Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat
Notes and Glossary
Table of Contents
Additional Pages
Colors Here are approximate equivalents of some of the less familiar colors. (Hyperlinks are to the entry at dictionary.com)
- scarlet: a deep red tinged with orange or green
- ochre: a moderate orange-yellow (also, any of several earthy mineral oxides of iron occurring in yellow, brown, or red and used as pigments; yellow and red ochre perhaps the chief sources of pigments for those colors)
- fawn: a grayish yellow-brown
- lilac: a light purple
- mauve: a moderate purple (rhymes with rove)
- crimson: a deep purplish red
- azure: a light purplish blue (in heraldry, azure = blue)
- russet: a moderate to strong brown [You’ve heard of russet potatoes?]
Words
- butler:
- The chief male servant of a household, usually in charge of wines and other liquors, the serving of meals, and the supervision of other servants [1250-1300] [Source: Random House Webster’s College Dictionary]
- The head servant in a household who is usually in charge of food service, the care of silverware, and the deportment of the other servants. [Middle English, from Old French bouteillier, bottle bearer, from bouteille, botele, bottle. See bottle.] [Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.]
- Properly, a servant in charge of the wine (Gen. 40:1-13; 41:9). The Hebrew word מַשְׁקֶה mashkeh, thus translated is rendered also (plural) “cup-bearers” (1 Kings 10:5; 2 Chr. 9:4). Nehemiah (1:11) was cup-bearer to king Artaxerxes. It was a position of great responsibility and honour in royal households. [Source: Easton’s 1897 Bible Dictionary]
- The more recent translations of the Bible have cupbearer: See Genesis 40:1-13 in NASB, NIV, or ESV.
- See below on the story of the butler and baker.
- Jeeves: the chief servant, or valet, of Bertie Wooster in the stories by Sir P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse. In the stories, Wooster is presented as not very bright fop, and Jeeves is his invincible valet who saves him from all sorts of trouble.
- Corn refers to any cereal plants, especially the principal crop cultivated in a particular region, which would be wheat in England and also in Egypt. (In the accents of southeastern England, corn rhymes with yawn.)
- “Jacob was the founder of a whole new nation”: the word nation is derived from Latin nasci = “to be born,” so the original meaning of nation was those who shared a common birth; that is, a common ancestor. (Today the term is more political than racial, especially in the United States.)
- trice: a very short period of time; an instant
- Chortle was coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There in 1872 (one of his portmanteau words) and is a combination of chuckle and snort.
French words
- boulevard = a broad city street, often tree-lined and landscaped [from Old French bollevart, rampart converted to a promenade, from Middle Dutch bolwerc, bulwark. See bulwark.]
- joie de vivre = hearty enjoyment of living
- eh bien = ah, well
- et maintenant = and now
- soirée = evening party or social gathering
- cuisine = the characteristic manner or style of preparing food; e.g., Italian cuisine; food; fare [from French, literally, “kitchen”]
Sons of Jacob (= Israel)
Here is a listing of the sons of Jacob (יַעֲקֹב) according to their mothers. You can find the summary list in Genesis 35:23-26. The complete story of the birth of the sons is found in Genesis 29; 30:1-24; and 35:16-20.
- Sons of Leah (לֵאָה): Reuben (רְאוּבֵן), Simeon (שִׁמְעוֹן), Levi (לֵוִי), Judah (יְהוּדָה), Issachar (יִשָּׂשכָר), and Zebulon (זְבֻלוּן)
- Sons of Bilhah (בִּלְהָה : Rachel’s maid): Dan (דָּן) and Naphtali (נַפְתָּלִי)
- Sons of Zilpah (זִלְפָּה : Leah’s maid): Gad (גָּד) and Asher (אָשֵׁר)
- Sons of Rachel (רָחֵל): Joseph (יוֹסֵף) and Benjamin (בִּנְיָמִין)
The story of Joseph and his brothers is found in Genesis 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, and 45. The most serious departure from the Biblical account is that, according to scripture, the brothers made two trips to Egypt to buy grain. Another departure is in the scene when Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Joseph, he runs away, but she is able to grab his garment, and then claims to Potiphar that he tried to seduce her! (It’s all in Genesis 39.)
