Ingrid Mattson – How to Tell a Beautiful Story The Tale of Joseph in the Quran
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AI: Transcript ©
Good evening, everyone. A warm welcome to you.
Thank you so much for joining us. My
name is Melissa Paige Nichols, and I am
pastoral counselor on staff with Campus Ministry here
at King's University College.
Tonight, we begin the second half of the
Veritas Series for Faith and Culture for this
14,
2015 academic year,
and we are most honored
to have Doctor Ingrid Mattson with us this
evening
to offer the 1st lecture
of this new year.
And now I am very pleased to invite
Hassan Mostafa,
president of the board of directors
of the Islamic Centre of Southwest Ontario
to introduce our speaker.
I greet you with the words of peace.
I'm very honored to be here
and,
before I introduce our esteemed guest, doctor Mattson,
I wanna speak just a little bit about
friendship.
It's
a difficult world that we live in today,
but in the Muslim community here in London
we're very proud and we're very honored of
the bonds and the friendships that we've created
with interfaith communities both with King's College, Huron
College.
Excuse me with many of the churches and
with many of the synagogues
and
at a time where people want to commit
violence and use the mask of religion to
do so, it's always great to fall by
to fall back on friendship
and,
and and then move forward. And so we
honor your friendship. We thank you for your
friendship.
And, having said that, I'd like to introduce
our esteemed guest, doctor Matson.
Doctor Matson is a religious scholar. She's an
expert in interfaith relations.
Since 2012, she's been the chair of Islamic
Studies
at Huron at the Windsor London and Windsor
Community Chair
of Islamic Studies at Huron.
Doctor Matson was educated in Canada just from
down the road on on the 401 from
the Kitchener Waterloo area.
She earned a PhD in Near Eastern Language
Languages and Civil Age Civilizations from the University
of Chicago.
From 1998 to 2012,
she was the professor of Islamic Studies at
Hartford Seminary in Connecticut,
where she developed and directed the 1st accredited
graduate program for Muslim chaplains in America
and served as director of the McDonald Center
for the Study of Islam and Christian Muslim
Relations.
Doctor Matson has long been active in the
Muslim religious communities. From 2,001 to 2,010,
she served as vice president and then as
president of the Islamic Society of North America,
the first woman to serve so in either
position. Her writings both academic and public focus
primarily on Quranic interpretation,
Islamic theology, ethics, and interfaith relations.
Her book, the story of the Quran,
is an academic bestseller and was chosen by
the US National Endowment for the Humanities for
Inclusion in its bridging cultures program.
Doctor Matson is also a senior fellow at
the Royal Ahlulbayt Institute For Islamic Thought in
Amman, Jordan.
From 2,009 to 2010, Doctor. Matson was a
member of the Interfaith Task Force of the
White House Office
of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
In 2008, she was on the council for
global leaders of the c 100 of the
World Economic Forum.
Doctor Batson is also the recipient of numerous
awards
Thank you, doctor Hassan Mustafa, for that introduction.
I'm very grateful to to doctor Mustafa and
to so many others,
from this community, from the community of London
and the community of Windsor, the the people,
the communities that gave,
the name of the chair that I hold,
the London and Windsor community chair
in, Islamic Studies. I'm so grateful
and really honored and feel blessed to occupy
a chair that is has been funded and
named after communities
because so many of my colleagues hold chairs
that are named after
millionaires
or monarchs
or billionaires,
so I feel really, you know, more rooted
in the people,
with this, so I'm grateful to that. I'm
also, of course, very grateful to,
King's University College,
and
especially for, the Center For Jewish
Catholic Muslim Learning here that, has sponsored this
lecture.
I'm,
so happy to have good, and
good colleagues and also friends, as as Hasson
said,
here. It's wonderful,
being in colleges that
bring a a,
a life of faithfulness and also a critical
eye to, religious studies,
to the Western campus. I think we
fulfill,
a very important role
in,
in the world today.
Religion is a part of people's
experiences, whether
we like it or not, and at a
minimum, we should understand the world in which
we live. So, teaching about religion,
should be part of every,
you know, every educated person's
education at some point,
and to be able to also have a
place,
to live faithfully is also important in a
nation where freedom of religion and expression is,
is so critical
to the values and identity,
so I'm grateful to be to be here
and also to be back in Canada.
Today, I'm talking
about the story of Joseph,
and I chose this because it is one
of my favorite stories
ever,
not just one of my favorite stories in
the Quran, but I thought it was particularly
appropriate also for this lecture series because it's
a story that is well known by all
the so called Abrahamic traditions,
by, Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
It is a story that we share. It's
a story that is told both within our
scripture
and also outside of scripture.
There are all sorts of retellings of the
story of,
Joseph,
in the Islamic tradition. We have
a there's a very developed miniature tradition of
illustrations
of this story
in Persian and Ottoman manuscripts.
