Joseph A Post-Exilic Composition?

Note: This was originally a Twitter thread, which you can view here.

I reference Paul Davidson's site often when I'm researching but don't always see his latest post, so thx to @biblemarkedward for bringing it to my attention.

Davidson explores whether the Joseph narrative was a late composition and offers evidence for it. This is especially interesting to me since I've recently been exploring whether at least parts of the what is normally considered to be the Yahwist, is actually post-exilic.

Although I think parts of the Joseph narrative are post-exilic, I don't think I can go quite as far as Davidson pushes it. In a previous post on the Joseph narrative, Davidson asks, "But what is it, exactly? History? Legend? Allegory? How we approach the text depends to some degree on its genre." He seems to prefer novella, but as I'm fond of saying, most of the Bible is one genre: Propaganda. All other genres are sub-genres to it. This is important because many of the scholars that Davidson references appeal to text elsewhere in the Bible to support their positions, but the Biblical authors were not interested in writing about history or truth, only their political agenda. Without being able to distinguish between truth and agenda, theories go askew.

Davidson asks "Can we separate the tale of a young Hebrew rising to power in the Egyptian court from the frame story of fraternal conflict and reunion?". I think Davidson and I are close in our thinking here as I think there are layers in the text that can be separated beyond the typical source criticism. The Joseph narrative was one of the first narratives that I analyzed, but I think much of it still holds up pretty well and teases out those layers.

The main resistance I have to a late composition, is that, when viewed as propaganda, the Joseph narrative seems to be pressing two major points: Justifying Ephraim and Manasseh ruling over the other tribes and explaining away Egyptian blood somewhere in their lineage (although no exodus from Egypt is necessary for the Egyptian bloodline). This propaganda makes the most sense when they were ruling over the other tribes, which is to say, not post-exilic. In fact, I see Joseph as a sort of bait and switch, setting up the story for the benefit of Ephraim and Manasseh.

In my post, I explain why I think that Joseph died as a young man with no offspring. The Biblical author brings him back to life by inserting him into the narrative. Why? So that Ephraim and Manasseh had a son of Jacob to be inserted into and thus become part of Israel. So who was the real father of Ephraim and Manasseh then? I propose Zaphenath-paneah.

The identities of Zaphenath-paneah and Joseph were combined. Resurrecting a dead son and combining identities are both techniques (see my Biblical Propaganda 101 for other techniques) used in the Isaac/Jacob narrative. Isaac was sacrificed by Abraham but resurrected to inject Jacob and Esau into and the identities of Jacob and Israel were merged.

Davidson mentions "Monroe says we should be looking at it the other way around: the House of Joseph was something separate from the kingdom of Israel, and the core Joseph story preserves an ancestor tradition about the House of Joseph. Only later did the myth of a Greater Israel with Jacob as its patriarch come into being." Monroe is right about Ephraim and Manasseh being separate from the rest of Israel, but it wasn't as the house of Joseph, it was as the house of Zaphenath-paneah. So the layers I see are an Egyptian narrative combined with a Joseph narrative, but not quite in the same way as Davidson sees it.