Joseph and Esarhaddon of Assyria
Brother rivalry in the story of Joseph in the Bible and in the life of King Esarhaddon
Brother rivalry in the story of Joseph: Flemish artist Balthasar Beschey depicts the moment when brother rivalry turns vicious in the story of Joseph in the Bible in this 18th-century painting, Joseph Sold by his Brothers.
A father prefers one of his younger sons to his older sons. The younger son is promoted—to the envy of his older brothers—and the older brothers turn against him. When an opportunity presents itself, they manage to depose him. The younger brother ends up in a foreign land—dispossessed of his rights as heir. However, rather than wasting away in this foreign place, he thrives. Eventually, he rises to a high political office, and his original rights as an heir are restored.
Does the above paragraph describe the story of Joseph in the Bible or the life of King Esarhaddon of Assyria? The answer—rather surprisingly—is both.
Eckart Frahm, Professor of Assyriology at Yale University, probes the many similarities between Joseph and Esarhaddon in his article “Surprising Parallels Between Joseph and King Esarhaddon” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Not only are there the obvious connections, but there are even more parallels when one delves into the textual evidence.
The story of Joseph appears in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, and the account of Esarhaddon’s rise to power is chronicled in the Assyrian text Nineveh A. Both Joseph and Esarhaddon are the younger sons of their fathers, and both deal with brother rivalry because their fathers favor them over their older brothers. In both of these instances, the brother rivalry is so intense and bitter that Joseph and Esarhaddon are forced to leave the land of their birth. While Joseph is sold as a slave by his brothers and taken to Egypt, Esarhaddon flees the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and takes refuge in the West for his own safety. Further, both of their fortunes are eventually restored. Beating incredible odds, they both rise to powerful positions: Joseph becomes second-in-command in Egypt, and Esarhaddon becomes king of Assyria.
In the free eBook Exploring Genesis: The Bible’s Ancient Traditions in Context, discover the cultural contexts for many of Israel’s earliest traditions. Explore Mesopotamian creation myths, Joseph’s relationship with Egyptian temple practices and three different takes on the location of Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham.
Esarhaddon of Assyria: This basalt stele from Sam‘al (modern Zincirli in Turkey) depicts King Esarhaddon of Assyria. Similar to the story of Joseph in the Bible, Esarhaddon dealt with brother rivalry before he became king of Assyria.
While the story of Joseph is familiar to many, the story of Esarhaddon is not as well known. Eckhart Frahm summarizes the Assyrian tale of brother rivalry below:
Esarhaddon reports with unusual candor [in Nineveh A] that he was not the oldest son of his father and predecessor Sennacherib. Esarhaddon had a number of elder brothers. Nonetheless, at some point Sennacherib decided to make Esarhaddon his heir apparent. Liver divination undertaken in the name of the sun-god Šamaš and the weather god Adad confirms the appointment. And both the people of Assyria and Esarhaddon’s brothers swear loyalty to the new crown prince.
The brothers, however, are not happy with this course of events. Jealous and full of resentment, they conspire against Sennacherib’s new succession designation. Sennacherib is affected by their machinations and finally distances himself from his newly minted heir. Secretly, however, Sennacherib continues to wish that Esarhaddon will become king after him. In the meantime, Esarhaddon leaves the capital Nineveh and takes refuge in an unspecified safe location somewhere in the West. Soon after, the brothers “go mad” and commit “deeds that are deeply offensive to the gods and mankind”—a thinly veiled allusion to the fact that, as other sources indicate, they murdered Sennacherib … But the brothers are not to reap any rewards from their actions. Esarhaddon returns to Assyria with a small army, chases the regicides away and, encouraged by prophetic oracles, ascends the Assyrian throne.
What do all of the parallels between the two accounts mean? Are the similarities no more than chance—just two tales of brother rivalry, exile and restoration? Or did one of these stories borrow from the other?
While there are many similarities between the accounts of Joseph and Esarhaddon, there are also some significant differences, such as the resolution. Whereas Joseph forgives his brothers and saves their lives, Esarhaddon does not reconcile with his offending brothers. Although their exact fate is unknown, Esarhaddon’s older brothers flee Nineveh and seek refuge with the king of Urartu. They live as exiles for the rest of their lives—unforgiven by Esarhaddon and unwelcomed in Assyria. This and other parts of departure between the two accounts show that one tale is not an exact copy of the other—despite their many similarities.
For an analysis of the comparisons between the stories of Joseph and Esarhaddon, read the full article “Surprising Parallels Between Joseph and King Esarhaddon” by Eckart Frahm in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Subscribers: Read the full article “Surprising Parallels Between Joseph and King Esarhaddon” by Eckart Frahm in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Not a subscriber yet? Join today.
In the free eBook Exploring Genesis: The Bible’s Ancient Traditions in Context, discover the cultural contexts for many of Israel’s earliest traditions. Explore Mesopotamian creation myths, Joseph’s relationship with Egyptian temple practices and three different takes on the location of Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham.
Learn more about Esarhaddon in the BAS Library:
Erika Bleibtreu, “Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death,” Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1991.
