Joseph the Provider

de Thomas Mann

Joseph the Provider, the fourth and last volume of Thomas Mann's great tetralogy, tells the story of the hero's rise to renown as a statesman in Egypt and his successful conduct of the famous fourteen years' abundance and famine in the lands. It is also the story of Joseph's restoration to his father Jacob, of the migration of Israel down to Egypt, and Jacob's death and burial; and lastly, it is a marrying of Hebrew, Greek, Babylonian, and Egyptian religious traditions as they met and mingled at the court and in the mind of Ikhnaton, the famous heretic Pharaoh of the fourteenth century B.C. -- a mingling that contained so many seeds of religious thought developed in centuries to come. As in the previous volumes, the narrative sticks faithfully to the relevant chapters of Genesis, concerned to fill out, interpret, and illuminate them: we have the dream of the seven cows and the seven ears, the prophecy, the scarcity, the journey of the brothers down to Egypt, their prostration before their unknown brother in fulfillment of Joseph's youthful dream; the money in the sacks, the banquet, the silver cup, the accusation, Judah's great speech, and the final revelation, when Joseph tells the frightened men: "I am your brother," and Benjamin the man of faith falls on his neck. In addition to all this there are two beautiful stories, the substance of which is taken quite literally from the Bible; the priceless diverting tale of the two fine gentlemen. Pharaoh's chief baker and chief butler; and the dark and enthralling story of Tamar, grand-daughter-in-law of the patriarch, with whom the old man was "a little bit in love." All in all, this fourth volume is a most rich banquet for the mind and heart, it gratifies and satisfies; it is a crowded pattern of which every single element and ornament has a symbolism belonging to and required by the whole; and it has, as the author makes quite clear to us through by indirection, through the pertinence and significance of its comment on all life, much and inescapable bearing upon our life today. - Jacket flap.