the םםםם

itself may be worn by either gender, and has links to priests

(and perhaps priestesses).267 The Hebrew Bible contains at least

14 references to priests wearing a םםםם. Furthermore, when Tamar

wears her םםםם םםם, she may be involved in a healing ritual.

Bledstein writes on the question of whether Tamar may have been

attempting a ritual to heal Amnon, and notes, “We learn later

that she [Tamar] is wearing ‘a garment of many colors,’ (13:18).

R. Oden points out that the ketonet marks ‘a ritual occasion’

266 Paula Marvelly, Women of Wisdom: A Journey of Enlightenment by Women of Vision through the Ages (London: Watkins Publishing, 2005), 5. Paula Marvelly writes, “The daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, Enheduanna was appointed in around 2300 BCE to the position of High Priestess of Nanna, the moon god, at the templeof Ur. Indeed, her portrait on a small alabaster disc, also unearthed with her poems, shows her presiding over a libation ritual.”

267 Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 2001.

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using Tamar as an example.”268 This could, then, be not only a

robe worn by women but also one worn by priestesses specifically.

Bledstein’s continuing research points out that Tamar’s clothing

description includes the word me’il, which she then finds worn by

various people involved in rituals through the Hebrew Bible,

mostly men (making Tamar’s clothing a bit queer itself, and

perhaps denoting the boundary-crossing work of priests and

priestesses in serving the sick and tending to the Temple).

Bledstein writes, “In each instance, the garment indicates sacred

and/or royal attire. The use of me’il in these contexts, combined

with Tamar’s performing a healing or purification ritual, leads

me to surmise that we are meant to understand that Tamar’s ketonet

passim, identified as a me’il, served to confirm that she was a

royal priestess.”269 Based on the similarities between Tamar’s

robe and Joseph’s earliest robe, then the reader might surmise

that Jacob recognized this prophetic or priestly potential in

Joseph, as well as Joseph’s femininity.

268 Adrien Janis Bledstein, “Was Habbirya a Healing Ritual Performed by a Woman in King David’s House?,” n.d., p. 30

269 Bledstein, “Tamar and the ‘Coat of Many Colors,’” 72–3.

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A part of this recognition may have had to do with Joseph’s

propensity to dream in symbols, perhaps as a revelation. This

creates another link between Joseph and his gender-fluid father,

who also dreamed in revelatory ways. In Genesis 28:10-17, Jacob

dreams of the ladder, prompting him to exclaim upon waking,

“Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!”270 Jacob

himself relates (though the text does not narrate) a second

dream.271 Later, the text notes that Jacob wrestles with a being

at Peniel. Though the text does not specify this moment as a

dream, it does note that the event takes place in the middle of

the night—and that, despite Jacob’s family being nearby, he is

alone.272 This instance echoes the dream wherein Jacob wrestles

with the being who came down the ladder and acquires his name.

Here, as Esther Hamori notes, Jacob receives confirmation of the

blessing he acquired from Esau and Isaac273 by acting femininely—

cooking—and by pretending to be Esau—and therefore putting on

masculinity. Interestingly, Jacob seems unable to correctly

interpret Joseph’s dreams. Pirson notes, “…Israel’s reading of 270 Attridge, “Genesis 25:19-34,” 28:16.271 Ibid, Gen. 31:10-16.272 Attridge, “Genesis 25:19-34,” 32:22-32.273 Esther J. Hamori, “When Gods Were Men”: The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern

Literature (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 101–2.

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the second dream deviates from the brothers’. They interpret it

in terms of kingship and domination. This element is lacking in

Israel’s exegesis. His rhetorical question, however, rather

exhibits his astonishment about the dream. But, being the

receiver of a dream twice himself…he should be able to assess a

dream at its true value.”274 Given Jacob’s/Israel’s background, it

is a bit surprising that he incorrectly interprets Joseph’s dream

—but the link is clearly drawn between father-dreamer and son-

dreamer. Jacob’s inability to interpret another’s dream, coupled

with Joseph’s talent for interpreting later in the text, may

narratively feminize Joseph as a progression from Jacob’s gender-

fluidity.

It is important to note that prophetic activity is not a

gender-specific activity. The Hebrew Bible is filled with stories

and books by and about and in the name of male prophets. I do not

see Joseph’s prophetic activity, in his dreams, as feminine

because it is prophetic activity, but because of how he is

portrayed and positioned while engaged in it. Martti Nissinen

274 Pirson, The Lord of the Dreams: A Semantic and Literary Analysis of Genesis 37-50, 50.

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writes, ““The prophetic action as such is not gender-specific.”275

However, the socio-cultural location of those engaging in

prophetic activities in the narratives includes gender

considerations. In short, gender matters: “…gender does matter

because prophecy appears as one of the few public, socially

appreciated roles that were not inextricably linked with male

gender and therefore could be assumed by nonmales even in a

patriarchal society.”276 Joseph’s gender coding—through his robe,

how power works for him, how his family treats him—puts him in a

nonmale position in his culture. Nissinen notes that other

nonmale cultic functionaries existed in the culture surrounding

ancient Israel: “In Mesopotamia, devotees of Istar called assinnu,

kugarru, sinnisanu, sometimes also kalu and kulu’u are mentioned in

several texts from different periods as representatives of an

ambivalent gender. These people feature in different roles

including cross-dressing, ritual dance, healing, prophecy,

lament…as evidenced by texts from Mari and probably also

275 Martti Nissinen, “Gender and Prophetic Agency in the Ancient Near East andin Greece,” in Prophets Male and Female: Gender and Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, the EasternMediterranean, and the Ancient Near East, ed. Jonathan Stokl and Corrine L. Carvalho(Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 35.

276 Ibid., 46.

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Assyria.”277 Further queering Joseph’s role as potential entu next

to Pharaoh, Nissinen writes of the assinnu in particular:

Perhaps the best word to describe them is ‘queer,’ because that is what they seem to have been even in the eyes of their contemporaries…. Rather, they reflected Istar’s alterity, emulating her power to transgress sexual boundaries, thus highlighting acceptable gender roles by wayof manifestly violating them…. They were appreciated as flesh-and-blood manifestations of the alterity of Istar, whowas believed to have created them; hence their social statuswas due to their otherness. The prophetic role (probably unlike their transgender role) is not likely to have been their permanent occupation, but as members of temple communities they could assume this role if they, like the female members of the same communities, fulfilled its requirements.278

This gender alterity was neither unheard of nor unknown, and may

be a part of how the narrator chooses to present Joseph. It is

possible that Jacob, Potiphar, and Pharaoh all appreciated

Joseph’s own gender-otherness, seeing in it prophetic value. As

such, Joseph as a cross-dressing, gender-bending prophet would

not have been out of sync with those cultures surrounding his

original culture.

