Joseph the Interpreter of Dreams: A New Analysis of the Egyptian Background of the Joseph Narrative

The question of the Egyptian background to the Joseph story has occupied both Old Testament and Egyptological research for almost 200 years. While in the past Egyptian sources from the 2nd millennium BC were often consulted, the research project examines material from the 7th-4th century BC. The focus is on two Egyptian papyri that shed new light on the motif of dreams and dream interpretation. The hieratic papyrus Berlin 23071 vs and the demotic papyrus Carlsberg 465 rt contain significant similarities to the Joseph story, especially the motif of the seven-year famine and the motif complex of the pharaoh who has a dream, does not understand it and calls for a dream interpreter to interpret it for him.
The proposed research project has three objectives:
(1) Based on the two papyri mentioned, Late Egyptian sources on the topic of ‘dream and dream interpretation’ are to be examined and related to the story of Joseph. This addresses a research desideratum that has already been pointed out by Hans-Peter Müller (1971), Nili Shupak (2006) and Michael V. Fox (2012), but which has not yet been satisfactorily addressed by either Old Testament or Egyptological research.
(2) The thematic complex of ‘dream and dream interpretation’ is to be contextualised by means of Demotic narrative literature (especially the so-called Inaros-Petubastis cycle) and by a new analysis of the Egyptian background of the Joseph story, in which material from the Egyptian Late Period is used in continuation of Donald B. Redford (1970).
Building on this (3), the thesis of the Joseph story as a diaspora novella from the Persian period will be elaborated, taking into account the current exegetical debate. This thesis, which has long been discussed in Old Testament research as an alternative to the classical location of Genesis 37-50 in the context of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, will thus be presented in monographic form for the first time.
This threefold research objective is based on extensive preliminary work from the applicant's ERC project on Demotic papyri and the Old Testament. Through collaboration with the world's leading Demotic scholars Kim Ryholt (Copenhagen) and Joachim Friedrich Quack (Heidelberg), the above-mentioned papyri were identified for the proposed research project. In addition, in the course of his more than 25 years of research on Egypt and the Old Testament, the applicant has dealt with the Egyptian background of the Joseph story and the current literary-historical debate on Gen 37–50 in several essays (Schipper 2011, 2013, 2018a, 2018b, 2019, 2021).
Due to the complexity of the Egyptian papyri, some of which have not yet been edited, the project is organised in such a way that the project collaborator works on the Egyptian sources and the applicant on the Old Testament perspective