A Deuteronomic Voice in the Joseph Story

For many years, it has been common to point to the Joseph story, Genesis 37-50, as being fundamentally different from the rest of Genesis in that its author(s) or redactor(s) brought to their material a superior literary craftsmanship which enabled them to create a single, sustained narrative work whose parts are organically related to one another. ¹ At the same time, it remains easy to detect the traditional J, E, and P sources in the story, as noted (for example) in the Anchor Bible commentary of E. A. Speiser.² It is understandable that these sources could be assembled into a narration like that of Genesis 6-9, where the contradictions about how many of each animal were taken on board and so forth show relatively clearly the seams where previously existing volumes of the story were assembled into a single text. But how could these prefabricated pieces be put together to form a work of superior literary craftsmanship