A Queer Reading of Joseph: Jewish Interpretations of the Beautiful Young Man in the Hebrew Bible

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Joseph’s overwhelming beauty, which is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in Gen 39:6 and which is later explained in the Jewish tradition in Genesis Rabbah, the oldest exegetical midrash, on the basis of the beauty of his mother Rachel, attracts not only women but also men (within Islamic tradition, starting with the Koran, Joseph’s beauty is emphasised). My queer discussion of homoerotic Jewish conceptions of Joseph is introduced with a new interpretation of Michelangelo’s Renaissance painting Jacob and Joseph, which is in the Sistine Chapel in the Papal Palace in Vatican City. According to this interpretation, the beautiful Joseph, the son of Rachel and Jacob, is a quasi-queer ancestor of Jesus Christ. Various Jewish interpretations of the biblical Joseph narratives in Genesis 37–50 are interesting from a queer reader’s perspective. These include several passages of Genesis Rabbah (and subsequent to it the medieval Midrash-compilation Yalqut Shimoni on Genesis §145), the homiletical midrash Tanḥuma in the edition of Solomon Buber Vayesheb (“But Jacob Dwelt”) 14 and 16, the Babylonian Talmud Sotah 13b, the Aramaic translation of the Bible of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Gen 39:1 and Rashi’s Commentary on Genesis. The rabbis have used inconsistencies, ambiguities and obscurities in the biblical story of Joseph as an opportunity to create their own new interpretations. So Joseph, the handsome and good-looking seventeen-year-old son of Jacob, is characterised as an effeminate youth beginning with the rabbinic tradition in Genesis Rabbah on Gen 37:2 and on Gen 39:6. Although a feminine appearance of a good-looking young man could in itself be a starting point for gay readers of today, it should be remembered that in Genesis Rabbah Joseph is suspected by his brothers of being an inmate of a brothel, thus he is associated with male prostitution from a rabbinic perspective. Various rabbinic and other Jewish interpretations offer an explanation for the biblical statement in Gen 39:1 of why Potiphar, the court official of the Pharaoh, buys the enslaved Joseph in Egypt: He wants to have sex with this beautiful strange young man and is therefore punished with castration. Not only the Egyptian Potiphar finds Joseph attractive but also his nameless wife according to the biblical story in the book of Genesis 39 and the daughters of Egyptian kings, also not mentioned by name, according to the rabbis in Genesis Rabbah. Joseph’s disregard of the desirable royal daughters in Egypt in the rabbinic saying on Gen 49:22 in Genesis Rabbah can be interpreted from a queer perspective as lack of sexual interest in women. Contemporary queer readers will most likely not share the extreme fate of Joseph: From being his father’s favourite son (keyword: Joseph’s tunic of many colours in Gen 37:3) via the total descent into slavery with the impending resale for the purpose of sexual services to an Egyptian, Joseph manages at last again to secure a very high position in a foreign country. While Joseph’s characterisation in rabbinic and further Jewish literature as a highly attractive youth of feminine appearance is from the time of Joseph’s lowest period during which he is associated with male prostitution, his unresponsiveness to the sexual advances of attractive women like the royal daughters can be situated in the time of his social zenith when he gives a triumphant performance in the splendid chariot of the Pharaoh in Egypt.

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