Joseph and Aseneth, Israel as Bride—Introduction
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Abstract
Date and Origins
Though there are versions in Syriac, Slavonic, Armenian, Latin and in middle English, probably translated from the Latin, a total of 80 manuscripts in all, Joseph and Aseneth is said to have been composed in Greek. But its assumed familiarity with the biblical setting and characters shows it was written for Jews or Christians and P Riessler had no doubt that it was originally written in Hebrew because of its strongly scriptural feel.
The Old Testament feel partly derives from the expressions used, which seem indebted to the Septuagint Greek Old Testament. This might be evidence it was written in Greek but, if it had been translated, it would have been translated by a Greek Christian who saw value in it as a devotional aid. Granted this purpose, the translator would not have given a free translation or left it as a simple verbatim translation. He will have used the Septuagint both to replace Aramaic phrases recognisably from the scriptures and to cast the work in a familiar form, so the dependence of the work on the Septuagint is no guarantee that book was originally Greek. It simply proves that the translator was not a dunce.
The earliest version of it is a Syriac (Christian) version of the mid sixth century AD. This version gives the title as The History of Joseph, the Just, and Aseneth his Wife, though really the focus of the tale is the wife rather than Joseph.
Joseph and Aseneth is of a form found in both Jewish and non-Jewish literature. Batiffol recognised in 1889 when he published the first critical edition of Joseph and Aseneth, that the characters in the story were symbolic, not natural people. He first thought it was a Christian work, dated in the 4th-5th centuries, but eight years later changed his mind writing that it was a first century Jewish work, redacted by Christians whose interpolations were plain to see. K Kohler in 1902 thought there was only one minor Christian interpolation, the work otherwise being typically Jewish.
Twentieth century scholars tended to concur and Gideon Bohak and Hagith Sivan go so far as to date it in the first century BC, but among others Ross Kraemer, recently reverted to the idea of a late date and Christian authorship. Yet, it is a strange Christian work that has no obvious saviour and indeed in which redemption is achieved voluntarily by the penitent herself, and where there is no intitiation of baptism and no mention of love, faith or church. Furthermore there is nothing in it suggestive of the use of the New Testament, despite its supposedly late date. It looks like more Christian log-rolling scholarship. Christian scholars can roll their logs indefinitely!
There seem to be two main recensions, a short recension and a long recension. Battifol thought the long recension was earlier than the short recension. C Burchard agrees that the longer version of Joseph and Aseneth is closer to the original one, and the shorter one is an abridgement. More accurately, he divided the 16 Greek manuscripts into four families labelled for convenience of reference a, b, c and d. He considered family b to be the oldest, though not the shortest, and family a comprised the longest and latest redactions. Both c and d were shorter than b but betrayed themselves as later by stylistic refinements that placed them alongside family a. The Syriac, Armenian and the two Latin texts match family b.
Marc Philonenko preferred the short version d as the original, and Kraemer agrees. Philonenko puts d as earlier than b, arguing that later versions are elaborations of d, yet his arguments fail because he has to concede that in places d is abbreviated and he has to look into b to find the omission. In scholarship you cannot eat your cookie and keep it also. If d in parts is plainly abbreviated from b, then d cannot have preceded b!
A translation of the Philonenko version d is available online, courtesy of Oxford University Press at Dr Mark Goodacre’s Birmingham University site. Since there seems to be no version of the longer manuscript online, this is the version discussed here, though reference will be made to the longer recension when commentators have cited it.
An Essene Work?
The use of the title, the Just, for Joseph might suggest an Essene origin. P Reissler long before the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered declared Joseph and Aseneth as Essene. Modern Christian scholars pooh-pooh the idea that the work is Essene because they are desperate to disassociate Christian origins from the Essenes who, to any objective observer, had so many affinities with the Nazarenes that a close link, even if not identity, can be safely supposed.
The point here is that, though Joseph and Aseneth is not Christian, Christians identified with it so much that they adopted it as their own. Yet the work was first century Jewish. If its source can be placed somewhere obviously not associated with Christianity or left as a mystery, then that is fine for the Christians, but to trace it to the Essenes adds credence to the link between Essenes and Christians in first century Judaea.
Aseneth’s prayer:
I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned. I have transgressed thy law and acted impiously, And I have spoken things evil before thee. My mouth, O Lord, has been defiled by things offered to idols… And do thou, O Lord, stretch forth thy hands over me, As a father that loves his children and is tenderly affectionate, And snatch me from the hand of my enemy,
is considered closely akin to the confession of the initiates in the Community Rule:
We have strayed. We Have transgressed. We and our fathers before us have sinned and been wicked in walking against the precepts of truth and righteousness. And for this reason God has judged both us and our fathers, but he has requited us with the lovingkindness of his mercy from eternity to eternity.
