Joseph

The Joseph story, clearly different from other stories in Genesis in its cohesiveness and understanding of God, speaks to me. It’s a story about power and faith, family conflict, and the hiddenness of God. Hear these words from Walter Brueggemann about the Joseph story in Genesis.

“The story hints and implies. Only very late does it make anything explicit... At one extreme, one is tempted to say too much, to echo the old stories about a rescuing God who intrudes to make all things right. But this narrative addresses people who know too much and will not accept such a raw confession. At the other extreme, one is tempted to claim too little. Then one may urge a humanism which believes in a God who ‘has no hands but ours’ to do the work. The narrative works its subtle way between a primitivism, which believes too easily and a humanism, which is embarrassed about faith. Like the narrator, the interpreter must speak about a transcendence which is quite concrete.”