As well, Joseph’s loss and gain of clothing may point to his

accrual of wisdom, making him a valuable wise prophetic asset for

277 Ibid., 42.278 Ibid., 43–4.

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Pharaoh. Pirjo Lapinkivi writes of Inanna/Istar’s loss and gain

of clothing as she enters and leaves the realm of death, marking

how she loses and gains wisdom along the way.279 Similarly,

Lapinkivi notes, “The same motif of the groom adorning the bride

and her gaining a new, higher status is also found in a much

later Neo-Assyrian text of the marriage of Nabu and Tasmetu.”280

As a reader, particularly as a queer reader, then Pharaoh’s

adornment of Joseph may be read as the groom—Pharaoh—adorning the

bride—Joseph—to denote the status of wisdom Joseph has acquired.

In terms of garments, the same could be said with Jacob as the

groom and Joseph as the bride; however, Pharaoh seems to be the

one to recognize wisdom in Joseph the most: he gives Joseph his

signet ring and a chain of gold. Similarly, Lapinkivi notes that

“Inanna puts on the ‘grand queenly garment’ and her jewelry,”281

and that “the marriage of Siva and Minaksi in the city of Madurai

in India, as well as the marriages of the spectators of the

ceremony, are accomplished by the bridegroom tying the marriage 279 Pirjo Lapinkivi, “The Adorning of the Bride: Providing Her with Wisdom,”

in Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2-6, 2001, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, Part 1 (Institute for Asian and African Studies: University of Helsinki, 2002), 327–8.

280 Ibid., 333.281 Ibid., 332.

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necklace (tali) around the bride’s neck.”282 Each of these

symbolizes recognition of the wisdom of the person acquiring the

jewels. As such, Joseph may function as a sort of ‘wise woman’

type in relation to Pharaoh. With this status and apparel as

wise, Joseph then acquires his ultimate seat of power next to

Pharaoh.

Chapter 7: Joseph and Family

I argue that Joseph’s interactions with his family members—

from his mother and father to his siblings to his own offspring

and descendants—works into the text’s gendering of him. Because

the narrative makes clear that Jacob loves Joseph dearly, I will

spend time discussing Jacob’s background and own gender fluidity,

as a means of showing some of the reasons he may have loved his

genderqueer son so much. I will spend some time on Joseph’s

interactions with his brothers, though not in as great of detail—

both because the brothers’ backgrounds are not covered as

extensively as either Joseph’s or Jacob’s and because I have

already covered their first big interaction with Joseph in 282 Ibid., 331.

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greater detail in the Robe and Power sections. Less time will be

spent on Rachel and on Joseph’s descendants—Rachel because the

text does not allow for much direct interaction between mother

and son, and descendants because part of the narrative gendering

of Joseph in relation to his descendants will be covered in my

treatment of how Jacob relates to and genders Joseph.

Joseph and Jacob

Jacob, without question, sometimes performs as male as an

adult in his narrative. He has multiple wives, and impregnates

both them and their handmaidens each multiple times. His children

seek his favor, he gives blessings, and he is the one to make

decisions about where the family moves.283 These things happen in

Jacob’s adulthood, from the point when Jacob takes Leah as wife

onward. Hepner notes that Laban attempts to feminize Jacob in the

trick he plays with Leah and Rachel: “Laban attempts to defeat

Jacob by degendering him, making him his woman, as it were,

thereby echoing the language of Man after he has had intercourse

with Woman (2:23), whom God had described as םםם םםםםם, warrior

283Stefan M. Maul, “Chapter Twenty-Five: Divination Culture and the Handling of the Future,” in The Babylonian World, ed. Gwendolyn Leick (New York: Routledge, 2007), 362. Attridge, “Genesis 25:19-34.”

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opposed to him (2:20)!”284 While I take exception to Hepner’s notion

that being feminized equals being degendered, he makes the point

that Laban here attempts to be ‘the man’ in relation to Jacob,

‘the woman.’ This reads to me like a small-scale echo of the

feminization of Israel by Assyria, laid out in the Assyrian

Vassal Treaties. Hepner backs his point by using Deuteronomy,

which reads in much the same fashion as the Assyrian Vassal

Treaties: “This term [םםם םםםם, a month of days] is an allusion

to the Deuteronomic law stating that an Israelite may only marry

a captive woman after waiting םםם םםםם, a month of days (Deut.

21:13).”285 If this is a play on words, it may work especially

well since Jacob’s name is changed to Israel in Genesis 32:28,

after fleeing Laban and then making a covenant with him. This

may be a subtle feminization of Jacob, written around his

acquisition of two brides.

Earlier in Jacob’s narrative, we learn that Jacob is ‘of the

tents,’286 which may be a less-subtle feminization of him. The

Hebrew reads: 287,םםםםם םםם םם םםם םםםםם “while/but Jacob [was] a

284 Hepner, Legal Friction, 423.285 Ibid.286 Ibid, Gen. 25:27.287 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Author’s own translation.

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harmless/complete/well-behaved man he dwelled [in] tents.” The

NRSV tells us Jacob was a ‘quiet’ man in this verse. The word

translated as ‘quiet,’ םם, is translated by Koehler and

Baumgartner as ‘harmless, complete, well-behaved.’288 What does

this mean? From context, the contrast is being drawn between Esau

and Jacob: Esau the manly hunter, Jacob the potentially not-so-

manly tent-dweller. While the text could be rendered to say Jacob

is a complete man while Esau somehow is not, that does not make

much narrative sense. Esau is performing masculinity by hunting

and being in the country. Jacob is staying where the women stay.

Carol Meyers notes, “The gender differentiation that placed men

in fields and in constructive tasks perhaps hinged on their

greater ability, relative to females involved in parenting

infants and small children, to work at uninterrupted tasks at a

distance from the residential compound.”289 Socially, Esau

fulfilled masculine roles by being away from the compound or tent

area, while Jacob in some way seems to have fulfilled feminine

288 Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 2001, II:1742.