There are plays
about it
in India.
Of course there is a
contemporary modern play about it, Joseph and his
Technicolor Dreamcoat.
So the store this is a story that
has engaged our imagination from very, very ancient
times
told even before it was written down,
in the Bible or the Quran, and it
goes on in a retelling
afterwards.
So,
so we all have, I think, I don't
have to tell the basic story to people,
it's also helpful to to have pretty much
all of your audience know generally the backstory.
The story of Joseph is told in the
Quran in one of the Suras. Sura means
that is often translated
as chapter, although that doesn't quite
translate exactly.
The Quran has a 114
Suras, some that are very short, just a
few verses, and some that are very long,
hundreds of verses.
The story of Joseph is a is a
medium, shortish to medium,
long chapter,
and it is
special and unique within the Quran for a
number of reasons.
To understand why it is special,
we first have to
know that the Quran contains many different forms
of communication,
all of which Muslims believe are the word
of God.
So,
everything that is within the Quran is a
revelation
that came from God through the prophet to
the prophet Muhammad as the messenger of God.
So the Quran
is is God's message
that was conveyed through his his prophet and
then given to the people.
But, in this in this revelation,
which was revealed over 23 years bit by
bit, there are many different forms of communication
and by that I mean,
that there are some stories, although
those are a small part, but there are
also legal rulings, there are supplications,
there is the praise of God, there
eschatological
descriptions, descriptions of the afterlife and the day
of judgment.
So there's many different
messages,
stories,
prayers, and passages in the Quran.
A word that could be translated as
as story,
if you go to an English translation of
the Quran, you might find,
very often in a number of verses, they'll
they'll use the word story,
but the Arabic word kisla
is not used very often. Usually,
what is conveyed is is news,
naba,
or a parable, methel,
or a hadith.
The word hadith is used, report.
So what is the difference between all of
these
narratives,
and
a story?
This story
has a specific meaning.
It is a narrative that's told
about something that has happened in a particular
format, and you'll see this if you if
you look at the Quran and you look
at these different words that are translated as
narrative,
that story has a particular meaning.
And
the Surah Joseph, the chapter of Joseph,
begins,
very early on in this chapter
are the words, we will narrate to you
the most beautiful story.
And
to this,
extent,
when we look at the story of Joseph
as story,
we are not engaging in
a metaphorical,
interpretation of the Quran.
So, we have to think a little bit
at the beginning here about hermeneutics,
meaning
what is the proper way to read the
Quran?
When we read the Quran, how do we
look at it? Now, of course, people can
look at it from whatever perspective they like.
From an but for a Muslim, for a
believing Muslim, I'm an observant Muslim, there are
certain things that we begin with. 1, that
this is the word of God, So that
is
is a belief that Muslims will have that,
non Muslims generally will not have.
The question then is, if a Muslim believes
this is the word of God, how do
we understand it? How do we interpret it?
And very often, we hear
phrases
like,
you know, because Muslims believe that the Quran
is the literal word of God, they are,
and the the assumption or the conclusion is
they are literalists, scriptural literalists,
and that's not quite true
because,
well,
the all Muslims believe that the Quran is
the verbatim word of God. That doesn't mean
that all forms that the Quran is read
in a completely decontextualized
manner, or in a manner in which,
the
words can't have some ambiguity
or
be polysemic,
meaning that that there could be many meanings
to the same word, or that we don't
have to contextualize scripture.
So, there are many tools,
exegetical tools or tools of interpreting the Quran
that are applied to the text. So for
example, the first level is linguistic. What does
a word mean?
What did the word mean in that time?
Is it different than how we understand
what that word means? Could there be many
different meanings?
Then there's the question of grammar. While something
can be phrased in a general
verbal form,
it might actually
imply or signify
a specific
ruling,
or it may signify
one person, even though the wording is very
general.
There's also the issue of the historical
context
of abrogation.
Were some verses abrogated by others?
So, there is a whole toolbox
that is brought
to understanding
what the Quran means. So we all know
what the Quran says.
The question is, what does it mean? And
here is where we'll find a wide range
of interpretations.
Now,
there are some
schools of Islamic thought that,
will interpret the Quran through a metaphorical
lens.
In particular, if you look at some of
the, the, Shiite schools of thought, there is
more application of metaphorical interpretation,
and by metaphorical interpretation, I mean
where some passages that seem fairly straightforward
will be interpreted
metaphorically.
So, for example,
the sun will be interpreted as a metaphor
for God, and the moon as a metaphor
for Adi,
and the,
clouds as a metaphor for an oppressive ruler,
etc.
So these are this is metaphorical or a
symbolic reading of what's in the
Qur'an. The majority of Muslims, the majority of
mainstream Muslims, do not engage in that kind
of metaphorical interpretation.
