Last Updated on October 14, 2024 by Kittredge Cherry
Joseph, a popular figure in the Bible’s Book of Genesis, can be seen as a gender-nonconformist who inspires LGBTQ people today.
Queer Bible scholars focus on how Joseph wore a robe that is usually known in English as a “coat of many colors,” but could be translated as a rainbow-colored “princess dress.”
The story of Joseph and his princess dress (Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28) is part of the three-year cycle of lectionary readings. It will be read again at many churches worldwide on Sunday, Aug. 9, 2026.
Even before birth, there was something queer about Joseph. According to ancient commentaries known as midrash, Joseph and his half-sister Dinah were miraculously switched in the womb, meaning that they changed gender even before they were born. The Bible describes Joseph as well-built and attractive. He is known as Joseph the All-Comely in Orthodox tradition and ranked as “the most handsome man in the Bible” in at least one poll.
Joseph’s father, Jacob, loved him more than any of this other children, so he had a special robe made for him. In Hebrew the robe is called “ketonet passim.” Its meaning is considered unclear by many traditional Bible scholars. Various translations use terms such as “a robe with long sleeves,” “an elaborately embroidered coat” or “a varicolored tunic.”
Joseph dreams of grain in an illustration by Owen Jones from “The History of Joseph and His Brethren,” 1869 (Wikipedia)
The only other use of the term is in II Samuel 13, where princess Tamar wears a “ketonet passim” and the author helpfully explains that this is “how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times.”
Traditional Bible scholars found it confusing that Joseph would wear an article of female clothing, the meaning is clear enough to today’s queer people of faith. Joseph was able to interpret dreams, and his rainbow robe also suggests the multi-colored garments that are sometimes worn by shamans and magicians.
Joseph wears his princess dress as he tells his brothers about his dreams in an illustration of Genesis Chapter 37 by Sweet Publishing (Wikipedia)
From a queer perspective, it’s sadly not surprising that when Joseph’s 11 brothers saw “that dreamer” in his princess dress, they got so upset that they attacked him and sold him into slavery. There is even an ancient tradition that the Egyptian officer Potiphar bought Joseph as a sex slave. The Bible story goes on to tell how Joseph triumphed in the end, rising to become Egypt’s second most powerful man and rescuing his family from starvation during a famine.
Resources on the queer Joseph of Genesis
The icon of Joseph at the top of this post was created by Matthew, a practicing Roman Catholic whose artwork appears at Queer Catholic Icons on Instagram as @queer.catholic.icons. “Joseph’s gender non-conformity and othered-ness is clear throughout Joseph’s story, attributes that make Joseph beloved by LGBTQ people of faith. I depicted Joseph standing in the desert, the place where we meet with God, and wearing a multicolored garment,” Matthew wrote.
There are many books, artworks, articles and videos that provide more queer insights into Joseph.
A scholarly paper titled “A Queer Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Renaissance Painting ‘Jacob and Joseph’ in the Sistine Chapel” was presented at two Biblical studies conferences in Europe in July 2024 by Karin Hügel of the University of Amsterdam. The abstract begins, “In the context of Michelangelo’s fresco ‘Jacob and Joseph’ in the Sistine Chapel, the beautiful effeminate Joseph, Jacob’s son, can be understood as a quasi-queer ancestor of Jesus Christ….”
Joseph by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, Papal Palace in the Vatican, 1511-1512 (Wikipedia)
“Josephine: A Trans Story of Biblical Proportions” by author J Mase III, a black/trans/queer poet, and illustrator Wriply Bennet was published in 2023. Inspired by the work of Peterson Toscano, it provides counter narratives to dismantle anti-trans Biblical rhetoric.
Raised in a Christian and Muslim home, Mase won a Lambda Literary Award for transgender nonfiction in 2020 for “The Black Trans Prayer Book.” It also appears on Q Spirit’s list of the top LGBTQ Christian books of 2020. Stories, prayers, poems, spells, incantations, theological narrative and visual offerings by black trans, non-binary and intersex people are collected in this interfaith, multi-dimensional theological and artistic work. The aim is to celebrate their valuable role in faith
Mase speaks on the video “Josephine (What the Bible Says About Transfolk).”
Other LGBTQ resources about Joseph include:
Joseph wears a rainbow dress in a photo by queer artist Laura Sommer of Heidelberg, Germany. She describes herself as “disabled, Autistic, queer, non-binary, aro/ace (aromantic/asexual), Christian and a neeeeeeerd.” On her website Wibbley Wobbley Minds, she uses Playmobil toy figurines to recreate the life of Joseph and other stories from the Bible and literature.
Joseph by Laura Sommer (Wibbley Wobbley Minds)
“Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel” by the late Chicago Theological Seminary professor Theodore Jennings has a chapter titled “Joseph as Sissy Boy.”
“OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation” by Chris Paige has a chapter on “Joseph(ine).” A more devotional reflection on Joseph(ine) appears as a chapter in “Christian Faith and Gender Identity: An OtherWise Reflection Guide” by Chris Paige.