The similarity is marked, though not in itself in any way conclusive, but there are other links. The disclosure that there are heavenly secrets, the importance of white robes, praying at dawn to the rising sun, the exaltation of virginity and the repeated mention of the bread and cup, hinting at a sacred repast akin to the Christian Eucharist, all plainly suggest a link to the Essenes or some related organisation. The repetition of formulaic introductions such as ”it is not proper for a man who worships God to…” is typically Essene and so is what they lay down because they amount to rules of living.
G D Kilpatrick in 1952 saw in the repetition of the bread and cup in Joseph and Aseneth some sort of ritual meal, partaken of by first century Jews, other than the Seder. The references to the bread and cup could not have been Christian, unless the whole work was Christian, because they are so closely integrated into its fabric. Kilpatrick detected no Christian additions.
The fact that Joseph and Aseneth is unknown until the sixth century cannot be taken as anything other than the merest suggestion of a late authorship. If the work was peculiar to a group like the Essenes who were rejected by Rabbinism and died out, there is no compelling reason why it should have been mentioned. Nothing was known about the Damascus Rule of the Essenes until the end of the nineteenth century, yet it had obviously been in continuous use among the Qaraites for over a millennium. It is quite possible that the source of Joseph and Aseneth was the Qaraites who concentrated in Mesopotamia. More ought to be done on the Syriac and Armenian ones because they might be able to confirm a Qaraite vehicle of transmission, especially as the Syriac version was actually found in Mesopotamia.
It seems unlikely that the original has not been altered by overworking and interpolation, whether the redacters were Christians or Jews. Indeed, the second part looks to have been added. Joseph and Aseneth is regarded as a pseudepigraph but it does not appear in the material at Qumran, suggesting a later origin, although there is no guarantee that all the Qumran material is known. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, parts of which have now been identified in the Dead Sea Scrolls was already known in a form modified by Christians. Joseph and Aseneth might be similarly a Jewish work modified by Christian overworking.
Story Outline
The plot has all the hallmarks of a women’s romantic novel but is punctuated with prayers of a poetic form that could have been liturgies. Set during the seven years of plenty in Egypt before the seven years of famine (Gen 41), Joseph and Aseneth is the story of a beautiful heroine, Aseneth, vowed to chastity, who falls in love with a handsome governor, Joseph (son of the Jewish Patriarch, Jacob) when he visits her father on official duties. He cannot accept her because of the difference in their religions, he being an Hebrew and she being the Egyptian daughter of Pentephres (Potiphera), the priest of On. The romance seems to be an explanation of how Joseph came to marry a gentile.
The plot supposedly takes up from the point in the bible when Joseph has explained the Pharaoh’s dreams and been rewarded by being made Egyptian governor. At this point in Genesis, Aseneth is briefly introduced, being mentioned three times—in Genesis 41 and 46:
And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphnathpaaneah; and he gave him to wife Aseneth the daughter of Potipherah priest of On. And Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt. And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt.
And in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls. And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: the food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same. And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number. And unto Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came, which Aseneth the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bare unto him. And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house. And the name of the second called he Ephraim: For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.
And unto Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, which Aseneth the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bare unto him.
The puzzle is that Joseph accepted the pagan woman as his wife when only a few verses earlier he had rather be jailed than liaise with another Potiphera’s wife. In fact, the double occurrence of the name Potiphera, once as Pharaoh’s executioner and then as the priest of On, each connected with a woman and sexual offerings to Joseph, is suspicious. It cries out that the original legend has been altered, most likely by the second temple priesthood when they re-wrote Israelite mythology to suit themselves. In this story, Aseneth takes Joseph to be an adulterer, and this was probably the original tradition.
The story is normally seen as an allegory of conversion to Judaism. Ostensibly, it is about Aseneth’s conversion from the worship of idols to the worship of the god of Joseph. The Egyptian woman so loves the man of her desires that she decides to convert to his religion so that he had no reason of religious difference to reject her as a bride. In her determination to be acceptable to him, she throws her idols out of the window, secludes herself in her tower and repents in sackcloth and ashes, confessing her sins and praying to the god of Joseph. A heavenly Joseph appears and announces to her that her prayer has been heard and that she is now a new creation. The divine being shares a meal with her, magically produces a honeycomb from which bees emerge and tells her about her heavenly self, Repentance. She renounces her past and is transformed into ”a city of refuge”. Aseneth, now a suitable bride for the godly Joseph, is united with him and he now accepts her. She marries him and they have two children, Ephraim and Manasseh.
Years later, still happily married, she becomes the victim of the plots of a spurned lover, Pharaoh’s son, who pursues Joseph and attempts to seize Aseneth as his wife, but Joseph’s brothers overcome him and the book ends with Joseph reigning as king over Egypt, with Aseneth at his side.
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Moses and Exodus