They try to stay
to as strict of
a a what you could maybe say a
plain reading of the text,
to try to understand linguistically
what it meant,
culturally what it signified,
historically,
in that context
when it was revealed and who it was
speaking to. So, there is context,
there is linguistic analysis,
but not a metaphorical or symbolic
reading of the Quran.
But, here, we see
a vast range of ways of interpreting the
pour n.
But what I want to say is that
if you
engage
strictly in a
straightforward,
you know,
plain reading of the Quran,
not a metaphorical reading,
you must
read the story of Joseph as a story.
Not to not meaning that it's fabricated,
but that it is in the genre of
the story because
the Quran itself says, this is a story.
Right? It uses the word story with respect
to this.
So by
by calling it a story, we're not applying
a metaphorical meaning, we're actually giving a very
literal
reading
of the text. Now, what does it mean
if something
is a
is a story?
Well, what are some of the elements of
a good story? If this was a classroom,
this is where I would ask you to
call out some of the elements of a
good story, but I'm not sure of the
acoustics here
and how how comfortable you'll be, so I'll
just I'll just call out some of the
things and,
you'll probably recognize them. A good story has
a plot,
has a plot that,
hopefully has some twists and turns, and ups
and downs, and ultimately
comes to some form of resolution,
or
might leave you hanging. It could be a
story,
that at the end is unresolved, but in
a way that that leaves you with something
to think about. A good story should have
strong characters.
Strong characters who are vivid,
who are, if they're human, they show some
of their humanity.
They
eat, they have family relationships,
they have intimate relationships.
A good story has
vivid settings,
and,
very often,
the a setting that is that is tight
is better.
And what I mean by tight is you
can think of,
you know, when you watch TV,
how often
does a sitcom take place? This is a
standard sitcom setting. Right? It's someone walks in
the the front door opens right into the
living room,
and there's the couch, and everyone sits on
the couch and behind them is the stairs.
So there's some movement, but all of the
action
occurs or most of the action occurs in
this tight little living room setting, usually
this one couch or a couch and maybe
another chair.
Or you think of some of the movies
you watch and how often it's it's this
closeness.
So, a setting that frames
the action
and that supports the message.
A theme. A story should have should have
a theme. You know, what is this story
about?
And the story doesn't have to be about
just one thing,
It might have layers of meaning. It might
have multiple themes. It might have something that's
on the surface and something that's a little
deeper.
A story has to do something with dialogue.
Some stories have a lot of dialogue, some
have very little, but whatever dialogue there is
in there
should move the action forward or
should somehow
not be just,
just thrown in there to fill pages, but
but really relates to the structure and theme
of the story.
A good story has conflict,
and that conflict
brings action, and it brings excitement.
It brings
visual interest,
and it also offers the opportunity
for,
for further action
and resolution,
and then, finally,
if it is a story that is told
orally,
it should have some elements that make it
interested
interesting
orally.
Oral stories, a good story
that is told
out loud,
will have repetition
because there's only so much you can remember,
so you need to kind of come back
to a theme, or have certain words
or phrases repeated, or come back to a
character. And, it should have in the words
itself a kind of rhythm or pattern. It
should be interesting
to listen to. It should be should be
enjoyable. There should be something in the cadence
of the storytelling
that makes it,
delightful.
In my view, the story of Joseph has
all of these things.
It has all of these things, and it
is why it is a beautiful
story,
Why it's a great story
because it's not just because it has a
good message,
but because it conveys
the message. It conveys
meaning through
these elements of storytelling that
are extremely
engaging,
And to this extent, I would say that
this is a way for the Quran to
teach us, for God to teach us something
about storytelling,
that
there is a way to tell a good
story.
This is how you do it,
and
good storytelling is important enough that I've included
it in my book.
This is something that,
scholars,
pre modern or classical Islamic scholars discussed.
They discussed storytelling
and,
the importance of it,
and they told it in the context of
a society where there was a lot of
storytelling that was going on,
for not very positive reasons, or not very
healthy reasons.
Of course, the,
you know, the ancient Near East,
like any society, had a lot of people
telling stories for money,
or
to seduce women,
or to scare people.
Whatever kind of stories we think there are
today, there are those stories that we think
are forms of art, that are forms of,
that are educational stories, that are moralistic
positive stories. We also think about stories that
are really seem to appeal to the most
degraded aspects
of human nature,
And this is this is,
the reality in any society, as I say,
and early Islamic society also faced this.
So sometimes there was a negative,
assessment of storytellers,
particularly because if if if there were competing
on one block
a very good storyteller
and a rather boring preacher,
most
people went to the exciting storyteller.
So there's a number of really interesting narratives
in the first centuries of Islam about
about scholars, very good, serious, rigorous scholars,
who would be sitting in the mosque, and
they would be
preaching and teaching.
