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Joseph and Aseneth is a narrative that dates from before the 6th century C.E. It seems to relate the romance, marriage and children of the Israelite patriarch Joseph and his Egyptian wife Aseneth. Some have regarded it as a Jewish midrash or elaboration on the story in Genesis (Genesis 37-50). Others question this interpretation partly because of its provenance (early Syriac Christianity), language (Son of God, Bride of God), symbolism (Eucharistic) and covering letter which appear to indicate a Christian context.

British Library manuscript #17,202 is an anthology containing a variety of writings including the oldest existing manuscript of this work. Written in Syriac, Joseph and Aseneth is a translation of an older Greek writing.

Manuscript History

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. That institution purchased it on November 11th, 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 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.” He labelled his anthology “A Volume of Records of Events which have Shaped 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. Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor, whoever he was, did not compose these documents: he compiled them. In the case of Joseph and Aseneth he used a Syriac translation that had been made by Moses of Ingila, around 550.

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 (near the border of modern-day Turkey and Syria) in a library belonging to the line of bishops who had come from Aleppo. This individual came across what he termed “a small, very old book” written in Greek “Of Aseneth.” The covering letter asks Moses of Ingila 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, the text is cut off.

So the translation of Joseph and Aseneth from around 550, included in the 570 anthology, is the earliest manuscript we now possess. But it is based on a “small, very old” manuscript written in Greek. How much older than the 6th century is a matter of speculation.

20th Century Interpretation History

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^[1]. Similarly H.F.D. Sparks includes a translation by D. Cook in his The Apocryphal Old Testament^[2]. 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 (K.G. Kuhn); and also in Egypt having to do with an obscure Jewish temple during the Maccabean period (Bohak). Cook endorsed the view of an earlier French scholar, Marc Philonenko, who thought that it was written by a Jewish author around 100 C.E. 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 C.E. And the anthologizers Charlesworth and Sparks seem to concur, with Charlesworth labelling the translation, “First Century B.C. – Second Century A.D.” The contention that the work is Jewish in origin, however, is no longer maintained in recent scholarship.

Recent Scholarship

The current view is that the work is fundamentally Christian. These include Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph^[3]; Rivka Nir, Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book^[4] and Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson, The Lost Gospel^[5], the latter being a translation of Joseph and Aseneth based on the oldest manuscript, the Syriac one, along with the first-ever English translation of the two covering letters that place the text in context. This translation used spectral-imaging technology to “see through” smudges and other marks to ascertain the original underlying text.

Jacobovici and Wilson advance four considerations to demonstrate that the text is Christian.

First is the manuscript environment. Joseph and Aseneth is found in an anthology of 6th century Syriac writings – A Volume of Records of Events Which have Shaped the World. That anthology includes a work by Sylvester, bishop of Rome, on Constantine’s conversion; a writing concerning the discovery of relics of two important 1st century individuals (Stephen, the first Gentile martyr) and Nicodemus (the Pharisee who helped bury Jesus); a miracle narrative (The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus); and an important church history by Zacharias Rhetor.

Since all these writings have to do with important Christian concerns, the question arises, how does Joseph and Aseneth fit into this context? Why would it be of any interest to monks and Christian clergy if it were simply a midrash on the marriage of an ancient Jewish patriarch several thousand years prior?

Moreover, how does this writing fit into an anthology of events that have shaped the world? Alongside the conversion of Constantine, for instance, that altered the course of history; and proof of immortality as in the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. To what world altering event does Joseph and Aseneth point?

Secondly, the language is Christian. Joseph is said to be “the Son of God” (J&A 6:3; 6:5). Aseneth is said to be “the Bride of God” (J&A 4:1). She is blessed as follows: “the Lord God of heaven truly chose you to be the bride of his first-born son” (J&A 18:13). This is not Jewish language but Christian. Also the heavenly communion service parallels the ritual flow of the Christian Eucharist: the taking of symbolic elements, giving thanks, breaking the bread (or honeycomb as in the case of Joseph and Aseneth) and then eating.

One British scholar had been overlooked by Burchard and Cook was E.W. Brooks. In 1918 he 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 a once recognized by any reader.”