Michael B. Dick, “Worshiping Idols,” Bible Review, April 2002.
Victor Hurowitz, “Solomon’s Temple in Context,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2011.
Lawrence Mykytiuk, “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible,” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2014.
This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on May 16, 2016.
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In the kingdoms of antiquity, it was common for brothers to contest against each other to be the heir to their father — in fact, it was usual for the victor, who might well be the youngest son and favorite if the father died of ripe old age, to kill all his rival brothers to make sure there would be no future civil strife, as also was the standard Ottoman imperial practice even in the last centuries before its fall. Therefore, we can assume that just about all previous and subsequent royal contests between royal brothers would show “surprising parallels” to the Joseph story, especially if we studiously ignore the differences. No prizes to Frahm in finding these “surprises.”
One other comment: the late dating of the Pentateuch suggested above, putting the whole thing at the time of the Babylonian Exile is quite thoroughly discredited by general scholarship. No one asserts such a thing, even those who want to claim the Pentateuch was “edited” into its present shape then — the original narratives, even these fevered sceptics must admit, predate the Babylonian Exile. Even more ludicrous is the idea that the Pentateuch stems from the fourth century BCE. Despite the best efforts of the secularist (and maybe even Judaeophobic) denigrators, this is the very latest time they can even implausibly claim the Mosaic books were written, since this was the time when as everyone acknowledges the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Mosaic books, was produced — i.e., those books, in their present form and text, were already the traditional canon of Scripture back then, which is precisely why the translation was made for diaspora Jewry. The story of Joseph far predates Esarhaddon.
I must correct myself. I was bothered by the fourth century statement I made, and then recalled that it was in the Third century BCE that the Septuagint was produced. The basic argument still stands.
One can add to that that the Joseph story explained the derivation of two of the twelve tribes of ancient Jewry. Tribes down through the ages and in just about all cultures have been notable for stressing genealogy as the key to their distinct identity, and all tribal members, even children, were commonly able to recite the full lineage of their tribal ancestors, especially the founders. Joseph was the founding ancestor for the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. Therefore the accounts of his life were part of the most ancient oral traditions of those tribes. Can we imagine a fourth century BCE novelist inventing this story and trying to foist it on the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh? Not even the other tribes would have a bar of such inventions. They all were invested in their own roles in the common heritage. We should also bear in mind that ancient Israel was a literate culture, and that it is highly unlikely that there would not have been very ancient written accounts of the origins of the twelve tribes, in addition to the oral heritage. So the account of Frahm is preposterous on the face of it.
With all due respect to Ben, unfortunately the Babylonian Captivity Scripture composition theory is in fact quite alive and well in the scholarly world. In fact, I have seen half a dozen mainstream academics proclaim it as fact–and this on television–in the past week.
One was in the Morgan Freeman show “Searching for God” (or words to that effect). Freeman, who has in the past said he is an atheist, seemed very reverent with regards to Biblical tradition and it was ironically the scholars he interviewed from the US and UK acted as if it were a foregone conclusion. The other was a British program I caught on Netflix called “Bible Secrets” about the Tower of Babel. It featured theories by alternative theorist David Rohl, with whom I almost always have huge problems with. In this case his theory was interesting enough to at least not dismiss out of hand, but the people who helped him linked it directly to the Babylon Scripture theory mentioned above, and scholar and after scholar chimed in expressing this as “the majority view”, so it can’t be both “no one endorses this today” and “the majority view” at the same time. The truth is likely in the middle which is, sorry to say, not what Ben mentioned and trust me, I would much prefer that Ben was right on this point. It would make my job a lot easier.
Respectfully yours,
Andrew Gabriel Roth
Translator Aramaic English New Testament
With regard to the age of the Penteteuch I am skeptical of the extremes myself. But I think it might be interesting to consider its age relative to other books of the OT, particularly Isaiah.
If we were to analyze Isaiah we might come away with the conclusion that there were a sequence of sections of less and less age – with some editing to tie the first (early) and later (later) chapters together. And in the early parts of Isaiah we have texts that relate so directly to the time of Sennacherib that they correspond rather well to Assyrian accounts of Babylon’s destruction by same ( 14:21-23 thought the latter part appears as prose vs. the earlier verse) and that he was coming to lay siege to Jerusalem (see below). Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon (circa 690 BC) is recorded in Assyrian chronicles, discussed by Georges Roux ( chapter 20, Ancient Iraq). Elsewhere we find that Esarhaddon, reversed the sentence of desolation after a period of 11 years vs. the nominal 70. Whether Esarhaddon was involved or not with the murder of Sennacherib (681 BC), it is unclear, but he found it disturbing that he could eradicate a city with sites that to Assyrians were sacred.
And then later, circa chapters 39 ( where Isaiah quotes from 2nd Kings chapter 2) and 40-45 where the text speaks of Cyrus – the most straight-forward explanation for these two segments is that the overall book or scroll was written and re-written into the document we know today.