And
as they're sitting there with their half dozen
students or mentors around them,
they would hear a lot of noise coming
in from the streets,
and send someone out to see what was
going on, and lo and behold,
there was one of these,
storytellers who made his living by putting a
hat in front of him,
telling some crazy,
wild story
with a lot of people, a lot of
the commoners standing around and just being in
amazement
at these stories he was telling. And very
sometimes they were stories
of
ancient people,
of ancient prophets,
and this, of
course, the religious scholars objected to because
they were telling things that were untrue
about
great figures like the prophets
or about righteous people,
or their theology when they talked about things
like the creation of the world, their theology
was off, and they had all sorts of
anthropomorphistic,
aspects into their storytelling, so when they spoke
about God,
they were saying things that, from a theological
point,
were
objectionable,
but made a good story,
but the thing that storytellers
loved to talk about more than anything
was,
heaven and *,
and the Day of Judgment.
The most common theme was the apocalypse,
and what would happen after death.
If you think that
only people that that
that The Walking Dead and the obsession with
The Walking Dead
is is a completely modern phenomenon, you don't
know anything about
the, ancient Near East. I mean people have
always loved these stories,
and so
the sober religious scholars were were always a
little bit worried about this, but the solution
the solution was to become a better storyteller
yourself, or make sure that you had,
storytellers
who knew their craft but all also had
sound
theological training so that when they told a
story, they wouldn't,
deviate
from what was the what was orthodoxy.
So we have someone like,
ibn al Jawzia or ibn al Jawzih,
who wrote the book Kitab al Khoslaas wu'adekareen,
the book of the story tellers and the
the,
preachers or those who would remind others, and
he says look,
you we need to have those people who
know how to tell a good story. That
is part of what,
how people learn their religion.
It's
many ordinary people in those terms they use
the term the masses, al amma, or the
general people,
the illiterate people. It's the only way they
learn the religion, and they're not they neither
have the time
nor the interest to sit,
in the mosque for these long
religious lessons and
lectures about all sorts of aspects of right
belief and and, law. So you need people
who are who can popularize,
the moral teachings.
And so
given that that's the case, then,
you know, do it right. If you if
we need storytellers, we need storytellers who can
do it right.
Now, the other thing I wanna say about,
the existence
of
the story of Joseph in the Quran is
that
it is not only here that the Quran
is self aware of the importance
of the of its own form.
And what I mean by that is that
the Quran
is
is
both a mess is a message, but it's
a message that is delivered in a particular
form,
and the form of it is very beautiful.
The Quran is filled
with rhyme,
it has patterns of rhythm,
It has all sorts of elements that are,
that we can recognize from
poetry
and
other forms of it's
not recognizable poetry, but as poetic elements.
And then when it is recited, and the
Quran originally is a recitation, Quran means
the recitation,
so it is originally oral.
It should be recited in a beautiful sing
song voice, which is what Tajweed is.
It is
a beautification
of the recitation.
So attention is paid to to pitch, to
rhythm, and pacing
of the recitation of the Quran.
So this idea that that the that, of
course, God would give his message in a
beautiful form.
And so
let's look then at this beautiful story of
Joseph in the
Quran and see why it is a good
story,
why it is a beautiful story.
So first of all, we have a plot,
and as I,
said earlier, probably most of you know
that generally the plot of this story.
There are some differences with the Joseph story
in the Quran in the Bible, so let's
just go over the plot quickly.
In the Qur'anic story, it begins with Joseph
having a dream,
and he,
tells his father about his dream,
and in his dream,
he,
his brothers
were
while he saw 11 planets and the Sun
and the Moon prostrating before him.
His father says, don't tell
your brothers about this dream because they will
plot against you.
Here we have some foreshadowing.
What happens
is,
of course, Joseph's brothers plot against him.
They,
decide that,
they're going to take him out. One of
the brothers who's not named
pleads with them not to kill him, but
just get rid of him.
And so,
Jacob does not
trust his sons, he knows something's going to
happen, he has
insight, and this is an an important aspect
of the story,
that the prophets have insight into
people's motives and intentions, and what's going to
happen.
So he doesn't trust them, but he lets
them go ahead.
They take Joseph, they throw him in a
well, and they bring back Joseph's shirt
with blood of a of an animal that
they have killed,
saying, see, a wolf has eaten has eaten
Joseph, attacked him, killed him, and this is
all that is left,
this * shirt.
Joseph's
father
doesn't really believe him believe them, and they
say, oh, you'll never believe us
when we tell you this story. And he
says, No, I don't believe you. You
have
somehow
made this up, but I'm going to be
patient.
Patience
is a big theme of this story.
Joseph's in the well, he's pulled out of
the well by a passing caravan. They take
him, they say, oh, we can do something
with this boy.
They bring him all the way,
to Egypt.
He is sold as a kind of house
boy or adopted boy,
and
now he is in a foreign land.