Thirdly, there is the distinctive Syriac Christian context in which the typical hermeneutic method was typological analysis – not allegorical and not literal interpretation. According to this methodology, persons and events in the Old Testament prefigure those in the New. Typology is a theory of history, that one event in the past really signifies another event, in the future. Thus the Exodus is not about the people of Israel leaving Egypt some three thousand years ago. It is really about Jesus (Moses) leading humanity (the people of Israel) out of sin (Egypt) through the Red Sea (baptism) into the Kingdom of Heaven (the Promised Land). Hence a story about Joseph, a savior figure, is really about Jesus and his doings.

Fourthly, the covering letter by Moses of Ingila tells us that the hidden message in Christological in nature, hence Christian.

^ James H. Charlesworth (ed), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, volume 2. New York: Doubleday, 1985
^ H.F.D.Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
^ Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
^ Rivka Nir, Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2012.
^ Simcha Jacobovici, Barrie Wilson, The Lost Gospel. New York: Pegasus, 2014.

[1] James H. Charlesworth (ed), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, volume 2. New York: Doubleday, 1985

[2] H.F.D.Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.

[3] Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

[4] Rivka Nir, Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2012.

[5] Simcha Jacobovici, Barrie Wilson, The Lost Gospel. New York: Pegasus, 2014.

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-{{italictitle}}
-'''''Joseph and Aseneth''''' or '''''Asenath''''' is an ancient [[Apocrypha|apocryphal]] expansion of the [[Book of Genesis]]'s account of the patriarch [[Joseph (Hebrew Bible)|Joseph]]'s marriage to [[Aseneth]].
+''Joseph and Aseneth'' is a narrative that dates from before the 6th century C.E. It seems to relate the romance, marriage and children of the Israelite patriarch Joseph and his Egyptian wife Aseneth. Some have regarded it as a Jewish midrash or elaboration on the story in Genesis (Genesis 37-50). Others question this interpretation partly because of its provenance (early Syriac Christianity), language (Son of God, Bride of God), symbolism (Eucharistic) and covering letter which appear to indicate a Christian context.
-According to Genesis 41:45, [[Pharaoh]] gives Aseneth, the daughter of [[Potipherah]] (Pentephres in the [[Septuagint]]) priest of [[On (Ancient Egypt)|On]] to Joseph as a wife. Genesis 41:50-52 narrates that Aseneth bore Joseph two sons [[Manasseh (tribal patriarch)|Manasseh]] and [[Ephraim]]. No more is said of her. Like many narratives in Genesis, the biblical story is tantalizingly brief, and raises questions that were to fascinate later interpreters. Why would an upstanding descendant of [[Jacob]] (Israel) marry the daughter of a [[Paganism|pagan]] priest, and how could it be justifiable? How could two of the eponymous tribes (the [[Tribe of Manasseh]] and the [[Tribe of Ephraim]]) be descended from a union with an outsider, otherwise prohibited by the [[Mosaic_law]]? The story of Joseph and Aseneth sets out to answer some of those questions.
+British Library manuscript #17,202 is an anthology containing a variety of writings including the oldest existing manuscript of this work. Written in Syriac, ''Joseph and Aseneth'' is a translation of an older Greek writing.
-The twenty-nine chapters of Joseph and Aseneth narrate the transformation of Aseneth, from [[idolatry]] to [[monotheism]] and the worship of [[Adonai]]. Aseneth, a [[virgin]] who has rejected numerous worthy suitors, falls in love with Joseph when he, as [[vizier]] of Egypt, visits her father. Joseph, however, rejects her as an unworthy idol worshipper.
+== Manuscript History ==
-Aseneth then secludes herself in her tower, repents of her idolatry, confesses her sin, and embraces Joseph's God. Begging for God's acceptance, she then receives an angelic visitor (looking like Joseph), who assures her that her prayers are answered and that she is now a new creation. There follows a strange and extended ritual, where in order to confer on her immortality, the angel shares with Aseneth a magical honeycomb, and is told of her heavenly counterpart Metanoia (Repentance).
+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. That institution purchased it on November 11th, 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.
-The honeycomb, which the angel marks with a cross, causes a swarm of [[bee]]s to surround her, and some return to heaven though others die. The meaning and significance of this episode of the bees is uncertain, and appears to have some sort of connection to initiation rites of [[mystery religion]]s. There may also be a connection with the otherwise mysterious name of the prophetess [[Deborah]], literally ''bee'', from one of the oldest parts of the [[Book of Judges]]. It is uncertain whether the involvement of a cross indicates a Christian influence or not.
