Who is the Faithful and Wise Servant? It's JOSEPH, of course!

by Leolaia 27 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Leolaia

  Who is the Faithful and Wise Servant? It's a question that the WT has misused to establish its own authority. As it is, the parable today as a cautionary tale applies to whoever it fits, but it is clear who the original servant was that inspired the parable.
  

  Genesis 39:4-5 says that "Joseph found favor in his lord's sight and was pleasing to him, and he appointed him over his house, and all that he had he gave into Joseph's hand. And it happened that after he appointed him over his house, and over all that was his, the Lord blessed the house of the Egyptian." Does that sound familiar in any way? The statement bears close resemblance with the Parable of the Faithful and Wise Servant (Luke 12:42-46) which begins with the question, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the lord appointed over his house to give them rations of food at the appointed time?" The resemblance in wording is especially close when we examine the original Greek:
  

  Luke 12:42 katestesen ... epi tes oiketeias autou "appointed over his house"
  LXX Gen. 39:4 katestesen auton epi tou oikou autou "appointed him over his house"

  Genesis 39:4-5 is in fact the ONLY PLACE in the LXX where kathistemi is followed by epi + oik-. The closest other parallels are also from the story of Joseph (cf. Genesis 41:33, 40-43; 45:8; Psalm 105:21). Furthermore, the phrase became almost a stereotyped feature of the story of Joseph, related like a refrain in retellings of the story:
  

  "The king ... appointed him lord over his house (katestesen auton kurion tou oikou autou)." (Psalm 105:21; LXX)

  "Potiphar ... appointed (ashemo) Joseph over all of his house (diba kwellu betu)." (Jubilees 39:3)

  "Joseph ... received authority over (epi) his fellow-servants and the charge of the whole household....[Potiphar] appointed (kathistato) him steward of his household (tes oikias)." (Philo, Joseph, 37-38)

  "This chief officer of Pharaoh entrusted to me his household (ton oikon autou)." (Testament of Joseph 2:1)

  "Potiphar ... committed the charge of his household (ton oikon) into his hands." (Josephus, Antiquities 2.39)

  "Pharaoh ... appointed (katestesen) him ruler over Egypt and over all his household (eph' holon ton oikon autou)." (Acts 7:9-10)

  "Pharaoh ... appointed (katestesen) me chief over (epi) the whole land of Egypt." (Joseph and Asenath 20:9)

  Clearly Joseph was well remembered as the servant who had been appointed over the entire house of first Potiphar and then Pharaoh. What about the rest of Luke 12:42? There are four key words: "the lord" (ho kurios), "wise" (phronimos), "servant" (doulos), and "ration of grain" (to sitometrion) usually mistranslated as "food". Each of these terms has its counterpart in the traditions about Joseph. He is appointed by Potiphar, his "lord" (kurios, Genesis 39:3-4). He is especially "wise", as Genesis 41:33, 39 (LXX) applies phronimos to him, and in Psalm 105:21-22 (LXX) we read that Joseph taught wisdom (sophisai) to the elders of Eygpt. Joseph's wisdom was proverbial. Josephus (Antiquities 2.9 applies no fewer than six different synonyms (sophia, sunesis, dexiotes, phronesis, phronema, and logismos) to him, and Artapanus (fr. 2), Philo (Joseph, 117), Acts 7:10, Targum Onq. Genesis 37:3 all describe him as wise as well. Joseph is also his lord's "servant" (pais, Genesis 39:17, 19; 41:12), who had been sold into slavery. Although the LXX uses pais of Joseph, Philo and the Testament of Joseph use doulos to refer to him repeatedly (cf. Testament of Joseph 1:5, 11:2-3, 13:6-8, 15:2; Philo, Joseph 37, 47, 51, 66). And it is Joseph who supplies the rations of grain to Egypt during a time of famine after waiting through seven years of plenty (Genesis 41:53-57), clearly at the proper "appointed time".

