![\"coat\"](\"http:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2009\/12\/coat.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Item. \u201cThe assignment of fertility god imagery to the coat of many colors seems altogether arbitrary. Is there really a documented correspondence between fertility gods and parti-coloured coats?\u201d \u2013\u2013Robert Alter.<\/p>\n
Item. \u201cI expect my main problem with Frye is the way he free-associates (or should I say frye-associates) in ways that I simply cannot follow (e.g., Joseph\u2019s \u201ccoat of many colors\u201d suggests to Frye that Joseph is a fertility god). Maybe I\u2019m dim but I don\u2019t see the connection, and whether it would disappear if we were to translate ketonet pasim correctly.\u201d \u2013\u2013David Richter<\/p>\n
Frye\u2019s associating Joseph with fertility gods, as I indicated in an earlier post, goes back a long way. He makes the connection three times in essays he wrote while a student at Emmanuel College in the 1930s. It would have been helpful if Frye had provided a source for this link in his papers and in The Great Code<\/em>. He didn\u2019t, so we can only speculate. We know, first of all, that the dream interpreting priests of Bablyon were identified by their multicolored garments, and that might well be connected to Joseph\u2019s coat of many colors. What seems more likely is that Frye picked up the association from the biblical scholarship of the time. Beatrice A. Brooks, for example, speculates that the Septuagint\u2019s rendering of k\u0115thoneth pac<\/em>, which changed the meaning to \u201ccoat of many colors,\u201d might well have been a conscious editorial decision because such coats \u201csuggested a fertility cult functionary\u201d (\u201cFertility Cult Functionaries in the Old Testament,\u201d Journal of Biblical Literature<\/em> 60, no. 3 [September 1941], 250\u20131). W.E. Staples maintains that Joseph\u2019s garment is \u201csuspiciously like the veil worm by the virgin goddess Ishtar\u201d (\u201cCultic Motifs in Hebrew Thought,\u201d American Journal of Semitic Languages<\/em> 55 [1938]: 47). Earlier William Foxwell Albright, the esteemed biblical archaeologist, had concluded that it was relatively certain that Joseph was worshipped at Shechem as a fertility god (\u201cHistorical and Mythical Elements in the Story of Joseph,\u201d Journal of Biblical Literature <\/em>37, nos. 3\u20134 [1918], 115).<\/p>\n Such studies indicate that Frye was not making an arbitrary connection and that it\u2019s easy enough to see how he might have derived the idea from the biblical scholars of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Item. \u201cThe assignment of fertility god imagery to the coat of many colors seems altogether arbitrary. Is there really a documented correspondence between fertility gods and parti-coloured coats?\u201d \u2013\u2013Robert Alter. Item. \u201cI expect my main problem with Frye is the way he free-associates (or should I say frye-associates) in ways that I simply cannot follow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-bob-denham"],"yoast_head":"\n