ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to acknowledge the divine hand that guides the Joseph story and at the same time to take account of the human agency that propels the drama. It provides a reading of the story which upholds Campbell Joseph’s intuition that his having been sold into Egypt was indeed inevitable. To bring the problem into sharper focus, let us take a look at some of the details of the narrative. It is at the resolution of the story that the tension between the blameworthiness of Joseph’s brothers for selling him into slavery and God’s involvement in the developments which led to their selling him is underscored. Joseph disavows any intention of judging his brothers or of meting out their punishment. Joseph himself has no direct encounter with God. Nevertheless, his appraisal of what happened is quite reasonable, given his earlier experiences.
