The coup against Jacob

During the 800s BC, some Israelite based in Samaria composed a romance concerning the career of local patriarch Joseph. Joseph, the favoured of Jacob and brother of Judah and Benjamin, was handed over to servitude in Egypt. Doing well there, Joseph was able to turn the tables on his wicked brothers and absentee father. Joseph begat Ephraim and Manasseh, patriarchs of the two major clans of the Samaria region.

The Documentary-Theorists propose that someone commissioned an "Elohist" among others to bring all the ancient pre-Exodus legends into an early edition of our Bible's kernel. Its "Genesis" became a national epic for ALL Israel. (Most credit Josiah of Judah with this collection. Guillaume Durocher claims Jews under the Ptolemies. Note that Durocher's focus starts with the Law - the latter part of Exodus on - where I focus on Genesis.) The romance particular to Joseph enjoyed further retellings on its own, such as in Joseph and Aseneth and in sura 12 of our Qurân.

A commenter at Durocher's article points me to Philippe Bohstrom at Haaretz. Bohstrom mentions that one Ya'qûb - Jacob - was emitting hieroglyphic scarabs over the whole region from Nubia to Haifa, 1700 BC. We own no less than 27 of these. Bohstrom argues that the Hyksos took over from Ya'qûb. The island Thera, they say, went off around 1600 BC or somewhat later; the Pharaohs, known to us as "The New Kingdom", followed that.

In the 800s BC by the Joseph story, Ephraim and Manasseh, who supplied Samaria with her kings, declared themselves a unity; which unity arrogated to itself primacy over the other Israelid clans, not least the southern Benjamin and Judah. By 900 BC, an illiterate people should not remember Jacob or Joseph. Samarian scribes could however know of the Ya'qûb scarabs: available for Egyptian scribes to read out to interested parties, and noted as pre-Pharaonic. So perhaps the whole story is Samarian propaganda, cooked up from such fragments.

Or, maybe the Samarians knew more. I was not aware of a difference between Ya'qûb and the Hyksos. Bohstrom proposes such a difference; the Joseph story is all about that difference.

If Bohstrom holds, then the Joseph romance reflects a change in dynasty internal to the Retenu régime over Egypt and Canaan.