History Characters / BookOfGenesis

* UndisclosedFunds: Despite Abraham's nomadic narrative, there are indications that

* ParentsAsPeople: The Bible doesn't delve into much details about Abraham's relationship with his children, and the only records of his involvement into his children's lives were to banish Ishmael away at the request of his wife Sarah, and his sacrifice of Isaac.

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: One interpretation. Before being made to crawl upon his belly he must have had legs. What would you call a walking, talking serpent with (at least) human level intelligence?

* BrideAndSwitch: Jacob was in love with Rachel and wanted her, but her parents tricked him into having Leah first, getting another seven years of work from him.

** Zigzagged with his descendants in the long run. They were almost wiped out after a gang rape incident, they had one of itheir tribesmen, Saul, crowned as the first king of Israel, before being replaced by David from the tribe of Judah, then they were slowly absorbed by Judah by the time of the Babylonian exile, with [[Literature/BookOfEsther Esther and Mordecai]] claiming descent from the tribe post-exile. Centuries later, [[Characters/ActsOfTheApostles Paul]], another of Benjamin's descendants, kickstarted the spread of Christianity before the tribe was fully absorbed by the Jews after 70 AD.

He and his family were called by God to build a boat filled with one male and female of each animal[[note]]The account contradicts itself in that it also refers to Noah taking seven male and seven female of the animals; the text skips from "by twos" to "by fourteens" without making it wholly clear which number is definitive.[[/note]] while He flooded the world. Afterwards, God made a covenant with him to never flood the world again.

* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: One of the only three people in the Bible who never experienced death (later examples were Elijah and the virgin Mary), as he is taken by God to heaven before he could face a natural death

** According to Christians, disobeying God by eating the forbidden fruit is referred to as being the Original Sin, and as such all their descendants are born with inclination towards sin. While never fully erased, God does help humans resist it by sending prophets to teach his word and by coming down to Earth as Jesus and dying for humanity's sins.
** Jews are much more lenient on this topic: while eating the fruit was disobeying God and therefore a sin, there's no halakha about descendants somehow sharing in it. And of course, no Jesus to help.

* RatedMForManly: Why Isaac favors him over Jacob; Isaac admires Esau's hunting skill.

** Zigzagged with his descendants in the long run. They were almost wiped out after a gang rape incident, they had one of itheir tribesmen, Saul, crowned as the first king of Israel, before being replaced by David from the tribe of Judah, then they were slowly absorbed by Judah by the time of the Babylonian exile, with [[Literature/BookOfEsther Esther and Mordecai]] claiming descent from the tribe post-exile. Centuries later, [[Characters/ActsOfTheApostles Paul]], another of Benjamin's descendants, kickstarted the spread Christianity before the tribe was fully absorbed by the Jews after 70 AD.

** Zigzagged with his descendants in the long run. They were almost wiped out after a gang rape incident, they had one of itheir tribesmen, Saul, crowned as the first king of Israel, before being replaced by David from the tribe of Judah, then they were slowly absorbed by Judah by the time of the Babylonian exile, with [[Literature/BookOfEsther Esther and Mordecai]] claiming descent from the tribe post-exile. Centuries later, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle Paul]], another of Benjamin's descendants, kickstarted the spread Christianity before the tribe was fully absorbed by the Jews after 70 AD.

* YoungestChildWins: When he is welcomed to Egypt and accompanied by his brothers, Joseph holds a banquet, giving Benjamin five times as much food as his brothers. Later, when Joseph's silver cup is planted in his sack, the brothers panic, offering to be held as prisoners in Benjamin's stead lest their father Jacob should be grieved. Joseph gives Benjamin 300 pieces of silver and 5 suits.

* OverprotectiveDad: Becomes this to Benjamin after Joseph's apparent death.

* OverprotectiveDad: In Genesis 31:49 (which is frequently engraved on "Mizpeh" jewelry), he says "The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another". In the next verse (31:50) Laban sternly warns Jacob: "If thou shalt afflict my daughters, or if thou shalt take other wives beside my daughters, no man is with us: see, God is witness betwixt me and thee." In other words, Laban is saying "God is watching you; may He smite you with a curse if you dare mistreat my daughters in any way".

