Joseph's revenge

I wonder how the story would have read if there had been tabloids in the days of Joseph. His brothers come looking for food and he accuses them of being spies and jails them - despite the fact that he knows full well who they are.

Fox News would have a field day with pictures of the ten brothers gradually filling the screens over the day, "Next," they would announce every ten minutes, "the latest on the Hebrew spy plot." And then as the truth emerged Joseph would be found to be lying about his own brothers - a mixture of judgement and understanding would ripple over the nation - the commentators would toss up Joseph's deceit but then bat it back with the fact that his brothers had left him for dead, and even though he knew who they were that didn't stop them being spies.

Our instant news mentality rarely lets a big story play itself out without the media having some influence over it. Civil rights groups would have demanded the brother's release, someone would have checked into the background of Joseph and the men and someone else would have found one of the Ishmaelite traders who had taken Joseph to Egypt and given an exclusive interview in which he stated he remembered the whole thing.

Pure revenge is not palatable to us - even when it is understandable - two wrongs do not make a right we proclaim. But sometimes, the media circus feels like a sort of socially sanctioned revenge - if you are too good, too famous or terribly bad the media will find you and tell the tale - with little regard for the person. The media has become a sort of guard against the publicly extraordinary - demanding the squeaky clean instead of the human.

Whilst some of the Biblical characters might cause us to squirm in our shoes with their exploits they are real people with real feelings which they respond to. That does not make all their actions right, but it makes them people we can relate to, people in need of redemption. The Bible is not full of plastic cast celebrity which, frankly, none of us really believe in and perhaps that is why we allow the media slaughter of people who stand in the light of fame - it is our Colosseum - our societal ritual of denegration.

I think I would rather deal with Joseph and his revenge.