+Around 932, the monastery’s abbot, Moses the Nisibene, acquired over 250 manuscripts from Mesopotamia and Syria for the library. One of these is the manuscript we know as British Library #17,202.
-Aseneth, promising to ''love, honour, and obey'' Joseph, is now seen as a potential wife by him, and the two marry and she bears him Ephraim and Manasseh. Then in the final chapters of the book, the Pharaoh's son, in love with Aseneth himself, attempts to seize her, persuading [[Dan (Biblical figure)|Dan]] and [[Gad (son of Jacob)|Gad]] to assist him and to kill Joseph. However, [[Benjamin]], Joseph's loyal brother, foils the attempt, and the Pharaoh's son receives fatal wounds. Aseneth forgives Dan and Gad, and Joseph and she go on to rule over Egypt. Enmity between Joseph and Dan and Gad is not recounted elsewhere, and nor is any between the tribes of which they are [[eponym]]s, so it is uncertain why they are mentioned in this manner by the author, unless it was due to a personal grudge.
+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.” He labelled his anthology “''A Volume of Records of Events which have Shaped the World''.” He was likely a monk.
-==Provenance and manuscripts==
+This Syriac anthology dates from around 570. It contains the oldest existing version of ''Joseph and Aseneth''.
-The work is anonymous and its author unknown. The dating is contentious, and it is not even clear whether this is a Jewish or a Christian work (or neither).
+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. Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor, whoever he was, did not compose these documents: he compiled them. In the case of ''Joseph and Aseneth'' he used a Syriac translation that had been made by Moses of Ingila, around 550.
-The earliest version is in [[Syriac language|Syriac]] and dates from the sixth century AD. Most modern scholarship treats it as a Jewish work dating some time from the first century BC to the second century AD. Batiffol (who produced the first critical edition) and, more recently, Kraemer have argued that it was originally a Christian work, dating from the fourth or fifth centuries. Kraemer suggests connections with works like the [[Acts of Thomas]].
+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 (near the border of modern-day Turkey and Syria) in a library belonging to the line of bishops who had come from Aleppo. This individual came across what he termed “a small, very old book” written in Greek “''Of Aseneth''.” The covering letter asks Moses of Ingila to translate it into Syriac, his Greek being rather rusty, and to tell him its “inner meaning.”
-Early versions exist today in  [[Syriac language|Syriac]], [[Old Church Slavonic|Slavonic]], [[Armenian language|Armenian]] and [[Latin]] – but there is general consensus that it was originally composed in [[Greek language|Greek]]. In the manuscripts, the work is variously titled: ''The History of Joseph the Just and Aseneth his Wife''; ''The Confession and Prayer of Aseneth, the daughter of Pentephres, the Priest''; and ''The Wholesome Narrative Concerning the Corn-Giving of Joseph, the All-Fair, and Concerning Aseneth, and How God United Them''. The extant manuscripts give us two versions of the work, a short [[recension]] and a long recension. There has been much scholarly debate as to which is earlier.
+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, the text is cut off.
-==Bibliography==
+So the translation of ''Joseph and Aseneth'' from around 550, included in the 570 anthology, is the earliest manuscript we now possess. But it is based on a “small, very old” manuscript written in Greek. How much older than the 6th century is a matter of speculation.
-*Bohak, Gideon, ''Joseph and Aseneth and the Jewish Temple in Heliopolis'' (Early Judaism and Its Literature 10; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1996).
-*Chesnutt, Randall D., ''From Death to Life: Conversion in Joseph and Aseneth'' (Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series, 16; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).
-*Putthoff, Tyson L., "Aseneth's Gastronomical Vision: Mystical Theophagy and the New Creation in ''Joseph and Aseneth''", ''Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha'' 24.2 (2014): 96-117.
+== 20th Century Interpretation History ==
-==External links==
-*[http://www.markgoodacre.org/aseneth/ The Aseneth Home Page]
-*[http://www.markgoodacre.org/aseneth/translat.htm Text]
-*[http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/asenath_mason.pdf another translation]
-*[http://jsp.sagepub.com/content/24/2/96.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr Aseneth's Mystical Transformation]
+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<ref>James H. Charlesworth (ed), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, volume 2. New York: Doubleday, 1985</ref>. Similarly H.F.D. Sparks includes a translation by D. Cook in his ''The Apocryphal Old Testament''<ref>H.F.D.Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.</ref>. 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.