289 Meyers, “The Family in Early Israel,” 24.

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roles by being near the compound/tent area. This complicates

Jacob’s gender early in his story.290

Similarly, the text states that Jacob cooks, and Esau—

presumably—does not. We presume this, because Esau sells his

birthright for a bowl of stew291—if he could cook, why would he do

that? Rather, it seems that the contrast between feminine and

masculine is once again being drawn. Furthermore, the text may

indicate that this was not an uncommon occurrence. The Hebrew

reads 292,םםםם םםםם םםםם םםםם םםם םם-םםםם םםםם םםם “And/Once/When

Jacob cooked stew/cooked food Esau came from the field and he was

tired/exhausted.” The initial letter, ם, can be translated in a

number of ways, including a continuation (such as ‘and’) and a

demarcation of time (once, when). Here, the continuation ‘and’

does not make narrative sense, as the previous verse does not

flow into this verse. Thus, a marker of time—once or when—makes

more sense. Because this verse begins a story about a specific

290 I want to take care to note here that we’re not given a reason for Jacob staying close to the tents. It’s possible that he could not, for some reason, have been away from the compound—perhaps he was differently abled, for example—but I want to be sure to highlight that this placed him in a feminine sphere.

291 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Genesis 25:19-35:29,” in The HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 39–58, 25:29.

292 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Gen. 25:29.

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instance, the one-time time marker ‘when’ does not make narrative

or grammar sense. Thus, ‘once’ or ‘once when’ makes the most

sense here. In English, the sentence might better read ‘Once when

Jacob cooked…”, noting that Jacob cooked on more than just this

one occasion. Bird writes, “The role of mother included primary

care of children of both sexes at least until the time of weaning

(about age three), the education and disciplining of older

children, and provision of food and clothing for the entire

household.”293 (Notably, Bird does not take into account the role

of children as laborers in the ancient world, while Carol Meyers

does: “Men, women, and children of several generations

collectively carried out the multifarious household

activities.”294) As such, when Jacob cooks, he again performs

feminine gender,295 while Esau performs masculine gender—coming

from the field and eating the cooking done by someone else.296

293 Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities, 59.294 Meyers, “The Family in Early Israel,” 23.295 Ken Stone, “Chapter 4: Pleasure and Danger in Biblical Interpretation:

Food, Sex, and Women in 2 Samuel 13 and the Song of Songs,” in Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex, and Bible in Queer Perspective (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005), 97.

296 Again, we are not told why Jacob was cooking rather than hunting or tilling. He may have had differing abilities, been ill, etc. However, his cooking places him in a feminine sphere, as noted by Phyllis Bird’s analysis of male and female roles in ancient Israelite society.

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As well, we are told that Esau is ruddy and hairy, while

Jacob is neither.297 The Hebrew word םםםםםם, meaning ‘reddish’

or ‘ruddy,’ seems to describe young men or boys.298 We are told

that other men in the Bible are ruddy—such as David in 1 Sam.

16:12299 and the woman’s beloved in Song of Songs 5:10300—and so

this seems to be a marker of young masculinity in the Hebrew

Bible. The text of Genesis 25:25 states that Esau was so-named

because of his hairiness and reddishness. Later, when Esau sells

his birthright for stew, the text takes care again to note that

his reddishness: םםםם is repeated twice in 25:30, meaning ‘reddish brown’—perhaps doubly emphasized to mean ‘reddish-brown

lentils.’301 At the end of the verse, Esau is given a nickname:

Edom, which my Bible notes as ‘That is Red.’302 Jacob never has

this appellation. Here, the text points to an in-born difference

297 Attridge, “Genesis 25:19-35:29.” 25:25.298 Frederick E. Greenspahn, When Brothers Dwell Together: The Preeminence of Younger

Siblings in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 88.299 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 276.300 Michael Avioz, “The Motif of Beauty in the Books of Samuel and Kings*,”

Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009): 350, n 35.301 Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 2001.302 Attridge, “Genesis 25:19-35:29,” 25:30, note b.

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between Jacob and Esau—one pertaining to social constructions of

gender in ancient Israel.

The hairiness of Esau is yet another marker of his

masculinity, against Jacob’s feminine smoothness. Again, Esau’s

name points to this hairiness from birth.303 The Hebrew Bible

continually references men as hairy. One such example is Samson,

whose very masculine power of strength comes from his hair.304 The

text also uses Absalom’s hair to indicate that he might become

king. Avioz notes, “Growing hair is intended to signal Abaslom’s

intentions for kingship to the People, since long hair was

related to beauty and was characteristic of kings.”305 The text

itself blatantly contrasts Esau’s hairiness and Jacob’s

smoothness םםם םםם םםם םםםםם םםם םםם םםםם םםםם םם-םםםם םםם םם

And Jacob said to his mother Rebekah, ‘Look, my brother“ , םםם

303 Ibid, 25:25.304 Susan Niditch, “Samson: Maleness, Charisma, Warrior Satuts, and Hair,” in

“My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man”: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 63–80.

305 Avioz, “The Motif of Beauty in the Books of Samuel and Kings*,” 352.

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Esau is a hairy man and I am a smooth man.’”306 Being not-hairy

disincludes Jacob from this manly circle.307

Furthermore, Rebekah—Jacob’s mother—favors him over Esau.

The text states, “Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game;

but Rebekah loved Jacob.”308 Once again, the text points out

Esau’s masculine hunting skills, and obliquely puts Jacob into a

feminine sphere. Jacob does not hunt, and therefore does not

follow a socio-cultural ideal of masculinity for the time. As

well, the female parent favors Jacob—which might not on its own

feminize him, but when coupled with this reminder of Esau’s

manliness and the rest of the feminization of Jacob, may deserve

a second read as subtle feminization.

I think this makes it all the more significant, then, that

Jacob favors Joseph. Jacob, whose early life was so femininely-

gendered by our text, then favors his apparently feminine son.309 306 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Gen. 27:11, author's own

translation. I also appreciate that םםם can mean smooth, to be smooth, or to divide into parts, showing a bit of Hebrew word-play as Rebekah and Jacob seek to do just that by tricking Isaac into giving Jacob the blessingrather than Esau and prompting the split between the brothers.

307 Hendel, The Epic of the Patriarch: The Jacob Cycle and the Narrative Traditions of Canaan and Israel, 84.

308 Attridge, “Genesis 25:19-35:29,” 25:28.309 Hameen-Anttila, “The Story of Joseph in Islamic Literature,” 276. I

include this citation here to note that in Islamic literature, and in the Qur’an itself, Jacob’s love for Joseph is seen as so extraordinary as to border on the romantic, once again subtly feminizing Joseph in relation to

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Jennings notes, “The remarkably lovely adolescent male is

transgendered by the affection of a more powerful male.”310

Perhaps this is why Jacob bestows the gift of the robe on Joseph.

Perhaps Jacob sees some of his early self in Joseph, and seeks

not to squash it but rather to encourage Joseph in being himself.

