Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/41

 The Book of Genesis and forceful expression

Crete

too, there

only a

is

may have been Jacob story

is

a unit.

eration

a

singular,

Israel,

The

historical.

entire

pictures the complete moral regen-

yet

and deceitful at the purified and ennobled it

The

and a progenitor of

rather- than

It

selfish

repentant soul.

Here,

Jacob, too,

Nevertheless, the real truth of the

spiritual

is

Jacob story of

of actual history.

a historical person

or of a part of Israel.

main thought.

to their

modicum

23

perfectly

man,

natural

is

the

craven,

end sublimely

outset, yet in the

impressive

drama of

doctrine of repentance which

it

a

presents

which Judaism has formulated and given to the world. the prototype of all Israel, and Jacob's repentance and purification, the authors of this story imply, and the prophets from Hosea on have taught, are the repentance and purification which all Israel must undergo. And the perfection to which Jacob at last attains, is the perfection for which every Jew and all Israel should strive, that they may become worthy of and fit for the sacred privilege and mission of service to fellowmen for which God has called them.^ is

that

Jacob

is

The fourth tains

division of Genesis, chapters

XXXVII-L,

A

an altogether different kind of narrative.

con-

few of the

incidents of the Joseph story, as, for example, the Potiphar's-

wife episode and the figure of a Semite as chief counsellor

Pharaoh and the second in the kingdom are probably borrowed from Egyptian legend and history.^ The name Joseph, too, is identical with an ancient Israelite place or tribe name, found upon an early Egyptian monument. But beyond this there is probably not a single historical fact in of

the entire Joseph story.

Or

if

there be such facts, they are

romance pure and simple, perfectly constructed and forcibly presented. It

only a substratum for what

1

A more

stories ^

148f.

is

Cf.

full

and

is

analytic

at best a historical

introduction

to

the

Jacob cyck^

of

given below, pp. 222-281. C.

F.

Kent, Heroes and Crises of Earlv

Hebrew

History,