Joseph's Tomb
Joseph's Tomb is a funerary monument located in Balata village at the eastern entrance to the valley that separates Mounts Gerizim and Ebal, northwest of Jacob's Well, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Nablus. It has been venerated throughout the ages by Samaritans, for whom it is the second holiest site; by Jews; by Christians; and by Muslims, some of whom view it as the location of a local sheikh, Yusef al-Dwaik or Dawiqat, who died in the 18th century.
The site is near Tell Balata, the site of Shakmu in the Late Bronze Age and later biblical Shechem. One biblical tradition identifies the general area of Shechem as the resting-place of the biblical patriarch Joseph and his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh. Multiple locations over the years have been viewed as the legendary burial place of Joseph. Post-biblical records regarding the location of Joseph's Tomb somewhere around this area date from the beginning of the 4th century CE. The present structure, a small rectangular room with a cenotaph, is the result of an 1868 rebuilding action, and does not contain any architectural elements older than that. While some scholars, such as Kenneth Kitchen and James K. Hoffmeier, affirm the essential historicity of the biblical account of Joseph, others, such as Donald B. Redford, argue that the story itself has "no basis in fact".
There is no archaeological evidence establishing the tomb as Joseph's, and modern scholarship has yet to determine whether or not the present cenotaph is to be identified with the ancient biblical gravesite. The lack of Jewish or Christian sources prior to the 5th century that mention the tomb indicates that prior to the 4th century it was a Samaritan site. Samaritan sources tell of struggles between Samaritans and Christians who wished to remove Joseph's bones.
At key points in its long history, a site thought to be Joseph's Tomb in this area witnessed intense sectarian conflict. Samaritans and Christians disputing access and title to the site in the early Byzantine period often engaged in violent clashes. After Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, Palestinians were prohibited from worship at the shrine and it was gradually turned into a Jewish prayer room. Interreligious friction and conflict from competing Jewish and Muslim claims over the tomb became frequent. Though it fell under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority following the signing of the Oslo Accords, it remained under IDF guard with Muslims prohibited from praying there. At the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, just after being handed over to the PNA, it was looted and razed by rioting Palestinians. Following the reoccupation of Nablus during Israel's Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, Jewish groups returned there intermittently. Between 2009 and 2010 the structure was refurbished, with a new cupola installed, and visits by Jewish worshippers resumed. Palestinian Authority police killed an Israeli worshipper at the tomb in 2011. The tomb was vandalized by Palestinian rioters in 2015 and again in 2022.
Early traditions
Biblical source and early religious traditions
The Torah provides four details regarding the traditions surrounding Joseph's remains. The account in Genesis relates that, before his death, he had his brothers swear they would carry his bones out of Egypt to Canaan. He is then said to have been embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt. In Exodus, we are told that Moses fulfilled the pledge by taking Joseph's bones with him when he left Egypt. In Joshua, Joseph's bones are said to have been brought from Egypt by the Children of Israel and interred in Shechem.The bones of Joseph, which the Children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, were buried in Shechem in a parcel of land Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor, father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of silver..
The Bible does not identify a specific site in Shechem where his bones were laid to rest. The Genesis Rabba, a Jewish text written c. 400–450 CE, states that a burial site in Shechem is one of three for which the nations of the world cannot ridicule Israel and say "you have stolen them," it having been purchased by Jacob. The rabbis also suggest that Joseph instructed his brothers to bury him in Shechem since it was from there he was taken and sold into slavery. Other Jewish sources have him buried either in Safed, or, according to an aggadic tradition, have him interred at Hebron according to his own wishes. The ambiguity is reflected in Islamic tradition which points to Nablus as being the authentic site, though some early Islamic geographers identified the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron as housing his tomb. The Qur'an itself does not mention details of Joseph's burial. Ali of Herat, Yaqut and Ibn Battuta all conserve both the Nablus and Hebron traditions. Later Muslim chroniclers also mention a third site purporting to be the authentic tomb, near Beit Ijza. The Hebron tradition is also reflected in some medieval Christian sources, such as the account by Srewulf who says that "the bones of Joseph were buried more humbly than the rest, as it were at the extremity of the castle".
Modern scholarship on the narrative of Joseph's bones
Though the traditional biblical date for the narrative of Joseph's life and death places him in Egypt in the middle of the Twelfth Dynasty, roughly contemporaneous to the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, contemporary scholarship no longer accepts such a remote dating. The figure of Joseph itself is often taken to be a "personification of a tribe", rather than an historic person.According to the Bible, Joseph was embalmed and buried in a coffin in Egypt, after having his people swear to carry his bones away. Later midrash identify his first entombment in a royal mausoleum, or as cast into the Nile. Moses is said to have gathered the bones and taken them with him during the Exodus from Egypt, using magic to raise the coffin, a tradition repeated by Josephus, who specifies that they were buried in Canaan at that time. Regarding his burial in Canaan, from Joshua it is evident that the portion Joseph received was an allotment near Shechem, not the town itself.
The majority of contemporary scholars believe the historicity of the events in the Joseph story cannot be demonstrated. In the wake of scholars like Hermann Gunkel, Hugo Gressmann and Gerhard von Rad, who identified the story of Joseph as primarily a literary composition, it is now widely considered to belong to the genre of romance, or the novella. As a novella it is read as reworking legends and myths, many of them, especially the motifs of his reburial in Canaan, associated with the Egyptian god Osiris, though some compare the burial of his bones at Shechem with the disposal of Dionysus's bones at Delphi. The reworked legends and folklore were probably inserted into the developing textual tradition of the Bible between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. Most scholars place its composition in a genre that flourished in the Persian period of the Exile.