Furthermore—as I wondered in chapter 1, in regards to

Joseph’s robe—if Jacob indeed made the robe he gave to Joseph,

this shows the text feminizing Jacob into his later years. Bird

notes, “Spinning and weaving are identified throughout the

ancient Mediterranean world as symbolic of female domestic

activity and skill, so that even queens and wealthy women are

depicted holding a spindle.”311 The Hebrew word םםם, which denotes

the action Jacob took in relation to the robe, can mean a number

of things. Koehler and Baumgartner mostly identify it with

making: “make, manufacture; make for; create; prepare.”312 The

Hebrew seems to indicate that Jacob did make this robe—and the

culture of the time indicates that such an activity would have

Jacob.310 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 181.311 Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities, 59.312 Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 2001,

I:890–1.

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been a feminine one. This, then, might be another and consistent

feminization of Jacob and Joseph.

Jacob-the-complexly-gendered gives Joseph the robe as a mark

of his favoritism of Joseph. The text notes that this is because

Joseph is םם-םםםםם םם, the son of his old age.313 But what do we

do with Benjamin, who is younger than Joseph, if this is the

case? Jennings agrees, noting, “This [explanation] is not wholly

satisfying to the attentive reader since there is, after all, a

younger son, Benjamin, whose birth is the occasion of Rachel’s

death in childbirth.”314 As Jennings goes on to note, we might—as

Thomas Mann has done—argue that Benjamin cannot be the favorite

if his birth kills Rachel. This may be the case, but it still

does not make Joseph out to be the last son, the youngest.

Jennings continues, “In any case, as Joseph is poised between

adolescence and adulthood, he is singled out and vested with a

maiden’s garment as a sign of the special affection of his

father. He is, at least to this degree, transvested and thus

313 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Gen. 37:3.314 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 181.

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transgendered.”315 While the making of the robe feminizes Jacob,

the giving and wearing of the robe feminizes Joseph.

Even later in Joseph’s life, after he’s had children, Jacob

treats Joseph in a feminine manner. (In a sense, this makes Jacob

the only person who accepts Joseph as he is from beginning to

end.) Hepner notes, “Joseph’s feminization is confirmed when

Jacob greets Joseph after 22 years of separation with the word

,this time (gen. 46:30), alluding to Man greeting Woman ,םםםם

created from his side, with the declaration םםם םםםם, this time

(2:23), and naming her םםםם, Woman.”316 Hepner sees that even

Jacob’s greeting can be read as feminizing. He goes on to state,

“The Talmud is sensitive to Joseph’s feminization, suggesting

that Leah originally conceived Joseph while Rachel conceived

Dinah, but Leah prayed that the fetuses be switched so that

Rachel have a son and that she would not have more than six of

the twelve sons of Jacob.”317 Thus, from a reader response

perspective, the narrative might read that Jacob recognizes

Joseph as feminine from birth onward. As well, when Jacob meets

315 Ibid.316 Hepner, Legal Friction, 555.317 Ibid.

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Joseph’s children, he adopts318 them as his own.319 The argument

could be made that because Joseph has an Egyptian wife—Asenath—

Jacob wants to be sure that Joseph’s children are seen as

Israelites.320 I do not dispute this argument, but I shift the

premise a little bit. I posit that from a reader response

perspective, the text could also read that because Joseph is so

feminine—even unto his time in Egypt under Pharaoh—Jacob must

adopt Joseph’s children.

For two test cases, I look at Moses and Ruth. Moses is an

Israelite with a foreign wife, Zipporah, and two sons, Gershom

and Eliezer.321 Ruth is a foreign woman with first one and then a

second Israelite husband (eventually, Boaz) and a son, Obed.322 I

318 David Stephan Powers, “Chapter 2: Adoption in the Near East: From Antiquity to the Rise of Islam: Adoption Among Monotheists: Israelites,” inMuhammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men: The Making of the Last Prophet (University ofPennsylvania Press, 2009), 15–17. I refer to the entire section here for discussion about the lack of a formal Hebrew word for the current concept of adoption, because of ancient Israelite concerns with lineage for inheritance and care of land.

319 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Genesis 37-50,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition, NRSV (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 59–82, 48:5.

320 Naomi Steinberg, Kinship and Marriage in Genesis: A Household Economics Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 129.

321 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Exodus,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition, NRSV (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 84–149, 18:1-27.

322 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Ruth,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition, NRSV (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 384–88, 4:17-22.

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draw the comparisons here because in each marriage, the wife is

foreign while the husband is Israelite—just as in the case of

Joseph and Asenath.

In Moses’ case, he has two children, Gershom and Eliezer,

with Zipporah. The text states that Zipporah is a foreigner,323

which is a point of contention for Miriam and Aaron.324 As some

scholars have noted, the Cushite woman may not be the same person

as the Midianite woman—or each may be the same person, referred

to with different names for ethnicity.325 Whether Moses has one or

two foreign wives, his children definitely come from a

partnership with a non-Israelite woman. As well, Moses himself is

recognized by the text as Egyptian.326 And yet, no one seems to

question the children’s Israelite status—despite Moses’ father-

in-law, Jethro, having custody of the children, possibly

permanently. Exodus 18:2-3 reads, in part, “After Moses had sent

323 Attridge, “Exodus,” 2:16-22.324 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Numbers,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised

Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 196–254, 12:1.

325 “Numbers 12 Pulpit Commentary,” Bible help -- commentaries, information, varieties, Bible Hub, accessed April 8, 2014, http://biblehub.com/commentaries/pulpit/numbers/12.htm. I find this fascinating and would like to examine it in greater detail, but am letting it lie in the interest of not getting off-track with my thesis.

326 Attridge, “Exodus,” 2:19.

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away his wife Zipporah, his father-in-law Jethro took her back,

along with her two sons.”327 Zipporah and their sons stayed with

her father until Jethro brought them back.328 Neither Zipporah nor

their sons stayed with Moses—they were raised, for an unknown

amount of time, in Midian. Furthermore, Exodus 18 ends with:

“Then Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went off to his

own country.”329 Though neither Zipporah nor the sons are

mentioned in this verse, they are also not mentioned through the

rest of Exodus as being with Moses. As well, the nature of Hebrew

verbs privileges male over female, grammatically, so that if even

one male is present in a group of women, the male form of the

verb will (usually) be used. As well, Jethro’s actions in this

passage continually use the third masculine singular,330 and so

these things make it difficult to tell whether he takes Zipporah

and the sons back with him to Midian when he departs. Gershom

appears again in Judges, as a priest to the Danites,331 while

327 Ibid.328 Ibid, 18:5-6.329 Ibid.330 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Exodus 18:1-27.331 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “Judges,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard

Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition, NRSV (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 377, 18:30.