He grows up there,
and he reaches,
puberty. He becomes a young man, and the
woman of the house tries to seduce him.
As she is, he's attracted to her, but
he is God fearing, and so his fear
of God keeps him
from,
engaging in,
unlawful
intimacy with this woman.
So we have this
this aspect of the story, which is this,
this scene, the seduction seductive
scene, which is,
probably part of 90% of good stories,
that there is. So there is this this
scene.
He is he runs away from her, and
there's this very vivid moment whereas he's running
away from her. She grabs his shirt
to pull him back and the shirt rips.
Now,
* hath no fury like a woman scorned,
so now she accuses him of trying to
seduce her.
Someone says,
well, you know, we've got a he's he
said, she said situation here.
How will we know what the truth is?
How do you know the truth?
And this person says, well,
look at his shirt. If it's torn from
the front,
he is lying, and if it's torn from
the back, she is lying.
So she is obviously proven untruthful here, but
she insists on,
pursuing him and it becomes very difficult.
A lot of gossip in the city, everyone's
talking about her,
about how she she is this woman, this
respectable woman, and she's trying to seduce
this young man in the house,
so she becomes,
humiliated by all of the gossip,
and decides that she's going to show
her friends.
So she invites them to come over to
her place to to have a banquet, to
eat,
and they eat and then she brings out
any of you who
who have, eaten in a Middle Eastern culture
know what happens when you bring out the
fruit. The fruit is eaten with knives,
so they're given bowls of fruit and they're
given knives. So all the women have knives
in their hands, they just start peeling the
fruit,
and she orders Joseph to come out.
Beautiful,
dazzling
Joseph. A story needs a
a a beautiful a hero.
He is the star. He is handsome, charismatic.
He comes out and the women
are so
distracted
by his beauty that the knife slip and
they all cut their hands.
So here and there there's there's this
very concrete aspect to this, this the knife,
the cutting of the hand, the fact that
these women are in fact bleeding
from
their,
how dazzled they are by the beauty of
Joseph.
Joseph finds this just really getting to be
too much, and he says, Just
just,
you know, I would rather go to prison
than to be facing this,
temptation, and difficulty, and harassment all the time.
So he is thrown
into prison.
Remember, Joseph was first thrown into a well,
and now he's thrown into prison.
In prison,
he's there for a long time,
and he meets 2 criminals,
and,
both of them
getting to know him,
ask him to interpret their dreams. Each of
them has a dream,
and Joseph interprets their dreams,
and, his
it turns out that his interpretation
is true, and this will be important for
our themes.
He asks,
the one who he knows will be exonerated
from his crimes, he said, Remember me when
you go out.
When you get out of here, don't forget
about me.
He gets out, that guy gets out,
and,
he forgets all about Joseph
for quite a time, and Joseph remains in
prison,
but then
the king of the land has a dream,
and he dreams
that,
he sees
7
fat animals being eaten by 7 very skinny
animals,
and he sees 7 green ears of corn
and other dry ones. And he says, what
does this dream mean? What does this dream
mean? So the the man who was in
prison with Joseph says,
I know someone who's a good dream interpreter.
Why don't you,
why don't we get him? The king says,
where is he? He says, well, he's in
the prison.
So they bring him out,
and Joseph
interprets
this dream, and he says,
You need to,
sow grain for 7 years in a row,
but
store most of it. Only take a very
little bit out, store most of it, because
after that there will come 7 very difficult
years, years of drought,
and you will eat
pretty much all that's left,
except
for, so you will need to have stored
all of that, and then after that, there
will be a relief from all of this.
And the king asked him then what happened
with the women, and he he explains this
and that finally, after all of this time,
the woman comes forward and says, Look,
honestly, he's telling the true story.
I
I repent.
I confess that I did something, and,
I ask for God's mercy.
And so now the king,
Joseph is exonerated.
Joseph is now appointed by the king to
be in charge of
the the,
grain in the land, and storing the food,
and the policy for making sure that,
there is enough for the people of the
land.
So this is one kind of settling. We've
come to a point of ups and downs
and hardship,
and now things are settled to some extent
for Joseph.
But now who comes back?
His brothers.
His brothers return to Egypt,
and importantly,
when they come, they don't recognize Joseph.
They don't recognize him even though he's speaking
to them.
And
so Joseph,
decides that now is the opportunity
to teach his brothers a lesson.
And
he tells them,
he tells them to bring
their whole family, all the brothers. He wants
his younger brother to come,
and,
says, Look, you know, you're not gonna be
able to have have things settled here until
you bring
your brother.
So they go back, they talk to the
father, and say,
look, they're saying that the the court is
saying that we need to to bring him.
We have to go back.
Of course, the father is very reluctant to
send another son with them.
