2. Then could Joseph not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, "Cause every man to go out from me." And there stood no man with him when Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud, and the Egyptians heard and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, "I am Joseph; doth my father yet live?" And his brethren could not answer him for they were affrighted at his presence. And Joseph said unto his brethren, "Come near to me, I pray you." And they came near. And he said: "I am Joseph your brother whom ye sold into Egypt. And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land; and there are yet five years in which there shall be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to give you a remnant on the earth and to save you alive for a great deliverance."
The reader will at once recognize in the second citation the exact language of the Bible. The first is the same passage turned into indirect discourse with no other change in its wording, yet how much it loses in force even for us adults and even in print; for children and in actual narration the story would lose even more.
=The advantage of using illustrations.= As for the advantage of using illustrations whether in the form of pictures that are distributed and passed around the class or in the form of stereoptican views, we have already suggested one advantage in that they help define for the child the meaning of some of the concrete terms not yet in his vocabulary, but they perform a still more important function in helping him to visualize the narrative. For what we see seems always a more intimate part of our experience than what we have merely heard. When Job wants to express the deeper intimacy of his new knowledge of God after God had appeared to him he declares, "I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee." (Job 42. 5.)
=When to use illustrations and what illustrations to use.= Though the use of illustrations, particularly of stereoptican views, which have the advantage of focusing the attention of the class on one thing, are a decided help, they should be used only in reviewing the lesson. The reasons for this are: 1. that the picture distracts the attention of the class from what the teacher is saying, 2. that it prevents the smooth flow of narrative by the necessity of explaining details of the picture that are often irrelevant, 3. that the interest in the dramatic dialogue of the characters which reveals their motives and, in most cases, the actual moral of the story is sacrificed to the interest in picturesque details of dress, scenery, etc., 4. that the teacher is at the mercy of the artist's conception of the Biblical narrative which rarely does it justice from a Jewish or from an artistic point of view, and often does violence to the nobler conception of the story that the unaided imagination, stimulated by the teacher's narrative, would have constructed. Pictures that represent God in human form should of course not be allowed in a Jewish school. Nor should the school use such pictures as represent anything of a mystical character in images so definite and familiar that they dispel the whole mystical atmosphere. When, for instance, the revelation on Mount Sinai is represented by two tablets of stone falling from heaven into the waiting hands of Moses, as in one familiar picture, it is hardly likely to instil the highest form of reverence. Or when, as in another picture, the ascension of Elijah is represented by a chariot drawn by horses of a brilliant red, meant to suggest fire but too definite in outline to permit of such suggestion, the child will in all probability merely be amused at the peculiar color of the horses and the picture will not have illustrated the story for him at all. It is therefore apparent that the teacher must exercise some sort of censorship over the illustrations used in teaching.