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Eliezer appears again in a lineage list in 1 Chronicles 23:15,332

thereby proving that they at least eventually returned to Israel

(insofar as the overarching narrative is concerned). Their

lineage as Israelites is not questioned by any of the texts,

despite both having a foreign mother and living in a foreign land

for an indeterminate amount of time.

By contrast, once Ruth—who is in Israel, with Boaz and Naomi

—has a son, that child is given to Naomi. The townspeople

proclaim that Naomi adopts him, that he is her son: םםםםםםם

םם םםםםם םם םםםם םםם-םם םםםםם םםםםםםם םםם םםם םםם םםם-םםם םםם

And the female neighbors gave him a name, saying, ‘A son“ 333,םםם

has been born to Naomi,’ and they gave him a name, Obed. He

(was/became) the father of Jesse the father of David.” Notably,

Ruth is a foreign woman—nearly every specific reference to Ruth

in the first half of the book specifies that she is a Moabite.334

Her status as a foreigner cannot be called into question. As

well, she resides in Israel—against Naomi’s wishes and against

332 Harold W. Attridge, ed., “1 Chronicles,” in HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Including Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books; Student Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 562–98.

333 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Ruth 4:17.334 Attridge, “Ruth,” 1-2.

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all expectation.335 And yet, the townsfolk still proclaim Ruth’s

child as Naomi’s—a kind of adoption, to legitimize Ruth’s

children as Israelite.

Set against these two cases of children born to Israelite

husbands and foreign wives, Jacob’s adoption of Joseph’s sons

seems more in line with Naomi’s adoption of Ruth’s child than

with the people’s lack of concern about the Israelite lineage of

Moses’ children. Hepner notes, “Genesis 41:51 highlights Joseph

as an anti-Moses figure by stressing that when Joseph names his

firstborn son in Egypt he recalls that he has forgotten his

parental home, which contrasts him with Moses who, when naming

his firstborn son, Gershom, remembers that he was a stranger in

Egypt.”336 Had it been enough that Joseph the Israelite was the

father, Jacob would not have needed to adopt Joseph’s children to

legitimize their heritage, even while Joseph was in Egypt—just

like Moses’ children needed no adoption to be legitimately

Israelite. But it is not enough; Joseph is too feminine—and

335 I make note here that the town is ‘abuzz’ when Naomi returns without husband or sons and with a foreign daughter-in-law in tow at the very beginning of Ruth. The shock the people apparently feel at this return seems to be tied to Ruth’s Moabite status, as seen in the continuous mention of her status as Moabite for the first two chapters.

336 Hepner, Legal Friction, 483.

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perhaps, by this point, too foreign as well—more like Ruth than

Moses, and so Jacob insures the children’s Israelite status by

adopting them into his own home. The text takes care to note that

Jacob does not care as much about the lineage status of any other

children that may be born to Joseph;337 his concern is for those

children who would stand in line for the largest portions of

inheritance under Israelite law.

Joseph and RachelThough the text does not present any direct contact between

Joseph and Rachel beyond Joseph’s birth, some narrative

connections to Rachel can be and have been made. The first I

brought up earlier: the possibility that Joseph’s infamous first

robe belonged to Rachel, perhaps as her wedding dress. But the

text presents another connection: it uses the same Hebrew phrase

to describe Joseph’s beauty as it does Rachel’s.338 The two lines

of text in question read:

Genesis 29:17339םםםםם םםם םםםם םםםם םםםם םםם-םםם םםםם םםםם

And/But/While the eyes of Leah were soft, and/but/while Rachelwas beautiful in form and beautiful in appearance.

337 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 48:6.338 Greenspahn, When Brothers Dwell Together: The Preeminence of Younger Siblings in the Hebrew

Bible, 96.339 Elliger and Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Author’s own translation.

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Genesis 39:6b340םםםם םםםם םםם-םםם םםםם םםםם

And Joseph was beautiful in form and beautiful in appearance.

As described in my section on Joseph’s beauty, though the gender

of the adjectives are different, this is a word-for-word match in

description between Rachel and Joseph. Because grammatical gender

has little to do with social/cultural gender and more to do with

making words match with one another, I choose to ignore the

gender markers on the descriptors at this point. As such, the

text links Joseph’s appearance with that of his mother, having a

two-fold effect. First, this link is of a feminine nature. Joseph

takes after his mother. Second, while Jacob may see his own

feminine self reflected in his son, he may also see Rachel—his

favored wife—reflected in Joseph. Macwilliam notes, “‘some

contemporary interpreters have understood the association of

mother and son as a textual feminizing of Joseph.’”341 The

feminization of Joseph is therefore doubled in this phrase match,

and so even Joseph’s tenuous link with his mother feminizes him.

Joseph and his brothers

340 Ibid. Author’s own translation.341 Macwilliam, “Ideologies of Male Beauty and the Hebrew Bible,” 274.

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In the beginning, Joseph’s brothers do not accept him as he

is. They hate the difference he and his robe represent. As I

discussed previously, their hatred of his robe seems to signify

more than simple jealousy of a favored brother. Reuben’s

interaction, as the eldest son, points out that this is not a

fear that Joseph will somehow cause disinheritance.342 Rather,

they hate how Joseph acts—how he talks, what he wears, who he is.

They are disturbed by his dreams: “So they hated him even more

because of his dreams and his words.”343 Everything about Joseph

represents something his brothers fear and therefore hate. As

such, they concoct a plan, unabashedly, to do away with Joseph.

“They said to one another, ‘Here comes this dreamer. Come now,

let us kill him and throw in into one of the pits; then we shall

say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what

will become of his dreams.’”344 Only Reuben’s last-moment voice

keeps Joseph from being killed outright. As noted in the section

regarding the robe, this voice stands out: only Reuben is not

afraid of Jacob’s favoritism of Joseph, and his intervention on

342 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 181–2.343 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 37:8.344 Ibid, Gen. 37:19-20.

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behalf of Joseph’s life (if not his well-being) indicates that

other incentives for the brothers’ hatred is at play here.345

When the brothers have committed their crime and sullied the

‘valuable’ robe, they take this evidence back to Jacob. They

leave it to him to interpret the evidence, to assume what has

happened. This echoes many crimes against trans* individuals

today, when a person’s status is not referenced or is only

obliquely referenced as cause of the crime or part of their

identity.346 Jacob is left to piece together a story on his own,

in his grief. As he does so, he dons sackcloth—seemingly the

opposite of the fine garment which he had bestowed upon Joseph.

