'What Profit for Us?'

This book offers a fresh reading of the biblical story of Joseph, alert to, and explicit about current literary methodology. Joseph is sold south by traders; then his brothers must go down to barter for food; and finally all his kin relocate in Egypt to survive famine. The relentless pull of the characters into various literal and figurative pits mingles with their struggles to emerge. The major mystery presented to both characters and readers—who is responsible for the descent of Joseph into Egypt?—develops into a much deeper question articulated by the brothers about the significance of the journey: 'What profit for us?' The conversation among characters is the repeated effort to interpret and thus understand, even control, the details of the descents so that survival is possible. The significance of the Joseph story for characters and readers is in the re-enacting, re-playing, remembering, re-interpreting of the events so that they can be grasped and integrated. The characters' strategies become a model for what the readers must do with the text.