Motives

Something I noticed in both the Genesis and Qur'anic account of Joseph is that not only are some of the events inconsistent with one another, but the reasons behind some of the events differ as well. I thought this was interesting because if the motives are different, then the stories end up teaching different lessons.

For example:

In the Qur'an, Joseph simple goes to prison because they thought "after seeing the sings of his innocence, that they should imprison him for a while." (12:35)

Basically, he's just SO innocent that incarceration is needed. This, I feel, shows what we talked about in class today: no matter what people want to do, God's will shall always win out.

In Genesis, however, Joseph goes to prison because his master thinks he tried to get with his wife. That's legitimate: he is assumed guilty of a crime and thus must suffer jail time for it. This account also teaches the more legal lesson of no adultery and such.

I just thought that it's interesting that both accounts are similar but teach different things just by the way events are presented.