Thus, from a reader response perspective, even this silence on

their despicable actions committed against Joseph points to a

transgender experience for him.

Later in the story, when Joseph and his brothers interact

again, the brothers do not at first recognize Joseph. “Although

Joseph had recognized his brothers they did not recognize him.”347

He has changed; he has been allowed to become himself, more 345 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 181.346 Renee Martin, “Hierarchy of Bodies,” The Guardian, April 25, 2009, sec.

World News, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/25/transgender-rights.

347 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 42:8.

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fully, more completely. Lefkovitz writes, “The fact that Joseph

knows his brothers while they do not recognize him is

unremarkable in the story but does suggest that Joseph has

effected a radical transformation over these years….”348 Perhaps

because the brothers expect the Egyptians to be different from

themselves, Joseph’s own difference does not stand out to them.

He’s just another Egyptian.349 Furthermore, Lefkovitz notes, “He

also becomes an Egyptian (encoded as feminine in Greek and much

Western literature)…. When his brothers come to plead for food,

he is so changed as to be unrecognizable to them.”350 From a

reader perspective, then, Joseph is completely feminized by this

point; his transformation from one social gender to another is

complete.

Even later, when the brothers do indeed recognize Joseph,

they no longer criticize him. They instead must seek his favor,

must accept him as he is. Jennings notes, “He is one of them, and

yet he is also decidedly not one of them.”351 Though the brothers

348 Lefkovitz, “Coats and Tales,” 87–8.349 Toscano, “Peterson Toscano.” Because the brothers do not recognize Joseph

amongst the Egyptians, it can be imagined—as Peterson Toscano has done—thatthe Egyptians looked feminine to the Israelites.

350 Lefkovitz, In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities, 60.351 Jennings, “Joseph as Sissy Boy,” 194.

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fought against the part of Joseph that was not like themselves

initially, the story now hinges upon their acceptance of those

parts of Joseph which are not like them. And it is only when they

accept him as he is that the brothers finally recognize him as

Joseph, their long-ago sold-off sibling. Genesis 45 reads as a

pivotal moment from a transgender lens. The chapter begins, “So

no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his

brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and

he household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I

am Joseph. Is my father still alive?’ But his brothers could not

answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.’”352 This scene

could easily take place today, as a person reveals

him/her/hirself353 as transgender to loved ones who sent

hir/her/him away, violently or otherwise.354 The transformation in

the brothers’ attitude toward Joseph does not happen

352 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 45:1-3.353 Some gender-non-conforming and transgender persons prefer to use pronouns

that do not fall into English’s gender binary of ‘he’ and ‘she,’ and wish to avoid being called ‘it’ because of the dehumanizing nature of our genderneutral pronoun. Thus, some gender-non-conforming and transgender persons prefer to use ‘they’ in the singular or new pronouns such as ‘hir’ and ‘zie.’

354 Matt Kailey, “National Coming Out Day: What’s Your Best ‘Coming Out as Trans’ Story?,” information, activisim, awareness, news, Tranifesto, October 11, 2012, http://tranifesto.com/2012/10/11/national-coming-out-day-whats-your-best-coming-out-as-trans-story/.

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instantaneously, even all these years later. It takes almost an

entire chapter of explanation on Joseph’s part before his

brothers begin to come around from their guilt. Finally, the text

reads, “And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and

after that his brothers talked with him.”355 I see this as a

powerful moment for trans* persons--a way to see a ‘coming out’

as a positive thing, as opposed to the negative ‘coming out’

earlier in Joseph’s life.

Joseph’s long life and descendantsThe text itself seems to approve of Joseph being fully

himself. Near the end of his story, it is noted that “Joseph

lived to see children of the third generation of Ephraim; the

children of Machir son of Manasseh were likewise born upon

Joseph’s knees.”356 As Abraham Malamat writes, “It seems that the

idea of the fourth generation as the maximum life span is the

basis for the divine admonition to the sinner that he will not

escape retribution even into his descendants’ lifetimes…. By

contrast, Job, the ‘righteous man’ (Ezek. 14:14), Si’-gabbari,

Adad-guppi’, and others like them derive enjoyment from seeing

355 Attridge, “HarperCollins Study Bible,” Gen. 45:15.356 Ibid., Gen. 50:23.

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their great-grandchildren flourish.”357 In essence, this seems to

say that Joseph lives a long life (already a blessing in itself),

and in that long life he sees his children, grandchildren, and

great-grandchildren healthy and well, rather than suffering.

Chapter 8: Joseph and Gender Today

Having looked at Joseph as transgender—as crossing gender

boundaries—we can turn our attention to how this might affect

transgender and gender non-conforming persons, queer persons,

today. Throughout the preceding chapters, I have sprinkled hints

at how Joseph’s story maps with some experiences of transgender

persons today. Noach Dzmura gives a succinct statement that could

apply to Joseph as easily as to any of us who do not conform to

gender norms today: “Today in Western cultures, many people mix

or cross the binary lines of culturally specific gender-

identifying behaviors. While we still attempt to classify people

in gender boxes based on their behavior choices, transgender

357 Abraham Malamat, “Longevity: Biblical Concepts and Some Ancient Near Eastern Parallels*,” in History of Biblical Israel: Major Problems and Minor Issues (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, Inc, 2004), 390–93.

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reality tells us that’s no longer possible.”358 Much of biblical

criticism and reading has done the same: attempted to place the

characters in the narratives in specific gender boxes. However,

as Judith Butler states, “This ‘being a man’ and this ‘being a

woman’ are internally unstable affairs. They are always beset by

ambivalence precisely because there is a cost in every

identification, the loss of some other set of identifications,

the forcible approximation of a norm one never chooses, a norm

that chooses us, but which we occupy, reverse, resignify to the

extent that the norm fails to determine us completely.”359 That

is, none of us are ‘safe’ from gender ambivalence to some extent.

Identifying definitively in one way will mean a loss of

identification in another way. This may be what Lefkovitz refers

to as passing anxiety: “Passing is about thresholds, and

thresholds are places marked by anxiety.”360 Joseph signifies this

passing anxiety via the sheer amount of thresholds he models. He

crosses gender borders in attire, beauty, function, cult, family,

and power. At times, he seems to ‘pass,’ to fit into the borders 358 Noach Dzmura, ed., Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community

(Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2010), 175.359 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York:

Routledge, 1993), 86.360 Lefkovitz, In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities, 62.