The story of Joseph is re-imagined through a queer lens in the 1990s Midwest with “That’s Me in the Corner: A Royally Tragic Tale of Queer Love of Biblical Proportions” by Jeff Crim. It was independently published in 2023. Based in Tennessee, the author is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
(Gender)queering Joseph: Midrashic Possibilities for the Torah’s Most Extra Child by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (Life is a Sacred Text)
“Sexual Orientation in the Presentation of Joseph’s Character in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature” by Robert Harris in the April 2019 issue of the Association for Jewish Studies Review.
Bible scholar/actor Peterson Toscano does a video presentation of “Joseph and the Amazing Gender Non-Conforming Bible Story.” It’s an excerpt from his solo performance “Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible.”
Jade (Jude) Sylvan won the Billings Preaching Prize at Harvard Divinity School in 2019 with a video sermon on Joseph and the princess dress. Sylvan wrote “Beloved King,” a musical about David and Jonathan, as one of the requirements for a master of divinity degree at Harvard.
There’s even a Joseph of Genesis patch that can be ordered in the colors of the rainbow flag, the trans pride flag, bi pride flag, asexual pride flag, nonbinary pride flag and more from the NeuroqueerCrafting (formerly Sapphic Stiches) Etsy shop.
Joseph of Genesis by NeuroqueerCrafting
A popular mainstream retelling of the story is “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” a musical with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Prayers
Q Spirit’s Litany of Queer Saints includes this line:
“Joseph of Genesis, gender-defiant dreamer in a rainbow coat, pray for us.”
___
Note on pronouns: This article follows Biblical tradition by using he/him/his pronouns for Joseph.
___
To read this article in Spanish, go to:
Un José queer y su vestido de princesa en la Biblia (Santxs Queer)
___
Related link:
תפילת משיח קשת בענן (Rainbow Christ Prayer in Hebrew)
___
Top image credit:
Joseph by Matthew of Queer Catholic Icons
___
This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBT and queer martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.
This article was originally published on Q Spirit in August 2020, was expanded with new material over time, and was most recently updated on Aug. 5, 2024.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
Qspirit.net presents the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBTQ spirituality.
.jpg){kind=link}
Looooollll such a nonsense you are telling me that joseph was gay cuz he had a pride coat ? Xxxxxxx lol that pride flag was made in our time and it didn’t exist a few thousand years ago , colors were hard to be made back in the ancient times and colourful clothes were considered noble and were extremely expensive and the coat that was given to joseph by his father wasn’t a gay pride flag , it was a symbol that jacob loved joseph more than his other 11 sons which he was punished by God for this wrong behavior
I definitely appreciate this! I wrote my thesis on this very topic. Thank you for telling Joseph’s story this way.
I’m replying to you here since it won’t allow me to reply to your response to me farther below. Experts on Hebrew have said that “ketonet passim” has only two possible meanings: the word “ketonet” means any type of robe (including priestly robes, a king’s robe, etc), “passim” is the plural of “pas” which could mean either “stripe” or “the palm of the hand”, hence the entire phrase could mean either a striped robe or a robe whose sleeves reach to the palm and hence “long-sleeved”. “Passim” cannot mean “princess” nor anything else that could be interpreted as exclusively feminine, and the fact that another passage happens to use the phrase for a robe provided for Tamar does not change this: it just means that both Tamar and Joseph were given either a striped or long-sleeved garment. Here’s an analogy: if an English text refers to a blue coat worn by a man and another blue coat worn by a woman that doesn’t mean that the phrase “blue coat” means a “woman’s dress”, it just means both of the garments happened to be blue.
It should hardly need to be pointed out that a “coat of many colors” does not become a “princess dress” just because of a single document mentioning another multi-colored outfit that happened to have been given to a princess: the context here would clearly seem to be that colorful dyes were expensive in the ancient world and hence clothing with a large number of colors was costly and usually reserved for the wealthy (of either gender). This would also seem to adequately explain why Joseph’s brothers would hate him out of jealousy over his expensive outfit, if their father hadn’t given them similar clothing. Likewise, the idea that Joseph and his half-sister Dinah were switched in the womb does not mean they “changed gender” : it means the babies swapped positions. Again, this shouldn’t need to be pointed out.
And you said that the passages about Joseph will be read in churches on “Sunday, Aug. 13, 2023” – two years from now? It’s 2021 right now, last I checked.
I’m planning ahead on the three-year cycle of Bible readings in the lectionary. I decided to repost this article every year instead of every three years because my readers like Joseph and want to know more about him.
Did you know that the only other garment referred to as a ketonet passim in the Bible is in 2 Samuel and is specifically called a princess dress there? I find that fascinating. Hebrew is very specific about how it refers to various garments. Choices were made, for sure, by these ancient authors.
In Genesis 37:1-9,” Joseph was seventeen years old. (For many years previously) he would pasture the sheep with his brothers. He would do boyish things, like curling his hair and touching up his eyes to look attractive, and he spent his time with Bilhah’s son and Zipah’s sons..the sons of his father’s wives, whom Leah sons had treated disrespectfully. Joseph used to bring reports to their father of all Leah’s son’s behavior that the thought was evil.”
What is this all about?
Parashat va-yeshev Jewish Bible
I really enjoyed the entirety of this post about Joseph.