Wednesday, April 7, 2010

How did the Jews come to live in Egypt? Something to do with Joseph and predicting the pharaohs dreams


How did the Jews come to live in Egypt? Something to do with Joseph and predicting the pharaohs dreams?

History - 6 Answers
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1 :
Read the Bible, the Old Testament. It is in the same bit as the 12 tribes of Israel. Basically, Joseph was his father's fav. son because he was born from his dad's wife (his dad had sex with lots of other women and didn't think that his wife would be able to have a baby). Ummmm .. can't remember it all exactly but the other sons got jealous and so they sold their brother, Joseph to slavers and told their dad that he was killed by a boar or some shit. Anyway, Joseph then got a job with the Pharoah explainging and interpreting the pharoah's dreams. He was then put in the position of like vice-pharoah, i forget what the real name is. Back at home, their father was so sad that the brothers repented and went looking for Joseph. Then they found Joseph in Egypt in like the mansion of whatever but didn't know it was him. You can read the rest lol, I can't be bothered to type much more and my memory is getting blurry. Please vote best answer!!
2 :
That is the story from the Bible: after the famine, Joseph's father and brothers and their families came to live in Egypt. Joseph had gotten the best land from his service to Pharoah, and he was rich and powerful. The events of Joseph's life are also found in the Torah and the Qur'an. Egyptian history is silent about this, including Joseph̢۪s prominent position. However scientific evidence supports the case of a historical Joseph. Studies in 'ice cores' found in Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the mountain which supplies the Nile with its water, reveal that a drought did take place around 3600 years ago, when the Bible sets Joseph's story. We also know of another event around the same time. One of the most fertile areas in Egypt was the land around Lake Quarun. This lake was fed with water from one of the branches of the Nile. Droughts in Egypt used to cause this branch to dry up, leaving the land around the Lake destitute. We do know that between 1850 and 1650 BC a canal was built to keep the branches of the Nile permanently open, enabling water to fill Lake Quaran and keep the land fertile. This canal was so effective that it still successfully functions today. There is no record of who built the canal, but for thousands of years it has only been known by one name. In Arabic it's the Bahr Yusef. This translates into English as The Waterway of Joseph. Could this canal have been built by a certain Prime Minister called Joseph as part of his work to save Egypt from famine? Was this Prime Minister the son of a Canaanite called Jacob?
3 :
I'm sorry for all the biblical based answers. This story, and the following exodus is a fairy tale. It never happened. Egypt was the superpower of the moment. A large community of Jews established itself there, for that reason. At the time of the fairy tale of Joseph, the Jews were semi-nomads. In times of hardship they went to the towns and villages. Not necessarily of Egypt. Only much later Jews settled in Egypt permanently. Alexandria had a large Jewish community, and an area called 'Land of Onias' in the Nile Delta was essentially completely Jewish, with a large temple. There good reason for that, but none of them biblical.
4 :
Due to Joseph's foresight in storing surplus grain from the harvest during the '7 years of plenty' Egypt had plenty of grain during the '7 years of famine'. Joseph was reunited with his family when his brothers came to Egypt to buy grain. The Jews then, at Joseph's invitation, moved en masse to Egypt due to the fact Egypt was unaffected by the famine.
5 :
The Torah is "a fairy tale" ??! You're the same troll who calls Mohammed "a profit" instead of prophet. Who commends Hitler and who claims concentration camps were for Christians to gas pagans, lol. Atheist fundie trolls are no less obnoxious than their religions equivalents. .
6 :
When Yosef was sold into slavery by his brothers, he worked for a man named Potifar. His wife framed Yosef for a crime, and Yosef was thrown in jail. There he interpreted the dreams of the royal baker and wine bearer who were also in jail. They interpretations came true, and Yosef made a mistake by telling the wine bearer to mention his dream interpretation skills to Pharoh. This was not good on Yosef's part because he should relied on Hashem (G-d). After years in prison, the wine bearer mentioned yosef to Pharoh. Yosef interpreted Pharoh's dreams, which meant 7 years of abundance would come to the land, then 7 years of famine. During the famine Yosef was in charge of storing the food and distributing it out to the people. Jacob sent his sons to buy food in Egypt. When Yosef saw them, he recognized them and brought them into his home. To make a long story short, the brothers didn't know it was Yosef, and Yosef played around with them a little (you really have to read the actual Torah, this is really hard to summarize), and finally he revealed that he was Yosef. When Jacob found out his son was alive, their family went down to Egypt. Gradually, (not a week later), in fact several years later, Yosef and Jacob, and the brothers died, and the population increased. Pharoh feared that they may take over the country and decided to gradually trick them into becoming slaves.





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