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of gender. But ‘passing’ is a debated goal in trans*

experience.361

As such, when Joseph refuses to cross these gender borders

in an ‘orderly’ way that syncs with his culture (he is not a

eunuch, despite often functioning in the same roles and spaces in

which eunuchs traditionally function), his narrative can be read

as embodying ‘border anxiety.’ Ken Stone explains:

My own view is that the archaeological-historical questions at stake are rather less important—especially for queer readers—than the ideological-theological questions associated with such debates. For the tendency to define an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ of identity by defining the Other on the basis of the Other’s supposed negative practices—and,in the process, defining oneself by way of contrast—has extremely troubling consequences. These consequences are usefully understood in relation to Iris Marion Young’s discussion of ‘border anxiety.’ Building in part upon Julia Kristeva’s theory of the ‘Abject’ (Kristeva 1982), Young points out that much demonizing of the Other takes place because of basic insecurity occasioned by the presence of that Other. This insecurity arises in part because the Otheris not quite so different from oneself as one might wish to believe. Hence, the Other challenges the security of the boundaries of one’s self, in much the same way that one’s bodily boundaries appear to be threatened by, e.g., eating and sex. Thus, ‘border anxiety’ arises as part of an attemptto establish those boundaries more firmly and to avoid the ‘fear, nervousness and aversion’ (Young 1990: 146) that result from any fluidity in those boundaries.362

361 Cheryl Morgan, “On Stealth,” information, awareness, opinion, Cheryl’s Mewsings, November 20, 2011, http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?page_id=12223.

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Thus, Joseph’s refusal to neatly ‘pass’ hits upon ‘border

anxiety;’ he is both like and unlike existing genders. He can be

read in multiple gender categories. His story shakes the

boundaries many want to keep stable. Thus, Joseph’s detractors

attempt to silence him through disrobing, threat of death, sale

into slavery, and imprisonment. All of these things can be read

as signs of ‘border anxiety,’ and of Joseph failing to ‘pass’ in

the manner Lefkovitz describes. Transgender persons today often

experience similar circumstances, as I’ve mentioned throughout my

thesis. The ACLU keeps an updated document pertaining to laws

that concern transgender individuals, including issues having to

do with imprisonment.363 The TGEU in Europe keeps a grassroots-run

count of transgender murders.364 Some transgender persons end up

forced into sex work/being trafficked.365 Some transgender people

362 Ken Stone, “Chapter 2: Border Anxiety: Food, Sex and the Boundaries of Identity,” in Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex, and Bible in Queer Perspective (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005), 61–2.

363 “Transgender People & the Law: Frequently Asked Questions” (American CivilLiberties Union), accessed April 13, 2014, https://www.aclu.org/files/images/asset_upload_file781_33764.pdf.

364 “Trans Murder Monitoring Project” (TGEU), accessed April 13, 2014, http://www.tgeu.org/node/53.

365 Ryan Beck Turner, “How Not to Talk About Human Trafficking” (Human Trafficking Center, January 21, 2014), http://humantraffickingcenter.org/posts-by-htc-associates/how-not-to-talk-about-human-trafficking/.

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experience disrobing and maiming.366 All of these are experiences

of injustice, predicated by this very border anxiety. Those who

are not or refuse to be stably gendered, like Joseph, highlight

our own gender instability.

Rethinking how gender is read in the Bible is not a holistic

solution. Yet, Ellen T. Armour notes that “tracking queer

biblical characters provides leverage to crack open normative

readings of the Bible that reinforce contemporary orthodoxies.”367

From this angle, reading Joseph as transgender may help to shed

light on transgender experience, and thus help readers to stand

in solidarity with transgender readings of the text. Vanessa

Sheridan notes, “The problems [with Biblical interpretation]

arise because marginalized readers inevitably come into conflict

with the prevailing modes of operation and the oppressive

methodologies enforced by those in positions of power within our

religious institutions. When this happens, it becomes essential

for us to remember that the Bible is our book, too; it doesn’t

belong only to the religious leaders or the molders of popular

366 “Russia: Five Youngsters Beat and Disrobed a Transgender Woman in a PublicPark,” information, activisim, awareness, news, QueerRussia, August 20, 2013,http://queerussia.info/2013/08/20/1474/.

367 Armour, “Queer Bibles, Queer Scriptures? An Introductory Response,” 5.

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opinion.”368 Reader response to the text plays an important key in

cracking open these messages of liberation for transgender

persons. Lewis Reay notes, “The invisibility of intersex and

transgender people throughout history requires detective work and

the ability to see beneath the text to draw out the inevitability

of gender-variant queer people in historical biblical

accounts.”369 Passing and border anxieties have hidden accounts of

transgender or gender non-conforming experience and require us to

see familiar characters and accounts anew if we are to begin to

address issues facing transgender persons today from an

exegetical standpoint. In so doing, we break open ambiguity—in

the texts and in ourselves.

Judith Butler asks, “Is the breakdown of gender binaries,

for instance, so monstrous, so frightening, that it must be held

to be definitionally impossible and heuristically precluded from

any effort to think gender?”370 Our Western assumptions about

gender tend to assume that gender is something fixed and

368 Vanessa Sheridan, Crossing Over: Liberating the Transgendered Christian (Cleveland: ThePilgrim Press, 2001), 110.

369 Lewis Reay, “Towards a Transgender Theology: Que(e)rying the Eunuchs,” in Trans/formations, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Marcella Althaus-Reid, Controversies in Contextual Theology Series (London: SCM Press, 2009), 152.

370 Butler, Gender Trouble, p. ix.

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inherent. Judith Plasko notes, “These assumptions [about gender]

are so basic to the way in which we understand reality that

anything that threatens them—a baby with ambiguous genitalia, a

person on the street whose gender is difficult to determine, an

man who is cross-dressed, a butch woman—may evoke both anger and

a profound sense of vertigo.”371 I answer Butler’s (rhetorical)

question with a resounding NO! We must think gender outside of

the binary box in order to be inclusive of all gender

representations. In part, this means reading gender ambiguity in

our texts. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott and Vanessa Sheridan write,

“A major aspect of reclaiming our territory as transgender

Christians and allies is learning to welcome ambiguity.”372 Seeing

gender ambiguity in our texts—for example, in the narrative of

Joseph—helps shed light on those areas of ambiguity that exist in

our current lives.

Seeing just one portion of ambiguity is not enough, however;

often, identities and disinclusions intersect on multiple levels.

Patrick S. Cheng notes, “The queer of color experience is one

371 Plasko, “Dismantling the Gender Binary within Judaism: The Challenge of Transgender to Compulsory Heterosexuality,” 187.

372 Virginia Ramey Mollenkott and Vanessa Sheridan, Transgender Journeys (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2003), 90.