For Schenke, the tradition of Joseph's burial at Shechem can only be understood as a secondary, Israelitic historical interpretation woven around a more ancient Canaanite shrine in that area. Wright has indeed argued that "the patriarch Joseph was not an Israelite hero who became Egyptianised, but an Egyptian divinity who was Hebraised."
Schenke's hypothesis
, starting from an analysis of, in which Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at the town of Sychar, made an extensive analysis of the ancient sources, together with an examination of the site. The curiosity of the Gospel text for scholars lies in the mention of an otherwise unattested town in the field, and the failure of the text to refer to Joseph's Tomb, despite mentioning the field Jacob allotted to Joseph, and Jacob's well. In Schenke's view, from the beginning of the Hellenistic period down to the 1st century CE, when the author of John's gospel was presumably writing, the grave commemorating Joseph stood by Jacob's Well. This grave was shifted, together with the sacred tree and Jacob's field, sometime between that date and the earliest testimony we have in the Bordeaux itinerary in 333 CE, which locates it elsewhere, by Shechem/Tel Balāṭa.History of the identification and use of the site
Pilgrim accounts
The Itinerarium Burdigalense notes: "At the foot of the mountain itself, is a place called Sichem. Here is a tomb in which Joseph is laid, in the parcel of ground which Jacob his father gave to him." Eusebius of Caesarea in the 4th-century records in his Onomasticon: "Suchem, city of Jacob now deserted. The place is pointed out in the suburb of Neapolis. There the tomb of Joseph is pointed out nearby." Jerome, writing of Saint Paula's sojourn in Palestine writes that "turning off the way , she saw the tombs of the twelve patriarchs". Jerome himself, together with the Byzantine monk George Syncellus, who had lived many years in Palestine, wrote that all twelve patriarchs, Joseph included, were buried at Sychem.Both Theodosius I and Theodosius II ordered a search for Joseph's bones, much to the dismay of the Samaritan community. An imperial commission was dispatched to retrieve the bones of the Patriarchs around 415, and on failing to obtain them at Hebron, sought to at least secure Joseph's bones from Shechem. No gravestone marked the exact site, possibly because the Samaritans had removed one to avoid Christian interference. The officials had to excavate the general area where graves abound and, on finding an intact marble sepulchre beneath an empty coffin, concluded that it must contain Joseph's bones. They sent the sarcophagus to Byzantium, where it was incorporated into Hagia Sophia.
Jerome reports that apparently the Christians had intended to remove Joseph's bones to their city, but a column of fire rose skyward from the tomb scaring them away. The Samaritans subsequently covered the tomb with earth, rendering it inaccessible.
Christian pilgrim and archdeacon Theodosius in his De situ terrae sanctae mentions that "close to Jacob's Well are the remains of Joseph the Holy". The Madaba Mosaic Map designates a site somewhat problematically with the legend – "Joseph's" – where the usual adjective 'holy' accompanying mentions of saints and their shrines is lacking.
Crusader and medieval sources generally are, according to Hans-Martin Schenke, highly misleading regarding exactly where the tomb was situated. He concluded that in the Middle Ages, as earlier, various groups at different periods identified different things in different places all as Joseph's tomb. Sometimes Balata, with its spring, seems indicated, as in the following two examples, which identify the tomb not as a structure, but as something by a spring and under a tree. It was evidently a site for Muslim pilgrimage at that time.
In 1173 the Persian traveler al-Harawi paid homage at the tomb, and wrote:
There is also near Nâblus the spring of Al Khudr, and the field of Yûsuf as Sadik ; further, Joseph is buried at the foot of the tree at this place.
Around the year 1225, Yaqut al-Hamawi wrote:
There is here a spring called ‘Ain al Khudr. Yûsuf as Sadik – peace be on him! – was buried here, and his tomb is well known, lying under the tree.
as did Benjamin of Tudela—who wrote that the Samaritans in Nablus were in possession of it. William of Malmesbury describes it as overlaid with white marble, next to the mausolea of his brothers. Menachem ben Peretz of Hebron writes that in Shechem he saw the tomb of Joseph son of Jacob with two marble pillars next to it—one at its head and another at its foot—and a low stone wall surrounding it. Ishtori Haparchi places the tombstone of Joseph 450 meters north of Balāta, while Alexander de Ariosti and Francesco Suriano associate it with the church over Jacob's well. Samuel bar Simson, Jacob of Paris, and Johannes Poloner locate it by Nablus. Gabriel Muffel of Nuremberg discerns a tomb to Joseph in a monument to the west of Nablus, halfway between that city and Sebaste. Mandeville and Maundrell, among others, also mention its existence, although it is debatable as to whether any of these reports refer to the currently recognised location. Samuel ben Samson appears to place the tomb at Shiloh. Mandeville locates it 'nigh beside' Nablus as does Maundrell, but the indications are vague. Maundrell describes his sepulchre as located in a small mosque just by Nablus, which does not fit the present location.
Although the Koran does not mention details of Joseph's burial, Islamic tradition points to Nablus as being the authentic site. However, some early Islamic geographers identified the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron as housing his tomb. While Ali of Herat, Yaqut and Ibn Battuta all report the Hebron traditions, they also mention the existence of a tomb of Joseph at Nablus. Later Muslim chroniclers even mention a third site purporting to be the authentic tomb, near Beit Ijza.