Joseph and Aseneth
Joseph and Asenath is a narrative that dates from between 200 BCE and 200 CE.[1] It concerns the Hebrew patriarch Joseph and his marriage to Asenath, expanding the fleeting mentions of their relationship in the Book of Genesis. The text was translated widely, including into Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Early Modern German, Latin, Middle English, Old French, Romanian, Serbian and Syriac.
Summary
The first part of the story (chapters 1-21), an expansion of Genesis 41:45, describes the diffident relationship between
Origin
The work was probably composed in Greek, attested by sixteen Greek manuscripts,[3] and other sources. In the assessment of Richard Cole, "the ultimate provenance of the work is uncertain. Suggestions have ranged from 200 BC to 300 AD from North Africa in the west through to Palestine and Syria in the east".[4]: 6
Some have regarded it as a Jewish
The oldest existing manuscript is a Syriac translation, contained in London, British Library, manuscript #17,202, an anthology that contains a variety of texts. The Syriac translation of Joseph and Aseneth was made around 550 CE by Moses of Ingila. The anthology was compiled around 570 CE by an individual whom scholars call "Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor."
Ancient and medieval translations
The Syriac translation
The principal manuscript of the Syriac translation of Joseph and Aseneth is London, British Library (formerly British Museum), manuscript #17,202.
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 Happened in the World. He was likely a monk. This Syriac anthology dates from around 570. It constituted the oldest surviving manuscript of Joseph and Aseneth. The compiler is known as "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.
Two covering letters to Joseph and Aseneth are included in the compilation and they record how the Syriac translation came to be made. An anonymous Syriac individual, probably a monk, had been looking at manuscripts in
Manuscript provenance
From the 6th century to the 10th the manuscript was in Mesopotamia. Around 932, the abbot of the ancient Syrian monastery
Editions
In 1870 J. P. N. Land published a transcription of the British Library Joseph and Aseneth in the third series of Anecdota Syriaca. A more thorough edition was then produced by
Translations in the medieval Latin West
Of the Greek Joseph and Asanath a translation into Latin (formerly ascribed incorrectly to
Another Latin manuscript belongs to the University Library,
Other translations in the ancient and medieval East
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
Two Serbian-Slavonic manuscripts with minor variants are known,[8] in addition to (at least) two illuminated Modern Greek manuscripts: Monastery of Koutloumousi, Mount Athos, MS 100, 16th century (=661); Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms Roe 5, 1614 (=671).[13][8]
20th-century interpretation history
In 1918 E. W. Brooks published a translation and introduction to Joseph and Aseneth in which he wrote: "that the book in its present shape is the work of a Christian writer will be at once recognized by any reader."[14]
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
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."
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 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).[5] 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.
21st-century scholarship
From the late twentieth century, some scholars have argued that the work is fundamentally Christian. These include Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph;[17] and Rivka Nir, Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book.[18] However, the work may have come from a milieu on the first century CE "when Judaism and Christianity were not separate identities but rather two tendencies within the same continuum".[4]: 6
As a lost Gospel encoding the Jesus bloodline
A 2014 book by Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson, The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus' Marriage to Mary the Magdalene,[19] argues for the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene through a decoding of Joseph and Aseneth, according to the Jesus bloodline myth. The book has been compared to The Da Vinci Code in 2003, as a conspiracy theory.[20][21][22]
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
References
- ^ Charlesworth, James H., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol2
- ^ "Category:Joseph and Aseneth (text)". 4 Enoch: The Online Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism and Early Christian Origins. Gabriele Boccaccini, PhD. September 3, 2015. Archived from the original on October 2, 2018. Retrieved April 10, 2020.
- ISBN 9780691009926. Retrieved April 10, 2020.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ a b c d e f g Richard Cole, 'Echoes of the Book of Joseph and Aseneth, Particularly in Yngvars saga víðfǫrla', Saga-Book, 41 (2017), 5–34.
- ^ a b Bohak, Gideon (1996). Joseph and Aseneth and the Jewish Temple in Heliopolis. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
- ISBN 978-0884142331. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
- ^ Simcha Jacobovici, Barrie Wilson, The Lost Gospel, page 384.
- ^ ISBN 0-385-18813-7(Vol. 2), p. 179
- ^ Batiffol, Studia Patristica, pp. 89-115
- doi:10.2307/43632969.
- .
- ^ Poorly translated by J. Issaverdens, The Uncannonical Writings Of The Old Testament (Venice, 1900), pp. 91-160, and The History of Asseneh (Venice, 1900), specimen of a better edition by Christoph Burchard, Joseph and Aseneth 25-29 armenisch, JSJ 10 (1979) 1-10
- ^ Miniatures of both of them were published by Gary Vikan,, Illuminated Manuscripts; miniatures of 661 published by S. M. Pelekanidis, P. C. Christou, C. Tsiounis, and S. N. Kadas, The Treasures of Mount Athos. Illuminated Manuscripts, Miniatures-Headpieces-Initial Letters (Athens, 1974) vol. 1 pp. 456, 458f. figs. 339-341
- ^ E.W.Brooks, Joseph and Asenath: The Confession and Prayer of Asenath Daughter of Pentephres the Priest. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1918.
- ^ 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.
- ISBN 9780664263058)
- ^ Assessing the Lost Gospel by Richard Bauckham
- ^ Lost Gospel claims Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children, by Victoria Ward, The Daily Telegraph, 12 November 2014
- ^ Burke, Tony. "Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Greek A". TonyBurke.ca. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
- ISBN 978-0802871312.
- ISBN 9781532603730.
- ^ Burke, Tony (November 17, 2014). "Translating Joseph and Aseneth: My Role in Jacobovici and Wilson's 'Lost Gospel'". Apocryphicity. Retrieved April 16, 2020.