ABSTRACT
Judaism is a God-centered religion. It is God who creates, who breathes life, who chooses people to whom to make His promises in return for their willingness to try keeping His commandments. Joseph keeps saying (to Pharaoh, to his brothers) that everything that happens is due to God's will. The Joseph stories, like the accounts in Genesis that come before, explore fidelity between the human and the divine, between husband and wife, fathers and sons, mothers and fathers, sons of different wives, down to grandfathers and grandchildren. From beginning to end, the conflict between wisdom (here meaning wise in the ways of man), which Joseph develops in abundance, and holiness (fidelity to God's law), which he possesses only intermittently, is played out. The Joseph stories, in the author's opinion, are anti-wisdom. While they reveal the advantages of being wise in the ways of the world, their major thrust is to delineate the limits of wisdom.