According to custom, the sons of the wives (Leah and Rachel) have priority over the sons of the maids, and in order of birth. Thus Reuben should have been Jacob’s principal heir, even though Jacob’s favorite wife was Rachel, and he seems to have wanted Joseph to be his principal heir, as indicated in Genesis 48, where Jacob blesses Joseph’s two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. But Reuben violated his father’s bed (Genesis 35.22), and Simeon and Levi killed the men of Shechem in revenge for the rape of their sister Dinah (Genesis 36), leaving Judah as the primary heir. King David was from the tribe of Judah, and he became king of all Israel. The House of David ruled in Jerusalem until its capture by the Chaldeans around 640 BC.
The 12 sons of Jacob were, according to the Bible, the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel. The book of Joshua gives their tribal allotment in the promised land; check the back matter in most Bibles to see a map of this.
Read more on the back story of Jacob’s family.
Note: All Biblical links here and elsewhere on this page are to the web site Bible Gateway, and references cited are from the King James Version (KJV), partly because that version is not under copyright. On the Bible Gateway site you can find various versions, the ones I recommend listed below.
The New American Bible (NAB) is the version used by the Roman Catholic church in the United States, although there are some differences in the published version and the version used in the liturgy.
Short Articles
- The coat of many colors (Genesis 37:3-4) is sometimes translated “long tunic with sleeves”: the Hebrew is uncertain at this point. What is clear is that Joseph was Jacob’s favorite, and the coat distinguished him from the rest, and indicated he was not to work in the fields with his brothers. So he was resented by them, especially by the four sons of the two maids (Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher).
- Clothing until the mid-20th century was made from wool, silk, linen, or cotton. Jacob’s family probably wore mostly wool, being shepherds. The vestments of the Hebrew priests were required to be of linen. In Egypt, most outer clothing was no doubt made of linen; cotton, before the invention of the cotton gin, around 1800, was much more expensive (even more expensive than silk). Also in Egypt, because it is hot most of the time, clothing was worn for modesty, ceremonial reasons, and to protect one from the sun, more than to keep warm. Egypt was famous for its linen, which continued to be one of its most important crops, until supplanted by cotton in the 19th century, because cotton is now much cheaper and easier to work with. From the Bible we learn that flax was grown in Egypt (Exodus 9:31) and also in Canaan (Joshua).
- The shekel is properly a Hebrew, not Egyptian, unit of weight, rather than a monetary unit, although in today’s state of Israel, the sheqel is the unit of currency. The Biblical shekel was approximately equivalent to 11.4 grams, or 0.4 ounces. In terms of value, it would correspond to that amount of silver (and sometimes gold). Coinage was invented around 800 BC, about 700 years before the time of Potiphar. So he could be weighing, but not counting, shekels!
- Abraham was the grandfather of Jacob, and the father of Isaac, Jacob’s father. Isaac was the son promised to Abraham and Sarah, his wife; Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old, according to the Bible. Before that Abraham became the father of Ishmael. Isaac married Rebekah, and then became the father of twins: Esau and Jacob. Esau was born first, but Jacob got him to sell his birthright for “a mess of pottage,” and later, with Rebekah’s help, tricked Isaac into bestowing on him the blessing intended for Esau, thus making Jacob his principal heir. So it is significant that Joseph’s brothers, jealous of his inheritance, try to wrest that inheritance from him: it runs in the family!
- Joseph’s second dream has the sun, moon, and 11 stars bowing down to him. This vision is understood as his father, mother, and brothers. But Joseph’s mother, Rachel, died giving birth to Benjamin. So the moon must symbolize Leah, Jacob’s principal wife.
- You can read the story of Noah and the flood in Genesis chapters 6, 7, and 8.
- The word shoah is included to make “show” (or rather “show-ya” ) rhyme with Noah.
-
Greatest man since Noah
Only goes to shoah
Joseph:
Anyone from anywhere can make it
If they get a lucky break
But the Hebrew word shoah means “calamity,” “desolation,” “destruction,” or “wasteness,” and is used in Hebrew for what is in English usually called the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews and others by the Nazis duringWorld War II. (There is an article on both terms at dictionary.com.)
