In the Bible, the Patriarchs may broadly apply to the 20 men in the ancestral line between Adam and Abraham, or it may specifically refer to the Prophets Abraham, his son Isaac, and Isaac's son Jacob. All of these men's stories are found in the book of Genesis, and this ancestral line can even be traced through both the Old and New Testament to Jesus, through figures such as David, Solomon, and Zerubbabel, to both family lines of Mary and Joseph. Oldest person ever The first 10 patriarchs in Genesis are referred to as the antediluvian as their stories are largely told before the Great Flood, and most of these men are said to have lived for over 900 years, with Methusela often cited as the oldest man in history, at 969 years old. After the Flood, lifespans of the patriarchs tend to grow shorter, but they are still longer than any of those recorded in recent history. The lifespans of the patriarchs in the Bible is in stark contrast to estimates for average life expectancy before the industrial era, which was usually around 24 years, or around 50-60 years for those who survived into adulthood. Significance Most of the numbers given in this genealogy are stated in Chapters five and eleven of Genesis, where three numbers are generally attached to each patriarch - their age at the time of their son's birth, their lifespan thereafter, and their total lifespan. These figures can then show how much overlap there was between the lives of each patriarch, and depending on the bible's translation, this gives a timeframe of somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 years. When combined with the subsequent events spread across the Bible, this is a large part of why many adherents believe that the earth is somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years old (5783 in the Hebrew calendar), in contrast to the figure of 4.54 billion years that is generally accepted among the scientific community.

The graph presents data on the most significant frustrations when reading the Bible among adults in the United States as of February 2019. The findings reveal that eight percent of respondents reported finding the language in the Bible difficult to relate to, and six percent said that they didn't feel excited to use the Bible. Other frustrations included finding the stories confusing or a lack of understanding about the background and history of the text.

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This file contains two datasets. The first is a repertory of 118 texts of plays about the patriarch Joseph (Genesis 37; 39-50) from the period 1500-1700, with references to digital copies, editions, and/or locations in archives. The second assembles the data about performances and printings of Joseph plays as they can be gathered from these sources, and contains nearly 800 references to printings or performances of plays about Joseph. There is no geographical or linguistic limit: I have included all the plays in any language and from any region that I could find. The temporal cut-off point is the year 1700.

These data were gathered within the scope of the Dutch Research Council (NWO)–funded project ‘TransLatin: The Transnational Impact of Latin Drama from the Early Modern Netherlands.’ This project ran between 2020-2024 at the Huygens Institute for Dutch History and Culture, with Jan Bloemendal as PI, Dinah Wouters as postdoctoral researcher and Andrea Peverelli as PhD researcher.

The data build on three previous studies on early modern drama about this biblical figure:

• Weilen, Alexander von, Der ägyptische Joseph im Drama des XVI. Jahrhundert: ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Litteraturgeschichte (Wien: A. Hölder, 1887). – sixteenth century, with a focus on Germany
• Jean Lebeau, Salvator mundi: l’ “exemple” de Joseph dans le théâtre allemand au XVIe siècle (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1977). – 1533 to 1625, focusing on the Low Countries and Germany, excluding Jesuit theatre
• Ruprecht Wimmer, Jesuitentheater: Didaktik und Fest: das Exemplum des ägyptischen Joseph auf den deutschen Bühnen der Gesellschaft Jesu (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1982). – sixteenth and seventeenth century, focus on Jesuit drama from German

I have gathered texts, summaries and data about performances of Joseph dramas between the end of the fifteenth century and 1700. I exclude dramas of which the story of Joseph is just a small part, for instance in Les mystères de la Procession de Lille, Le mistère du vieil testament, or the Heidelberger Passionsspiel. However, I do include translations and summaries from periochae (programme booklets with summaries). When one playwright has written two or three plays about Joseph, I include these separately. I have found 98 complete texts, including translations, and 15 summaries. The Latin plays form the biggest group, followed by German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian and French.

Figure 1. Total number of plays per language. The total of texts does not always equal the sum of totals per language because there is one bilingual Latin-Spanish play and one bilingual Latin-German summary. Moreover, note that the language of summaries is not necessarily the language in which the play was performed.

These datasets are applied and analysed in the following articles and chapters by Dinah Wouters:

• “Adaptations of a Biblical Story on Early Modern Stages: A Transregional and Multilingual Account of Joseph Plays (1500-1700)”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes [2025];
• "The Biblical History Play: Turning Seventeenth-Century Joseph Plays into Political Drama", Journal of the Bible and its Reception [2024];
• “The Jesuit Monopoly on Revenge in Joseph Plays: Morals, Justice, and Atonement,” in Revisiting Revenge Tragedy, ed. Adam Hansen, Marco Prandoni, and Cornelis van der Haven (Leiden: Brill, 2024): 60-83;
• “Comoedia Sacra and Comedia Nueva: Defending Innovation in Comedy from the Northern Humanists to Lope de Vega,” Medievalia et Humanistica 48 (2023): 19–39;
• “Revisiting Potiphar’s Wife: A European Perspective on a Character in Early Modern Drama,” Medievalia et Humanistica 47 (2022): 81–106.