-[[Category:1st-century BC books]]
-[[Category:1st-century books]]
+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.”
-[[Category:2nd-century books]]
-[[Category:4th-century books]]
+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 (K.G. Kuhn); and also in Egypt having to do with an obscure Jewish temple during the Maccabean period (Bohak). Cook endorsed the view of an earlier French scholar, Marc Philonenko, who thought that it was written by a Jewish author around 100 C.E. 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.”
-[[Category:5th-century books]]
-[[Category:4th-century Christian texts]]
+All these authors contended that the author was Jewish and written around the dawn of the 1st century C.E. And the anthologizers Charlesworth and Sparks seem to concur, with Charlesworth labelling the translation, “First Century B.C. – Second Century A.D.”
-[[Category:5th-century Christian texts]]
+The contention that the work is Jewish in origin, however, is no longer maintained in recent scholarship.
-[[Category:Old Testament Apocrypha]]
-[[Category:Joseph (patriarch)]]
+== Recent Scholarship ==
+The current view is that the work is fundamentally Christian. These include Ross Shepard Kraemer, ''When Aseneth Met Joseph''<ref>Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.</ref>; Rivka Nir, ''Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book''<ref>Rivka Nir, Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2012.</ref> and Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson, ''The Lost Gospel''<ref>Simcha Jacobovici, Barrie Wilson, The Lost Gospel. New York: Pegasus, 2014.</ref>, the latter being a translation of ''Joseph and Aseneth'' based on the oldest manuscript, the Syriac one, along with the first-ever English translation of the two covering letters that place the text in context. This translation used spectral-imaging technology to “see through” smudges and other marks to ascertain the original underlying text.
+Jacobovici and Wilson advance four considerations to demonstrate that the text is Christian.
+First is the manuscript environment. ''Joseph and Aseneth'' is found in an anthology of 6th century Syriac writings – ''A Volume of Records of Events Which have Shaped the World''. That anthology includes a work by Sylvester, bishop of Rome, on Constantine’s conversion; a writing concerning the discovery of relics of two important 1st century individuals (Stephen, the first Gentile martyr) and Nicodemus (the Pharisee who helped bury Jesus); a miracle narrative (''The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus''); and an important church history by Zacharias Rhetor.
+Since all these writings have to do with important Christian concerns, the question arises, how does ''Joseph and Aseneth'' fit into this context? Why would it be of any interest to monks and Christian clergy if it were simply a midrash on the marriage of an ancient Jewish patriarch several thousand years prior?
+Moreover, how does this writing fit into an anthology of events that have shaped the world? Alongside the conversion of Constantine, for instance, that altered the course of history; and proof of immortality as in the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. To what world altering event does ''Joseph and Aseneth'' point?
+Secondly, the language is Christian. Joseph is said to be “the Son of God” (J&A 6:3; 6:5). Aseneth is said to be “the Bride of God” (J&A 4:1). She is blessed as follows: “the Lord God of heaven truly chose you to be the bride of his first-born son” (J&A 18:13). This is not Jewish language but Christian. Also the heavenly communion service parallels the ritual flow of the Christian Eucharist: the taking of symbolic elements, giving thanks, breaking the bread (or honeycomb as in the case of Joseph and Aseneth) and then eating.
+One British scholar had been overlooked by Burchard and Cook was E.W. Brooks. In 1918 he 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 a once recognized by any reader.”
+Thirdly, there is the distinctive Syriac Christian context in which the typical hermeneutic method was typological analysis – not allegorical and not literal interpretation. According to this methodology, persons and events in the Old Testament prefigure those in the New. Typology is a theory of history, that one event in the past really signifies another event, in the future. Thus the Exodus is not about the people of Israel leaving Egypt some three thousand years ago. It is really about Jesus (Moses) leading humanity (the people of Israel) out of sin (Egypt) through the Red Sea (baptism) into the Kingdom of Heaven (the Promised Land). Hence a story about Joseph, a savior figure, is really about Jesus and his doings.
+Fourthly, the covering letter by Moses of Ingila tells us that the hidden message in Christological in nature, hence Christian.