He says, I just don't trust you. You
have to. Do you promise that he'll come
back safe? And they say, we promise, we
promise he'll come back safely.
When he comes to the court,
Joseph takes the younger brother,
and they and he recognizes him, and he
says, Look, you know, it is me. It
is me. I'm gonna do something. Just keep
cool.
We're gonna do something to keep those guys
a lesson.
Secretly
hides
within
their
belongings
a goblet,
and lets them go. Then
he tells the guards, There's something missing here.
Go search those people.
They search
him, and they find the goblet in the
bags. They say, we don't know what this
is.
If, you know, we didn't take it, and
he says, well, it's in it's in this,
this boy's sack, so he must have been
the thief.
And they say, well, if he's a thief,
his brother before him was like that.
So they they sell out their younger brother,
and they also
disrespect Joseph, who is long gone by now.
So he says he says, you have to,
you have to leave him with me.
They say, what's our father gonna do? Well,
they say, well, what can you do? So
they go back to the father and they
said, we're so sorry. Your son has stolen.
We we could
not
have stopped what we didn't
see.
We couldn't have guarded against the unseen,
something that they didn't
see, not know about.
Now, of course, Joseph is so,
so grieved,
but he says,
There's something untrue about this. You are not
telling me the whole truth.
He becomes
so sad
and crying
that his
that he that he his eyes end up
turning white, and he goes blind.
And they say, why are you crying? Now
you're crying for the son, but you're also
still crying for Joseph.
He says,
verily, I complain
of my anguish and grief only to God.
So he says, Go back. Go back, sons,
and find out. Try to see
ask them. Ask them about your brother. Ask
them about Joseph. Don't despair of God's mercy.
Maybe there's a way.
And so
the brothers go back
to the court and they say, please, you
know, please, is there something you can do?
Please be just. Please be charitable. Our father's
old.
And the man says
to them,
you don't realize
what you did,
what you did to Joseph and his brother
that you weren't even aware,
and suddenly
the brothers recognize him. Suddenly, the brothers say,
are you Joseph?
And they see him for who he is.
He said he says, yes,
I am Joseph.
And at this point,
Joseph says, but I'm not going to blame
you.
I want you to take my shirt,
take it back to my father,
and throw it over my father's eyes.
They do that and even before,
even before they get there,
Joseph's father says,
oh, I can I can
I sense Joseph? I I smell him.
I smell Joseph, and then they bring the
shirt
and his eyes are healed.
And he says he knew that this would
be this would happen.
So they all go back to Egypt,
and now,
Joseph says, bring my parents, bring them in
honor, and of course, the,
prophecy
or the dream that began at the beginning
or that Joseph had at the beginning is
fulfilled because his brothers all
now
must humble themselves
before Joseph who's in this great period,
or this great position in the Egyptian court.
They prostrate down in front of him.
Joseph says, this is the fulfillment of my
dream,
and
the verse,
the Quran and or this
chapter, the story of Joseph enters saying,
these are the tidings of the unseen, which
we, meaning God, have revealed to you
for you are not with them.
And at the very end says, verily in
these stories is a lesson.
So this is generally
the plot
with all of its ups and downs and
twists and turns.
So let's think about themes
and how the themes come out in
in the objects and characters and dialogue.
First of all, of course, there is the
repentance theme, and the repentance theme is in
the the woman who tries to seduce Joseph,
the prisoner,
and the prisoners who who do or don't
repent of their misdeeds,
the repentance of Joseph's brother,
so part one of the minor themes is
that
people can do wrong, they can do evil,
they can betray,
but they
may be forgiven again. So this is something
that we see with
a number of the characters throughout the story.
There is the theme of patience,
and
the the dialogue is interesting in this story.
The theme of patience
is brought through the dialogue, especially
through these
small, little, pithy
statements
that people make throughout. So one of the
most famous,
kind of prayers,
or pieces
pieces of dialogue in the story that becomes
a kind of prayer or supplication
that probably all Muslims know
is when Joseph's father says,
patience is beautiful.
You know, it's almost a bumper sticker. It's
just very, very short,
Sabru
Jamil.
Patience is beautiful. It's 2 words in Arabic.
You can't get shorter, more impactful dialogue, so
that this theme of patience
through hardship and adversity is really summed up
in this in this in this short
statement
of Joseph's father.
But patience
what does patience really mean? You know, sometimes
I because I teach chaplains,
this can become
an almost
almost kind of throwaway comment.
When people are suffering and they're in a
difficult situation,
it's something that I would fail my chaplaincy
students for saying to someone who comes to
them
with a lot of difficulty if the sum
of their counseling is,
Well, be patient. That's that's not helpful.
Really,
that's not the end of helping someone who
is in a very difficult situation.
It might be
the meaning of all of what you're going
to say, but it not, in and of
itself, is not the thing that is necessarily
therapeutic.
And we're gonna talk about therapy.
