Note 42 — IV THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MESSIAH

And now, who is this Joseph, as son of whom the Messiah was to be a suffering and dying creature like any ordinary man? Winckler has pointed out in his “Geschichte Israels” that under the figure of the Joseph of the Old Testament, just as under that of Joshua, an ancient Ephraimitic tribal God is concealed. Joseph is, as Winckler expresses it, “the heroic offspring of Baal of Garizim, an offshoot of the Sun-God, to whom at the same time characteristics of Tammuz, the God of the Spring Sun, are transferred.”42 Just as Tammuz had to descend into the under-world, so was Joseph cast into the well, in which, according to the “Testament of the twelve Patriarchs,”43 he spent three months and five days. This betokens the winter months and five additional days during which the sun remains in the under-world. And again he is cast into prison; and just as Tammuz, after his return from the under-world, brings a new spring to the earth, so does Joseph, after his release from confinement, introduce a season of peace and happiness for Egypt.44 On this account he was called in Egypt Psontomphanech, that is, Deliverer of the World, in view of his divine nature, and later passed among the Jews also as a prototype of the Messiah. Indeed, it appears that the Evangelists themselves regarded him in such a light, for the story of the two fellow-prisoners of Joseph, the baker and cupbearer of Pharaoh, one of whom, as Joseph foretold, was hanged,45 while the other was again received into favour by the king, was transformed by them into the story of the two robbers who were executed at the same time as Jesus, one of whom mocked the Saviour while the other besought him to remember him when he entered into his heavenly kingdom.46