Joseph and Aseneth is a narrative that dates from between 200 BCE and 200 CE. The first part of the story (chapters 1-21), an expansion of Genesis 41:45, describes the diffident relationship between
Aseneth, the daughter of an Egyptian priest of
Heliopolis and the Hebrew patriarch
Joseph
Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the mo ...
, the vision of Aseneth in which she is fed
honeycomb
A honeycomb is a mass of Triangular prismatic honeycomb#Hexagonal prismatic honeycomb, hexagonal prismatic Beeswax, wax cells built by honey bees in their beehive, nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen.
beekeeping, Beekee ...
by a heavenly being, her subsequent conversion to the God of Joseph, followed by romance, marriage, and the birth of
Manasseh
Manasseh () is both a given name and a surname. Its variants include Manasses and Manasse (surname), Manasse.
Notable people with the name include:
Surname
* Ezekiel Saleh Manasseh (died 1944), Singaporean rice and opium merchant and hotelier
* J ...
and
Ephraim
Ephraim (; he, ''ʾEp̄rayīm'', in pausa: ''ʾEp̄rāyīm'') was, according to the Book of Genesis, the second son of Joseph ben Jacob and Asenath. Asenath was an Ancient Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughte ...
. The second part (chapters 22-29) involves a plot by the Pharaoh's son, who recruits
Dan
Dan or DAN may refer to:
People
* Dan (name), including a list of people with the name
** Dan (king), several kings of Denmark
* Dan people, an ethnic group located in West Africa
**Dan language, a Mande language spoken primarily in Côte d'Ivoi ...
and
Gad to kill Joseph, only to be thwarted by
Benjamin
Benjamin ( he, ''Bīnyāmīn''; "Son of (the) right") blue letter bible: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h3225/kjv/wlc/0-1/ H3225 - yāmîn - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv) was the last of the two sons of Jacob and Rachel (Jacob's thir ...
and
Levi
Levi (; ) was, according to the Book of Genesis, the third of the six sons of Jacob and Leah (Jacob's third son), and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Levi (the Levites, including the Kohanim) and the great-grandfather of Aaron, Moses and M ...
.
The work was composed in Greek, attested by sixteen Greek manuscripts, and other sources. The oldest existing manuscript is a
Syriac Syriac may refer to:
*Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic
*Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region
* Syriac alphabet
** Syriac (Unicode block)
** Syriac Supplement
* Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
translation, contained in British Library manuscript #17,202, an anthology that contains a variety of writings. The Syriac translation of ''Joseph and Aseneth'' was made around 550 CE by
Moses of Ingila Moses of Ingila (fl. mid-6th century) was a Syriac Christian author who translated a number of texts from Greek into the Syriac language.
One surviving letter, preserved in British Library MS no. 17,202, prefaces the writing we call ''Joseph and A ...
. The anthology was compiled around 570 CE by an individual whom scholars call "
Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor is the designation used by modern scholarship for the anonymous 6th-century author who compiled a twelve-part history in the Syriac language around 569. It contains portions of the otherwise lost ''Ecclesiastical History'' of ...
."
Some have regarded it as a Jewish
midrash
''Midrash'' (;["midrash"]
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...
or elaboration on the story in
Genesis
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
(Genesis 37–50). Others question this interpretation partly because of its provenance (early
Syriac Christianity
Syriac Christianity ( syr, ܡܫܝܚܝܘܬܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܬܐ / ''Mšiḥoyuṯo Suryoyto'' or ''Mšiḥāyūṯā Suryāytā'') is a distinctive branch of Eastern Christianity, whose formative theological writings and traditional liturgies are expr ...
), language (Son of God, Bride of God), symbolism (Eucharistic) and covering letter which appear to indicate a Christian context. Gideon Bohak and others have drawn attention to the geographical location of the story (Heliopolis) and an important
Jewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora ( he, תְּפוּצָה, təfūṣā) or exile (Hebrew: ; Yiddish: ) is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland (the Land of Israel) and their subsequent settlement in other parts of t ...
community centered on a
Jewish temple in
Leontopolis, located in the
nome of
Heliopolis during the
Ptolemaic period, seeing this as the likely starting point.
History of the Syriac manuscript
In 1870 J.P.N. Land published a transcription of ''Joseph and Aseneth'' in the third series of ''Anecdota Syriaca'', using British Library manuscript #17,202.
The British Library acquired manuscript #17,202 from the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
. That institution purchased it on November 11, 1847, from an Egyptian merchant by the name of Auguste Pacho, a native of Alexandria. It had come from an ancient Syrian monastery,
St. Mary Deipara, in the Nitrian desert in Egypt, where it had been housed for over 900 years.
Around 932, the monastery's abbot, Moses the Nisibene, acquired over 250 manuscripts from
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
and Syria for the library. One of these is the manuscript we know as British Library #17,202.
