I'd also heard that Muhammad borrowed heavily from local Jews and some Christian monks (he seems to have had very friendly relations with some of them), so I looked for a midrash on Potiphar's wife. It includes several different speculations to flesh out the narrative: Joseph is about to succumb when interrupted by a vision of his father, Joseph discourses on death with Potiphar's wife Zulycah to discourage her, Potiphar was homosexual... And the little detail I'd always missed, that Pharaoh gave him "Asenath daughter of Poti-phera" who may or may not have been the same as Potiphar.
If the same, that would seem to make for extremely awkward in-law relations, though the rabbis worried more about Joseph marrying a non-Israelite, in violation of the (much later) Sinai law. In one "explanation" Asenath is Joseph's neice in what strikes me as a very unpleasant story. In another analysis, Joseph realizes that he is still technically a slave, and he has seen Pharaoh's favor turn on a dime. If he marries Potiphar's daughter, his children will be Potiphar's grandchildren--and Potiphar would never enslave his own grandchildren, so they'd be safe, even if Joseph winds up enslaved again.
As to my original question, the Jewish versions I read don't match Muhammad's, so he either invented it or those monks had a freewheeling attitude towards Genesis.
(*)I've tried reading the Koran a couple of times, but never succeeded in getting very far.
1 comment:
My guess is he just made the whole thing up.
While Egyptians of all social classes practiced incest, it's highly unlikely that Asenath was Joseph's niece. What nieces he would've had would all still be in Canaan.
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