  Regarding this last point, as Dale Alison argues, though the phrase to sitometrion "ration of grain" does not occur in the LXX, sitos "grain" is one of the key words in the story of Joseph, and the related verb sitometreo "deal out rations of grain" occurs only twice in the LXX -- and both with Joseph as the subject (Genesis 47:12, 14). Artapanus claimed that it was Joseph who discovered food rationing (metra; cf. fr. 2), and Luke's dounai/didonai + to sitometrion "give out rations of grain" recalls expressions throughout the Joseph literature that relate Joseph's deeds:
  

  "your gift of grain (sitodosias)." (Genesis 42:19; cf. 42:33)

  "Joseph ... ordered his steward to give them their measures of grain (siton ... dounai memetremenon).... Joseph still gave them grain (siton ... didontos)." (Josephus, Antiquities 2.189)

  "He is giving grain (sitodotei) to the whole land....I too will go to my grain giving (sitodosian) and will give grain (doso siton)." (Joseph and Asenath 4:8; 26:3)

  The parable in Luke 12:42-46 does not only share vocabulary with the story of Joseph. The situation of the faithful and wise servant is also similar to that of Joseph, not only in the theme of a servant becoming an overseer, but also in the motif of the lord being absent and delayed. According to Genesis 39:16, the lord's wife kept Joseph's garment "until his lord came (heos elthen ho kurios) home." This parallels Luke 12:43 which says: "Blessed is that slave who is doing so when his lord comes (elthon ho kurios autou)", and depicts the slave as present in the lord's home when the lord was absent. Jewish tradition explained that the lord was absent because everyone else had gone to a public festival (cf. Josephus, Ant. 2.45; b. Sotah 36b). Potiphar came home and found his slave not doing what he was supposed to be doing, and his wife told him: "This Hebrew was brought to us to berate us! He came in here to rape me, but I screamed" (Genesis 39:14). This recalls the faithless slave in the parable that figures that his lord "will be a long time in coming, and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women" (Luke 12:45). Luke 12:46-47 next mentions the lord's reaction: whipping the errant slave with "many lashes" and sending him "to the same fate as the unfaithful." This recalls the anger of Potiphar who then "took him and put him in prison" (Genesis 39:20). According to the Testament of Joseph (2:3; 13:9; 14:1-2), Joseph was "beaten" (tupto) -- the exact same verb used in Luke 12:45 to refer to the drunken servant beating the other slaves. An even closer parallel to the text of Luke can be found in the Testament of Joseph:
  

  "If my lord was absent (apedemei), I drank no wine; for three-day periods I would take no food but give it to the poor and the ill. I would awaken early and pray to the Lord, weeping over the Egyptian women of Memphis because she annoyed me exceedingly and relentlessly." (Testament of Joseph 3:5-6)

  Here what Joseph says is the exact opposite of the evil slave's actions: "If that slave says in his heart, 'My lord is delaying,' and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk," and presumably fail to distribute the food rations he was appointed to do (Luke 12:45). In this text, Joseph declares himself to be faithful to his lord's wishes and presupposes that he sometimes carried out his lord's duties while his lord was away. This is precisely the situation in Luke 12:42-46, where we find the phrase elthon ho kurios which corresponds to the elthen ho kurios of Genesis 39:16 (LXX).

  If there is any doubt regarding the dependence of Luke 12:42-46 upon the Joseph traditions, it is dismissed by Luke 12:44. Here we read of the lord's returning and finding his servant doing well. Jesus declares: "I tell you that he will appoint him over all his possessions." This is a variation of the original declaration, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the lord appointed over his household to give them food rations on time?' We find exactly the same pattern in Genesis 39. After we twice read that the master appointed Joseph over his "house" (39:4-5a), the text continues: "The blessing of the Lord was upon all that he owned, in house or field." The blessing itself recalls Luke 12:43 which says "Blessed is that slave whom his lord finds doing so when he comes", but the LXX rendering of "all that he owned" (Heb. kl-'shr ysh-lw) lines up neatly with the Lukan text:
  