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that is marked by middle spaces. That is, queer people of color

never fully belong to the larger communities of which they are a

part. Because they are queer, LGBTIQ people of color do not

belong fully to their racial and ethnic communities. And, because

they are racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTIQ people of color do

not belong fully to the queer community.”373 I have alluded to

this intersection of race and gender, if not sexuality, in

discussing Joseph’s relationship with the Egyptians and his

brothers. Far more work needs to be done here, but I have

provided a beginning example of how race plays into constructions

of privilege and power in our texts. As well, I have tried to

show that Joseph’s gender-boundary-crossing is not a static thing

—it happens in multiple areas and in multiple ways, usually in

more than one way at the same time. While mostly discussing how

Joseph is feminized—in order to assert a space in which

transgender individuals might see themselves—I have also alluded

to a way in which Joseph retains some performative masculinity:

he has children with Asenath. This in itself highlights a manner

in which Joseph can be read as transgender. Plasko writes:

373 Patrick S. Cheng, Rainbow Theology: Bridging Race, Sexuality, and Spirit (New York: Seabury Books, 2013), 112–3.

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“Increasing numbers of transsexuals, by refusing to live

seamlessly and invisibly in their new gender identities, are

rejecting the demand that they uphold the two-gender system. A

new ‘transgender’ movement is emerging that highlights the

kinship among gender-variant identities and celebrates a

multiplicity of ways of challenging the gender and sexual

binaries. This movement has the capacity to extend and deepen the

feminist critique of gender roles and gender hierarchy by

enacting and embodying the disruption of gender dimorphism.”374

Though the transgender movement is less new now than when Plasko

wrote these words, they still remain relevant. Just as Joseph

refused to remain static in his gender performance and

presentation, so also do many transgender persons today. In so

doing, Joseph might represent, in some small way, this

‘disruption of gender dimorphism,’ the over-reliance on a gender

binary.

Of course, in breaking open these binaries, in seeking to be

seen on the inside, we must be careful. Ken Stone notes:

374 Plasko, “Dismantling the Gender Binary within Judaism: The Challenge of Transgender to Compulsory Heterosexuality,” 189.

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Demands to be allowed inside such institutions as the religious community, the ordained clergy, the socially sanctioned marriage contract, the heteronormative academy and so forth may be necessary interim political goals for those of us who are currently excluded from, or marginalizedwithin, those institutions. Nevertheless, we should not ignore the extent to which such demands actually reinforce boundaries between ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ boundaries that often rely upon food and sex but frequently become, themselves, justification for stigmatization and oppression.Ultimately, a ‘safer’ biblical interpretation, and a ‘safer’religious practice, may need to work instead at dissolving those very boundaries between ‘inside’ and ‘outside;’ or, like Tamar [in Genesis], using sexual transgression and social marginality to turn those boundaries ‘inside out’ (cf. Fuss 1991).375

The caution, here, is to keep from reinforcing the same

boundaries we hope to subvert. Inclusion is important—but

inclusion can also be a means of excluding, of keeping out, of

defining ourselves against those who are now on the outside. We

must stay vigilant for how our own systems change as inclusion

happens and be on the lookout for what might need change, and we

must—as Sheridan and Mollenkott state—be comfortable with

ambiguity. Ringrose notes, “After all, the Hebrews thought that

an individual’s moral worth was reflected in his fertility, a

value system now at odds with that of the Church….laws of all

375 Stone, “Chapter 2: Border Anxiety: Food, Sex and the Boundaries of Identity,” 67.

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kinds can become outmoded and…we must look behind the law at real

intent.”376 If our inclusion becomes law, we must not let that

inclusion become a means for excluding those who are not like us

or make us uncomfortable. We must examine the intent. Karina

Croucher writes, “Gender…is just one important aspect in the

construction of identities that are asserted through bodily

practice.”377 We have so many ways through which we identify

ourselves, that we must keep this in mind as we exegete toward

liberation. In this way, we continue to “welcome ambiguity.”

This in no way undermines the work that needs to be done for

transgender inclusion and recognition, however. Indeed, as Plasko

writes, “It is time to undertake a thorough, critical

investigation of the persistence of gender roles, leading to a

new phase in the transformation of Judaism in which the liberal

community takes a hard look at the ways its structures continue

to assume and support the gender binary.”378 This holds true for

376 Ringrose, “Chapter One: Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium,” 104–5.

377 Karina Croucher, “Ambiguous Gender? Alternative Interpretations: A Discussion of Case Studies from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and Halaf Periods,” in Gender Through Time in the Ancient Near East, ed. Diane Bolger (New York: AltaMira Press, 2008), 25.

378 Plasko, “Dismantling the Gender Binary within Judaism: The Challenge of Transgender to Compulsory Heterosexuality,” 203.

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Christianity, as well. One way to do this is to recognize the

self-reflection of performed gender: “If gender is performative,

then it follows that the reality of gender is itself produced as

an effect of the performance.”379 That is, by performing gender,

we create gender. This is no less true of cisgender individuals

than it is of transgender individuals. By recognizing that we

create gender, we can free ourselves to read narratives such as

Joseph’s through transgender lenses. We can see how Joseph—and

the text—creates his own gender presentation. We can read his

story with various gender pronouns, which can highlight and break

open silencing, exclusion, and inclusion. This allows us to see

the affinities between Joseph and the assinnu and the entu-

priestesses; it allows us to read Joseph’s first robe as a

princess dress, as outlined in 2 Samuel 13:18; it allows us to

see the gender-mapping relationship between Jacob and Joseph and

between Joseph’s experiences and those of transgender persons

today. Using this lens, we are free to exegete not only Joseph’s

but also Esther’s, Jezebel’s, and Judith’s stories in new ways.

379 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 218.

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We can read Jacob anew and gain new insights into Joseph’s

brothers’ anger—and how we reflect that in our culture today.

The task of cracking open new gender identities in our texts

is not an easy one. Much gender alterity has been hidden under

countless layers of past and current exegetical work—and the

search to seek out new meanings should not (always) discredit

these older meanings. By looking at the queerness of the text—of

the narration, of the historical-cultural location, of the word-

play and similarities in the stories—we can find space for

inclusion of transgender individuals without excluding other

categories of people who also lay claim to these texts. The story

of Joseph—as Peterson Toscano has noticed and performed380--allows

for a jumping-in point, a point at which to begin exegeting the

people of our texts from a number of angles. Joseph’s robe,

liminality, beauty, power, dreams, and family relations all lend

themselves to different ways in which intersecting identities of

gender can be examined.

380 Toscano, “Peterson Toscano.”

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