* VagueAge: His birth is recounted before Joseph is sold into slavery, which should place him at least in his early twenties, more likely older, when the family reunites in Egypt. The list of Jacob's descendants who travelled to Egypt also includes his ten sons. But his brothers still call him "the lad" at that point, both [[BigBrotherInstinct they]] and [[OverprotectiveDad his father]] are extremely protective of him, and this combined with his passive role in the narrative often leads him to be portrayed as a child or teenager in art or dramatic adaptations.

* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: One of the only two people in the Bible who never experienced death (the second being Elijah), as he is taken by God to heaven before he could face a natural death

The Pharaoh who appoints Joseph as his vizier.

* NameOfCain: TropeMaker. He's the first person to ever commit murder, and no one else in the Bible shares his name, thus cementing its status as a name associated with badness.

* MatzoFever: He unwittingly infected Potiphar's wife with this.

!!Adam through Abraham (Genesis 1--11)

!!Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Genesis 12--36)

!!The Children of Jacob (Genesis 36--50)

* GirlInABox: According to Jewish tradition, when her family went to visit Esau, Jacob was afraid Esau would want to marry her, so he locked her in a box (which is why she isn't mentioned when he arranges his family for the meeting). He is rebuked by {{God}} for doing so. According to this tradition, her destiny was to become Esau's wife (well, one of them, since by then he was already married to three pagan women), and serve as a MoralityPet for him.

* [[GuileHero Guile Heroine]]: Tamar turns the odds in her favor despite being a neglected, powerless widow trying to get a fair deal from the head of the family in a patriarchal society.

* AnimalMotifs: The lion. Jacob blessed him with this symbolism, and he, his tribe, and his descendants (and by proxy, the last dynasty in Ethiopia, and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastafari a religious movement from Jamaica]] revering the last emperor of said dynasty) stuck with it to this day.

* AnimalMotifs: The lion. Jacob blessed him with this symbolism, and he, his tribe, and his descendants stuck with it to this day.

* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: His punishment for killing his brother was to be shunned by all people for the rest of his life, possibly combined with immortality.

* HumansAreBastards: (according to Christians) disobeying God by eating the forbidden fruit is referred to as being the Original Sin, and as such all their descendants are born with inclination towards sin. While never fully erased, God does help humans resist it by sending prophets to teach his word and by coming down to Earth as Jesus and dying for humanity's sins.
** Jews are much more lenient on this topic: while eating the fruit was disobeying God and therefore a sin, there's no halakha about descendents somehow sharing in it. And of course, no Jesus to help.

* OriginalMan: Many people believe they were this, after all they wore animal skins and must have worked with stone tools. Indeed, some interpretations have these two as Homo erectus, the original human being, while their offspring would have been various Homo populations such as Neanderthalensis and Sapiens.
* SadlyMythtaken: The Bible does not call the fruit an apple (Muslims call it Khuldi). The portrayal of said fruit as an apple is a StealthPun on the Latin word malus.

->''You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.''

* AmbiguousGender: While modern audiences remember it as a male character (and possibly Satan), a surprising amount of artists had portrayed it as a bizarre, half-snake half-''woman'' entity, with a humanoid torso with female breasts and everything. Some people interpret this as a reference to Lilith, who in some versions of Genesis was Adam's first wife but fled ([[ValuesDissonance and in some versions was punished]]) because she didn't like the idea of being subservient to Adam. And this is disregarding the interpretation that the serpent wasn't even a ''literal'' serpent but instead an allegory for a difficult decision.
* BigBad: Of... practically ''everything'', actually. As stated below, with ''one simple action'' he managed to ruin the paradise God created. According to the Book of Genesis, he is the reason we are able to die, the reason we know of good and evil and the reason we are not able to enter the Garden of Eden and never will.[[note]]Though - at least according to Christianity (the Book of Revelations) - God will create for the faithful a New Earth even better than the Garden of Eden and will restore the saved part of humanity to a pre-fall state (no death, no suffering, no sin, etc.).[[/note]]

-->''"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?"''

* GuileHero: And how. He gets it from his mother's side of the family.

%%* TheChick