- The writing on the wall (#2. Joseph’s Dreams) is a reference to Daniel, chapter 5, the story of Belshazzar’s feast, sometime around BC 540, about a thousand years after the time of Joseph!
- Ishmaelites literally would mean descendents of Ishmael, Abraham’s son by Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian maid. (See Genesis 16. Abraham’s son by Sarah was Isaac, who was the father of Jacob. See Genesis 21:1-8.) You can read about the descendants of Ishmael in Genesis 25:12-18. The Bible also uses the term Midianites, who would be sons of Midian, who was also a son of Abraham, but by Keturah (See Genesis 25:1-6). Thus the Ishmaelites (and Midianites) would be something like second cousins to Joseph and his brothers. But perhaps the Bible is using the terms Ishmaelites and Midianites interchangeably to refer to nomads. See Genesis 37:28-36 and 39:1-2. (According to Muslim tradition, Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arabs, and, according to Muslim tradition, Abraham offered Ishmael, rather than Isaac, and at Mecca, instead of Moriah!)
- Ramases (or Ramses, or Rameses, or Ramesses) is the name of 11 kings of Egypt in the New Kingdom [Dynasties XIX (1307-1196) and XX (1196-1050)]. (All the kings, except the first, of Dynasty XX were named Rameses.) Rameses II (1290-1224) is thought by many to be the Pharaoh of the oppression of the Israelites in the Biblical book of Exodus: “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.” (Exodus 1:8) Rameses is also the name of the city, called Avaris in the time of the Hyksos; located in the Delta, it was the capital at the time, and the probable location where Joseph ruled. It was renamed Rameses by that Pharaoh, and is thought that the Israelite slaves made bricks to build it up.
- The story of the baker and butler is found in Genesis 40. The butler dreams of three clusters of grapes that he presses into Pharaoh’s cup. Joseph interprets that to mean, that in three days, Pharaoh will lift up his head, and he will bring Pharaoh his cup once again. Joseph requests that the butler remember him when he is restored. Then the baker tells his dream, in which there are three baskets of baked goods on his head; the birds came and ate the contents of the baskets. Joseph interprets that to mean, that in three days, Pharaoh will lift up his head--from him!--and he will be hanged. The butler of course forgets about Joseph for two whole years, until Pharaoh has his dreams (Genesis 41).
- Elvis Presley (1935-77) was known as The King (of rock and roll), and Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, is portrayed a la Elvis. Presley spent most of his career in Memphis, Tennessee, and Memphis was the capital of all Egypt in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. One of the most important deities in the old Egyptian religion was Amon-Re (or Amon-Ra), the sun god (Amon of Upper Egypt, Re of Lower Egypt): from Dynasty IV the king of Egypt was known as “Son of Re,” and Elvis’s first recordings were done by Sun Records.
- Memphis, Egypt, is now known as Mit Rahina, now a village. In the Bible it is known as Noph (Isaiah 19.13; Jeremiah 2.16; Ezekiel 30.16; et al.). It was the capital of Egypt during most of the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom. In the time of the Hyksos, the capital moved to Avaris, in the eastern delta, near the land of Goshen, where Joseph settled his family. In the New Kingdom, the capital moved to Thebes, farther up the Nile valley.
- Canaan refers to the land of promise of the Israelites; between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River; now usually called Palestine (in the geographic, but not political, sense). The extent and boundaries of Canaan are fully set forth in different parts of Scripture (Gen. 10:19; 17:8; Num. 13:29; 34:1-12; Deut. 11:30).
- The Sphinx was built during Dynasty IV during the Old Kingdom, at the time of the pyramids. It is located in the vicinity of the pyramids, south of where the story of Joseph takes place. It has the body of a lion and the head of a man, and represents a deity that was supposedly watching over the tombs of the kings. (There is also the mythological sphinx in the tale of Oedipus Rex [or Oidipous Tyrranos in Greek; the best known version is by Sophocles], which guarded the gate of Thebes, in Greece.)
Last updated 7/24/04 and 02/28/19 . Please email me: tf_mcq <at> yahoo.com with any corrections or suggestions.