From the 10th century back to the 6th century the manuscript was in Mesopotamia. In the 6th century we can pick up the trail. Manuscript #17,202 is an anthology, a collection of a number of important writings compiled by an anonymous Syriac author called by scholars
Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor is the designation used by modern scholarship for the anonymous 6th-century author who compiled a twelve-part history in the Syriac language around 569. It contains portions of the otherwise lost ''Ecclesiastical History'' of ...
. He labelled his anthology ''A Volume of Records of Events Which Have Happened in the World''. He was likely a monk.
This Syriac anthology dates from around 570. It contains the oldest existing version of ''Joseph and Aseneth''.
The compiler is called "Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor" because one of the items found in his anthology is an important church history by the real
Zacharias Rhetor
Zacharias of Mytilene (c. 465, Gaza – after 536), also known as Zacharias Scholasticus or Zacharias Rhetor, was a bishop and ecclesiastical historian.
Life
The life of Zacharias of Mytilene can be reconstructed only from a few scattered repo ...
. Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor, whoever he was, did not compose these documents: he compiled them. In the case of ''Joseph and Aseneth'' he used the existing Syriac translation that had been made by Moses of Ingila.
Careful edition was edited by
E.W. Brooks , ''Historia ecclesiastica Zachariae Rhetori vulgo adscripta'' (CSCO 83;
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, 1919, reprinted 1053), vol 1, pp. 21-55; Latin translation by the same, ''Historia ecclesiastica Zachariae Rhetori vulgo adscripta'' (CSCO 87
Louvain
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic c ...
, 1924, reprinted 1953), vol. 1, pp. 15-39.
[C. Burchard, ''Joseph and Aseneth (First Century B.C.-Second Century A.D.). A New Translation and Introduction'', in James H. Charlesworth (1985), ''The Old Testament Pseudoepigrapha'', Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc., Volume 2, (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2), p. 179]
Two covering letters to ''Joseph and Aseneth'' are included in the compilation and they record how this Syriac translation came to be made. An anonymous Syriac individual, probably a monk, had been looking at manuscripts in
Resh'aina
Ras al-Ayn ( ar, رَأْس ٱلْعَيْن, Raʾs al-ʿAyn, ku, سەرێ کانیێ, Serê Kaniyê, syc, ܪܝܫ ܥܝܢܐ, Rēš Aynā), also spelled Ras al-Ain, is a city in al-Hasakah Governorate in northeastern Syria, on the Syria–Turkey ...
(near the border of modern-day Turkey and Syria) in a library belonging to the line of bishops who had come from
Aleppo
)), is an adjective which means "white-colored mixed with black".
, motto =
, image_map =
, mapsize =
, map_caption =
, image_map1 =
...
. This individual came across what he termed "a small, very old book" written in Greek "''Of Aseneth''." The covering letter asks
Moses of Ingila Moses of Ingila (fl. mid-6th century) was a Syriac Christian author who translated a number of texts from Greek into the Syriac language.
One surviving letter, preserved in British Library MS no. 17,202, prefaces the writing we call ''Joseph and A ...
to translate it into Syriac, his Greek being rather rusty, and to tell him its "inner meaning".
The second covering letter provides Moses of Ingila's response. He says that the writing is a piece of wisdom literature whose inner meaning has to be carefully discerned. He cautions the anonymous monk to be careful. As he is about to disclose its Christological meaning affirming Christianity, the text is cut off.
Other manuscripts
There exist also forty-five Armenian manuscripts dated back to the sixth or the seventh centuries, falling into six groups, of which the most important is
Matenadaran
The Matenadaran ( hy, Մատենադարան), officially the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, is a museum, repository of manuscripts, and a research institute in Yerevan, Armenia. It is the world's largest repository of Armenian ...
(Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts),
Erevan
Yerevan ( , , hy, Երևան , sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and i ...
, MS 1500 (A.D. 1282-1283) (=332).
Nine Latin manuscripts were possibly written in England and date back to circa A.D. 1200.
Another Latin manuscript belongs to the University Library,
Uppsala
Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...
, MS C 37, beginning of the 13th century (=436). A final group of four manuscripts is headed by Monastery Library,
Vorau
Vorau is a municipality in the Hartberg-Fürstenfeld District in Styria, Austria. It is home to the Vorau Abbey
Vorau Abbey is an abbey of the Austrian Congregation of Canons Regular located in Vorau, Styria, Austria. Founded in 1163, it co ...
(Austria), MS 136, 13th century (=435), Unpublished untill 1985.
Two Serbian-Slavonic manuscripts with minor variants are known,
in addition to (at least) two illuminated Modern Greek manuscripts:
Monastery of Koutloumousi,
Mount Athos
Mount Athos (; el, Ἄθως, ) is a mountain in the distal part of the eponymous Athos peninsula and site of an important centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism in northeastern Greece. The mountain along with the respective part of the penins ...
, MS 100, 16th century (=661);
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second- ...
, Oxford, Ms Roe 5, 1614 (=671).
20th century interpretation history
In 1918 E.W. Brooks published a translation and introduction to ''Joseph and Aseneth'' in which he wrote the following: "that the book in its present shape is the work of a Christian writer will be at once recognized by any reader."