But where does the therapeutic
aspect come?
It really comes through the deepest, most important
message
in this story, which is that
whatever we know of the world,
whatever we see of the world,
whatever
evidence there is or we have access to,
is not necessarily
the same as truth,
that there is an external reality
and there is an internal reality.
In Arabic, it's called the and the,
the exterior and the interior.
And it is this world that we live
in with all of its evidence and proof
will very often
lie to us.
It will be untrue,
and that what is true will be hidden.
So if we start with
the places where this happens,
Think about let's think about the shirts.
A shirt
is
a kind of,
stand in for the self.
The shirt is
like is a stand in, to some extent,
for the person.
The shirt is also what covers your outside.
A shirt, necessarily, is an exterior is something
exterior,
and part of the beauty of this story
is, 1, in the repetition
of this object.
There are 3 shirts that are
that are mentioned or feature as important parts
of this story.
The first is the short shirt that the
brothers bring back
with the so called lying blood, the fake
blood that they use as proof
that Joseph has been attacked by an animal
and killed.
So here they have the shirt
with the blood on it. Evidence,
right?
But it is false evidence. It is fabricated
evidence. It is evidence that is not true,
and the one person in all of the
story who knows that is the one person
who is a prophet, whose knowledge of the
world
does not come from looking at the outside,
but who has
knowledge
of the inner reality or inner truth of
things, which is Joseph's father, because he is
a prophet, so he knows
he is given access to some of the
unseen,
and also has insight.
So, here we have
the the epitome
of evidence,
of material evidence,
which is the shirt, and it is a
lying shirt. It's not true. It's, in fact,
the exact opposite of the truth.
The second shirt is the shirt that Joseph
is wearing
when the woman tries to seduce him, and,
of course, the shirt being ripped is an
attempt for for her
to,
to corrupt
Joseph's
morality.
Again, the shirt is part
of what he is. It is a kind
of synodosh. It's a substitute for who he
is.
Here, we have
a shirt that actually is exonerating.
So now we've moved through the story from
a lying shirt to a shirt that tells
the truth.
So this shirt gives evidence, but in this
case, the evidence is truthful.
And so we know that Joseph has started
to move through his story
because
he has gone from a point where his
shirt is used
to deny the inner reality, where his shirt
is used to prove
the inner reality or the truth.
And this third shirt
is
Joseph shirt that he takes off himself
in order to heal
his father.
And in this case, the shirt is not
only about truth,
but it
it is a it is brings a reconciliation
of the inner and outer. What do I
mean by that?
Well, why did his father lose his eyesight?
Losing the eyesight means that
he no longer can see this world,
yet he is
holds on to what is actually true. The
world around him has betrayed the truth.
It has all been lies.
And so
he no longer it no longer serves the
truth.
He has so he loses his sight,
but he maintains
his
absolute faith that there is
that his sons are still alive
and that God will get,
him out of this.
So
Joseph, by bringing his shirt, which is exterior,
but bringing it bringing this,
over his father's eyes now,
he heals
the rift between the outer and the inner.
It is also
the case with his brothers.
His brothers,
their eyesight is
absolutely
fine.
They can see perfectly well,
yet they stand before Joseph and don't recognize
him.
He's standing right before them,
but they don't recognize him.
He recognizes them because he is someone who
sees the truth, who knows the
truth. But his brothers are living
in a world of lies,
and that's why they cannot
see him until
they go back to Egypt with humility
and start their process of repentance.
And now once they've undergone,
they've started this process of repentance, suddenly
they
become
aware
that this is Joseph. They see him. So
this is this
this healing between
their outer sight and the inner truth.
The
hidden theme again and again and again comes
through.
There is,
the
stored grain.
Think about that that that that in order
for the land of Egypt, for the people
of Egypt
to survive,
they have to hide the grain away for
7 years.
They have to keep it away and out
of sight,
and then
when they need it, they can pull it
out.
So there's
there's a treasure
that is hidden and kept away for a
time.
And unless
unless you are a prophet or unless you
have understanding of the unseen,
you will not be prepared to do that.
You will not have patience. You'll go and
you'll you'll dig into those stores, and you'll
eat all of that up, and you won't
realize that whatever sacrifice it took
to store that away, whatever difficulty
you underwent
during those 7 years was for a reason.
The reason was so that after, you wouldn't
starve.
So that is part of we have to
we have to accept that some things will
remain
unseen and hidden,
and will be will ripen and come out
at the time when they're really necessary
and when it's good and right for us.
Similarly,
when Joseph
hides the goblet,
the goblet inside
the pack,
so he now he now is creating
the situation where,
where
the unseen,
again,
is what is hidden and unseen
is in contradiction
to the truth, but he does that in
order,
in a way, to to let his brothers
start that process of awareness of what they
have done by
doing the same thing that they had done.