  Luke 12:44 epi pasin tois huparkhousin autou
  LXX Gen. 39:5b en pasin tois huparkhousin autou

  The phrase pasin tois huparkhousin occurs only one other place in the LXX, Judith 8:10, which unlike Luke 12:44 and Genesis 39:5 is not prefaced by a preposition, not followed by a masculine pronoun, and not preceded by the occurrences of kathistemi. The narrative in Judith 8 also bore little resemblance with the parable, unlike the story about Joseph and Potiphar's wife, and Joseph's exaltation under Pharaoh.

  Thus we find that the Christian readers of Luke (and its Q predecessor), as followers of a "lord" promising to return, should find in Joseph a role model, particularly as one who was rewarded by Potiphar and later by Pharaoh for his faithful service. Interestingly, Acts 7:9-14 (also written by Luke) relates the story of Joseph and his exaltation as a theme of divine justice and vindication. The eschatological focus in the parable (e.g. referring to an end-time coming of the Lord) is also paralleled by Jewish tradition which focuses on Joseph's actions as prefiguring the Day of Judgment (cf. Jubilees 39:6; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Gen. 39:10; b. Yoma 35b). The Christian reader of Luke 12:42-46 would also think that the servant who says, "My lord is delayed," and then begins to beat others and eat and drink is the antithesis of the good and faithful Joseph; while the faithless servant eats and drinks and gets drunk, the extrabiblical traditions about Joseph go beyond Genesis in telling us that he fasted and refused to drink wine when his lord was away. Philo (Joseph, 45) also has Joseph telling Potiphar's wife that he will not be a "drunkard" (methuo). So it seems pretty clear, as Dale Allison concludes, that the "faithful and wise servant" in Luke intended to evoke the story of Joseph and his positive moral example.
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  seeitallclearlynow

  Very, very interesting, Leolaia - I really enjoyed that!

  Thank you for your research.
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  bebu

  I enjoyed that as well. Quite interesting!

  bebu
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  ese

  nice - so u think the f & d slave in the greek scrips refers to jesus (who is prefigured by Joseph)?
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  observador

  Leolaia,

  if you continue writing things like this, the WT may hire you to write their articles and books.

  You go to the point of even referring to the greek text? Oh, my! You're very convincing!

  But, as I said the other day, I still like your other avatar better than this one.

  Observador.
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  ellderwho

  Leolaia,

  Did you help with the Aid Book??
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  galaxy7

  thankyou very much for your post.

  this is one of my biggest problems with the JWs.and how they use that scripture.

  I always wondered why they changed the scripture from wise to discreet

  i guess they discreetly failed to remember JOSEPH when dealing with that parable
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  Leolaia

  observador and elderwho.....Thank you for the nice comments... I should point out, again, that I drew heavily on Dale Alison's "The Intertextual Jesus" which helpfully lists all the texts that are connected to the sayings of Jesus in the shared material in Matthew and Luke.

  Leolaia
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  Leolaia

  nice - so u think the f & d slave in the greek scrips refers to jesus (who is prefigured by Joseph)?