Two English anthologies of Old Testament Apocrypha/Pseudepigrapha include translations of ''Joseph and Aseneth'', all based on Greek manuscripts later than the oldest extant Syriac version. An introduction and translation by C. Burchard is included in
James H. Charlesworth's ''The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha'', volume 2. Similarly
H.F.D. Sparks includes a translation by D. Cook in his ''The Apocryphal Old Testament''. The inclusion of ''Joseph and Aseneth'' in these anthologies seem to suggest that the editors and translators were under the impression that the author was Jewish and that the work had something to do with Jewish apocryphal literature.
This accords with Burchard's judgment in 1985. He writes: "Every competent scholar has since Batiffol has maintained that ''Joseph and Aseneth'' is Jewish, with perhaps some Christian interpolations; no one has put the book much after A.D. 200, and some have placed it as early as the second century B.C. As to the place of origin, the majority of scholars look to Egypt."
A list of extant manuscripts and 20th century interpretation history can be found in the introductions to these two anthologies. Views as to origin include: written in Israel by an Orthodox Jew (Aptowitzer); in Israel written by an Essene (Riessler); in Alexandria Egypt composed by a member of the
Therapeutae
The Therapeutae were a religious sect which existed in Alexandria and other parts of the ancient Greek world. The primary source concerning the Therapeutae is the ''De vita contemplativa'' ("The Contemplative Life"), traditionally ascribed to the ...
(K.G. Kuhn); and also in Egypt relating to the
Jewish temple in the nome of Heliopolis (founded c. 170 BCE), in the same area as the geographical setting of the story (Bohak).
[ Cook endorsed the view of an earlier French scholar, Marc Philonenko, who thought that it was written by a Jewish author around 100 CE. Its purpose, he maintained was twofold: to present inter-faith marriages between Gentiles and Jews in a positive light, and, secondly, to persuade Jews as to the advantages of such unions. Cook thought that this view was "likely."
All these authors contended that the author was Jewish and written around the dawn of the 1st century CE. And the anthologizers Charlesworth and Sparks seem to concur, with Charlesworth labelling the translation, "First Century B.C. – Second Century A.D."
Some recent scholars, however, have challenged that interpretation.
]
Recent scholarship
In the last two decades some scholars have argued that the work is fundamentally Christian. These include Ross Shepard Kraemer, ''When Aseneth Met Joseph''; and Rivka Nir, ''Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book''.
According to Angela Standhartinger
Angela may refer to:
Places
* Angela, Montana
* Angela Lake, in Volusia County, Florida
* Lake Angela, in Lyon Township, Oakland County, Michigan
* Lake Angela, the reservoir impounded by the source dam of the South Yuba River
Fiction
* Ang ...
, a covering letter by Moses of Ingila included with the manuscript explains the story "as an allegory of Christ's marriage to the soul".
As a lost Gospel encoding the Jesus bloodline
A 2014 book by Simcha Jacobovici
Simcha Jacobovici (; born April 4, 1953) is an Israeli-Canadian journalist and documentary film maker.
Biography
Simcha Jacobovici's parents were Holocaust survivors from Iași, Romania. He was born April 4, 1953, in Petah Tikva, Israel. In ...
and Barrie Wilson
Barrie A. Wilson is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar, Humanities and Religious Studies, York University, Toronto, where he has taught since 1974. An historian of religion, he specializes in movements in early Christianity. Throughout the 199 ...
, ''The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus' Marriage to Mary the Magdalene'', argues for the marriage of Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
to Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene (sometimes called Mary of Magdala, or simply the Magdalene or the Madeleine) was a woman who, according to the four canonical gospels, traveled with Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to crucifixion of Jesus, his cru ...
through a decoding of ''Joseph and Aseneth'', according to the Jesus bloodline
The Jesus bloodline refers to the proposition that a lineal sequence of descendants of the historical Jesus has persisted to the present time. The claims frequently depict Jesus as married, often to Mary Magdalene, and as having descendants living ...
myth. The book has been compared to ''The Da Vinci Code
''The Da Vinci Code'' is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel ''Angels & Demons''. ''The Da Vinci Code'' follows symbologist Robert Langdon ...
'' in 2003, as a conspiracy theory.
The authors claim that the story of Joseph and Aseneth was already composed during Jesus' lifetime and precedes the canonical gospels.
The Syriac manuscript, being the oldest manuscript, and its accompanying cover letters are given great weight; the authors commissioned multi-spectral photography to "see through" smudges and other marks on the manuscript to ascertain the original underlying text. The translation into English was by Tony Burke, translator of The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, author of ''Secret Scriptures Revealed'', and editor of ''Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions: Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha''. Burke worked independently and was not informed of the overall project objectives. Burke also prepared the first-ever English translation of the two covering letters in Syriac, which was more difficult than translating the main text, owing to damage to the manuscript.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Joseph and Aseneth
1st-century Christianity
6th-century Christian texts
Joseph (Genesis)
Syriac Christianity
Old Testament pseudepigrapha
Texts in Syriac
Jewish apocrypha