Now, the goblet, we could say is is,
it reminds us of a crucible.
A crucible is something in which which can,
which can hold,
you know, hold a substance and be heated
at a very high
temperature. It's that when we talk about about
someone in the crucible, we talk about someone
who's going through such difficulty.
They're going through the fires. Abraham going through
the fire, so his faith can come out
pure.
So we have this this is
this is a kind of archetypal
symbol
throughout storytelling.
And let's think about what the crucibles are,
and really the settings are the crucible.
So if we think about the well and
the prison,
here we are. We have we have Joseph
like that grain being stored in a grain
silo, or like this goblet being pushed down.
He is
he is in this crucible. He is in
this difficult situation in this very tight, narrow,
confined space
where he can't interact very much with the
world?
What is the thing that purifies him,
that makes him
red prophecy,
that makes him go from someone who,
at the beginning, doesn't know the meaning of
his own dream,
has to ask his father
to being the person
who can
interpret dreams.
It is by going through that crucible, by
being pulled away from the world, by being
hidden from the world for a time, so
he can go through this process of maturation,
and of understanding,
of going inside deep, and understanding
the reality
and the truth
of
of the universe, of the cosmos.
So the dreams are also we have this
going deep into something dark. Joseph in the
well. Joseph in the prison. The grain hidden
in the stores. The goblet
stuck down in the merch in the in
the bag,
and then the dreams, of course, 3 dreams
throughout, and 3 is a is also an
archetypal kind of number for storytelling, right? We
had 3 shirts,
we have,
we have a series of 3 dreams as
well.
His initial dream where he sees the sun,
and the moon, and the stars prostrating in
front of him, and then the prisoners
who narrate the dream in the prison,
and then the king who narrates his dream.
So, but these are not only
just themes
that go throughout.
A dream itself is
unreal.
It's knowledge
that does not reflect
the
material world around us. It is,
it is meaning
and a message cloaked in metaphor and symbolism,
and so he needs to be able to
interpret
and understand
what it is. So who is the the
person who can interpret?
It is the one who really is is
guided by God, in particular,
the prophets.
So this is why at the very beginning,
Joseph's father says to him
says to
him, your Lord will teach you the interpretation
of events.
So this is a whole process that that,
Joseph goes through so he understands
it's not just to be a soothsayer or,
you know, some kind of dream interpreter, but
to actually understand and realize that, there is,
We may not understand
it at that time except for those prophets
and those who are given insight by God
into the meaning at that moment,
but an absolute conviction
that
there is a reality
and that this world,
very often will be deceptive.
I'd like to say, finally, and then open
up
some time for discussion,
that
I believe in a, you know, not only
is
this story teaches us many, many things.
As I said before, I believe it is,
in itself, the fact that it is a
beautiful
story, that the Quran calls it a beautiful
story, it tells us that that this is
a discourse that's important.
It is valid. It is beautiful. It is
beneficial.
It is an important way of
conveying messages
and information
in a pastoral context, in a congregational
context.
So we need we need to understand the
importance of storytelling and become good storytellers.
But I also think that,
again, as someone who works sometimes in a
chaplaincy context or a pastoral context, I believe
that that the Joseph story is a beautiful
healing story,
that the process
of
reading the story
again and again can in itself
help heal
people
because it's very difficult for people who have
been traumatized
to always directly address
the point of their trauma, and sometimes it
can make it worse.
But, a story that is filled with metaphor
and symbolism,
and that takes you through
these crucibles
and brings you out,
is
a way of bringing you through a process,
a healing process,
that is not
that might not directly,
exacerbate
the personal trauma you have,
but
give that recognition to the traumatic
experience,
that you have and that you know about.
As I said before, when someone throws off
in a kind of thinking they're being helpful,
saying something like, Well, be patient. Be patient
with your suffering,
as if the person isn't just trying to
hold on. You know, very often it's a
kind of throwaway line, whereas what is shown
here is anyone who's,
who's been,
seriously depressed,
or in deep mourning,
or in a situation that was just intractable,
Anyone,
get out of that.
Anyone,
you know, I think everyone knows a little
bit of it, and many of us
know
at a at a very deep level what
that feels like.
So
to have that experience
being retold
through a story
that is manageable,
that can be told,
and repeated again, and has
these multiple levels of symbolism.
I believe, it's my theory, that this can
be an extremely healing
story.
So, I recommend
that also in that context.
It's not just moralistic. It's not just listen
to the lessons and this is what we
do, but the actual story itself
with all of its beauty, with its plot
and symbols,
and repetition
of different themes,
and the crucible, and the hiddenness,
is something that appeals at a very deep
level
to the human imagination,
perhaps even to our unconscious,
and can help
with
the healing process, and there are so many
people who need healing.
So with that, I'd like to close and,
offer an opportunity for some comments or questions.
Thank you.