  No...I think the f & d slave refers to those disciples who heed the teaching of Jesus. The gospel Jesus invites the listeners to identify him with the "lord" (kurios) who will be coming, the one who has the power to bless or punish the disciples who accepted the word. There is a lot of symbolism here. The use of sitometrion "rations of grain" is significant because it (1) recalls the famine of Joseph and (2) within the gospel "grain" is used to symbolize the word of the kingdom. Thus in the Parable of the Sower "the seed is the word of God" which, when it falls on good soil, that is, "a people with a noble and generous heart who have heard the word and take it to themselves and yield a harvest through their perseverence" (Luke 8:11-15). Paul also has a similar understanding where he says: "I did the planting, Apollos did the watering, but God made things grow" (1 Corinthians 3:6). The rations of grain that Jesus entrusts to his disciples is like the vineyard in the Parable of the Wicked Husbandman that the "landlord" leases to his tenants as "their inheritance" (Luke 20:9-16). Jesus is passing on to his disciples his teaching, his wisdom -- which in Q and the synoptics constitutes the Word -- and he expects his disciples to pass on the teaching, to plant it in new soil, and reap the benefits. If the apostles do not give out the "rations of grain" in the first place, the Word will not spread and nourish the souls of those starved by the religious authorities of the day. Those who give out the Word must also practice the Word and live righteously. But Jesus stresses that, unlike the Pharisees, they are not to live self-righteously and exalt themselves over their brethren (cf. Luke 9:46-47, 11:43; 14:7-11; 20:46), which is precisely what the WT has done by glorifying themselves as a "prophet", designating themselves as the only way to Jesus and God, and providing their own "food" and not the moral teaching of Jesus (which, of course, is also neglected by many calling themselves "Christian").
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  JCanon

  Hi L....

  Thanks for this interesting comparison. You're good.

  The JIOR take on this is interesting because of the connection with Joseph and his descendants. The Messiah comes to the earth twice, the first time as a sacrifice through the royal line of David when he is born as a child, and the second time he arrives without specific heritage as with Melchizedek. The first time since he must be perfect, the "transmigration" (WTS term) was into an unfertilized egg of Mary so that he was born as a real individual through that line only as a perfect child. But since that was only necessary once and since he must give up that body as a sacrifice, the second time he simply takes up the body of one of his followers at the second coming. That's the "Lazaru/Prodigal Son" second coming doctrine of the JIOR, where Christ is an imperfect man at the second coming.

  But...there's a little catch to that. Since the promised must be fulfilled that there are some from each of the 12 tribes to make up this "kingdom of priests" the 144,000 (a symbolic number, maybe really 10x 144K?) there was the issue of how are you going to find some members from each tribe during the last days to fulfill this, even if some were to be replaced by gentiles, still some representative percentage needed to come from the 12 tribes.

  So what Jesus did was to choose some from the original congregation who had lineage from the 12 tribes to "survive down to the Lord's day" (2 Thess 4:15) (including Paul and John!) along with select members from each of the 12 tribes. These men/women would survive down through the times inconspiculously and then within a generation or two of the second coming marry and start families again so that by the time the Christ arrived there would be some from among the original 12 tribes to choose from. And that's where the connection with Joseph comes in.

  "Out of Egypt I called my Son" is a reference to the second-coming Messiah, though no specific lineage needs to be established, would come through the line of Joseph. That Messiah would take up the body of one of the children from this new generation of those in the line of Joseph. Joseph's children were half Egyptian and thus "out of Egypt I called my son" is a reference to that. The Revelation reference to the "impalement" of the prodigal son Messiah in "Sodom and Egypt" is also a reference to his general ethnic background and social situation (gay and black).

  At any rate, getting back to the parable, the "faithful and discrete slave" was originally supposed to be the GB of JW who are considered the public "temple" organization that God recognizes to preach the good news. But we know they fail and become the "false prophet". So in the end, it is Jesus himself who becomes the faithful and wise servant whom God then gives over his entire house. That this is paralleling what happened to Joseph is thus interesting, since the second coming Messiah who becomes the ultimate faithful and discrete slave was prophesied to come in the line of Joseph at the second coming.

  So it does work out, in more ways than one that the Messiah is paralleled with Joseph, especially in the capacity of the faithful and discrete slave who feeds his followers at the right time.

  Of course, this means little or nothing to non-believers outside the spiritual household of Christ, but is interesting for those on the inside I guess you could say, as the WTS would, that the second coming prodigal son Messiah is also the "Greater Joseph".

  Interesting...

  J.C.