POTIPHAR

'Potiphar' (or 'Potifar') ( ; Egyptian origin: '' ; "he whom Ra gave.") is a character in the Book of Genesis's story of Joseph.
Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, is taken to Egypt where he is sold to Potiphar as a household slave. Potiphar makes Joseph the head of his household, but Potiphar's wife, angered when Joseph resists her attempts to seduce him, accuses him falsely of attempting to rape her. Potiphar casts Joseph into prison, where he comes to the notice of Pharaoh through his ability to interpret the dreams of other prisoners.
According to the biblical scholarship, the story of Potiphar and his wife derives from the Yahwist source, and stands in the same place that the stories of the butler and the baker and Pharaoh's dreams stand in the Elohist text. By casting Joseph as a victim of seduction and of false witness, the text suits the Yahwist's purpose of denigrating Joseph, the Yahwist being a southern writer and Joseph a northern hero. This may also be the reason for the homoerotic undertones to the description of Potiphar's favouritism of Joseph, and thus for the description of Potiphar as a eunuch (''saris'').
The Elohist's Potiphar (given as ''Potipherah'') is a priest of On, whose daughter Joseph marries. This source, probably the original on which the Yahwist was based, has a slightly different account of how Joseph was sold into slavery.
Potiphar's wife is not named in either the Yahwist or Elohist stories. The mediaeval Sefer HaYashar, a commentary on the Torah, gives it as Zuleika, as does the Persian poem called Yusuf and Zulaikha (from Jami's ''Haft Awrang'' ("Seven stories")). For more on the nameless in the Holy Bible, please see List of names for the Biblical nameless.

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Cultural references

Cultural references

★ In ''The Divine Comedy'', Dante sees the shade of Potiphar's wife in the eighth circle of Hell. She does not speak, but Dante is told by another spirit that, along with other perjurers, she is condemned to suffer a burning fever for all eternity.

★ In John Sayle's film, Matewan, Will Oldham plays a young minister boy who preaches the story of Potiphar to his small town.

★ In Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical ''Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'', Potiphar is featured as a tycoon of ancient Egypt and his wife is portrayed as a man eater. Both feature in the song "Potiphar".