Now what about Sennacherib, Babylon and Jerusalem? Well it turns out that Jerusalem was attacked and besieged earlier than Babylon by about a decade and a half. Isaiah as an adviser to Hezekiah – the whole story rests on that notion. When Isaiah is layed to rest is uncertain, but Hezekiah supposedly survived until 687 BC, long enough to be reign contemporaneously with Esarhaddon. So, what is the intent of reciting the fate of Babylon? Is it to compare it with that of Jerusalem confronted with the same adversary but protected from on high? And did the story get tweaked further as time went by?
But back to the comparative age question? Is there any mention of the Penteteuch in Isaiah or any of the ideas in its content?
But then
I think that there is some confusion here, Mr. Roth. I wrote that no one believes that the entire Pentateuch as such was written during the Babylonian Exile. At least, no knowledgeable scholar does that I am aware of. All that those “Higher Criticism” scholars claim who support the (now antiquated, usually heavily modified and for very many largely discredited) “Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis” is that the allegedly separate documents were all edited and sorted out into a single Pentateuch (or Hexateuch) during the Babylonian Exile. But they admit and even generally insist that the supposed “J, E, P and D” documents, and their ancillary modifications or sub-documents, predated, sometimes by many centuries, the Babylonian Exile.
You can’t know when the Pentateuch was first written, with what we have. And even with the oldest examples we do have, it is a copy. Every argument would be full of fallacy. To say these books did not exist before this and this time is insane. It can also, more than likely, make one look the fool with possible future findings. Obviously, if going by the text, it was certainly much older than Josiah (and they most obviously knew what it was in their time) II Kings 22:8.
Well it certainly is mind-boggling how the revision of the dating of Genesis from its inception during the early Israelite monarchy period to some period centuries later opens the narrative with an insightful perspective with these allusions to contemporaneous history and you wouldn’t know how compelling the evidence is unless you read the full article that is crammed with data that places you in a vortex circa early 7th century B.C.E. at the beginning of a “like Nimrod a mighty hunter” (Genesis 10:9) epic saga that the author of the latter half of Genesis compiled by using a technique familiar to the authors of Exodus with Aaron and Moses not themselves relying on the magical arts of the Egyptians but instead using the wise men and the sorcerers and magicians in a polemic against them and now we have the story of the patriarch Joseph set against a backdrop of the behind-the-scenes intrigue between rival heirs to the throne, as it is written, “…and E’sar-had’don his son began to reign in place of him” (2 Kings 19:37).
Along with the fact that Joseph has a chapter named after him in the 12th sura of the Koran he is the most mentioned character in the Koran that goes beyond the Bible in praising his attribute of chastity that in Jewish mysticism is the attribute known as “zedek” or righteous, that is, taken in the context that Joseph never rose beyond the position of second-in-command to Pharoah, which is an attribute of “malkhut” or kingdom, and that could have a potential negative import in the Kabbalistic tradition not unlike the distinction between what is Pharaoah’s and what is God’s (Mark 12:17).
So the fact that Esarhaddan as a prince was in exile in the same region from where the partriachs came, “beyond the river” (Joshua 24:2), or the Euphrates, and the city of Uru is mentioned in Esarhaddan’s annals recording the first of his military campaigns launched from his base in Hanigalbat, a region formerly known as Mitanni and Naharayim that roughly includes the region between the Balikh and Khabor rivers north of the upper Euphrates. It is thought by some scholars that the region referred to as “Aram Naharayim” (Genesis 24:10, 27:43) or “Aram of the two rivers,” includes “Ur of Kasdim” (Genesis 10:31), a city northwest of Haran. The article in the current issue of BAR states on page 48 the significance of the patriarch Jacob’s association with this city and that “Haran may also have the ancestral home of Sennacherib’s wife Naqi’a” and that Esarhaddan “invested heavily” in Haran’s temples having been “crowned there a second time in 671 B.C.E.”
The reign of Sennacherib is described in only negative terms by the author of the book of Tobit whose main character was among those deported from the tribe of Naphtali in Galilee to Ninevah where he found favor with the Neo-Assyrian King Shalmaneser V, but not his successor Sennacherib and Tobit had to flee for his life, returning home only after Esarhaddan’s succession (Tobit 2:1). Shalmaneser V was the king who conquered the kingdom of Samaria and some of the people were exiled to the city of Gozan on the Khabor River, or “in Habor at the river Gozan” (2 Kings 17:6), and the area’s mixed population of Hurrian and Semitic people are reflective of the cultural blend of textual sources that comprise the foundation of the material found in the book of Genesis, in the region known as Naharin in Egyptian sources before it was known as Mitanni and it was also destination for the Pharaoh’s hunting expeditions during the 18th Dynasty, another possible connection to Joseph who likely would have spent more time practicing his archery (Genesis 49:23-24) than worrying about starting his own dynasty.
You can do it, Mr. Shanks, we’re all pulling for you to take your ship back from these pirates who censure me in the hope that we can avert a curse over the land (Malachi 4:6). Just remember your eponymous ancestor, “the mighty one of Jacob” (Genesis 49:24) and muster all your strength like a comic book superhero in the face of adversity and say to yourself, “I…will..act…my age!”