Literatura Drugiej Świątyni do Rodzaju 37:9

§ 65. (The twelve sons of Jacob and the Zodiac.) For this connexion of the twelve tribes and their founders with the Twelve Signs cf. De Som. ii. 111 ff., where Philo is discussing Gen. 37:9–11, where Joseph says “the sun and moon and eleven stars did obeisance to me,” thus “classing himself as the twelfth to complete the Zodiac.”

It seems to be agreed that the Signs are mentioned in Job 38:32 under the name of the Mazzaroth (a word copied without translation by the LXX), and many modern scholars have thought that Gen. 37:9 actually refers to them, some indeed finding traces of them in the blessing of Jacob in ch. 49. Whether this is so or not, Philo naturally took the words so, but the tone of that passage, where Joseph’s presumption is condemned, is very different from this, where the twelve tribes are the earthly counterpart of the twelve great heavenly bodies. It would be interesting to know how far the idea was current in Philo’s time. An article by Feuchtwanger, in Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 1915, pp. 241–267, gives an account of the place held by the Zodiac in Rabbinical tradition, but mostly in later times, and does not dwell much upon its relation to the tribes and their founders. One point mentioned (also by the Jewish Encyclopaedia, s.v. Zodiac) is the tradition that each of the tribes had one of the Signs on its banner.

[111] He saw, the text says, another dream and told it to his father and brethren, and said “it was as though the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.” And his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream that thou hast dreamt? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to do obeisance to thee on the earth?” And his brothers were angry with him, but his father kept the saying in memory (Gen. 37:9–11).