Other ancient texts · Read in Jesus' day

Joseph and Aseneth

Joseph and Aseneth is a Greek story that expands a few verses in Genesis (41:45, 41:50, 46:20). It tells how Aseneth, daughter of an Egyptian priest, turned from idols to the God of Israel, met a heavenly visitor and married Joseph, and how Pharaoh's son later plotted to kidnap her. People read it as an early account of conversion to Judaism, as a window into Jewish life in Egypt, and for its striking parallels to Christian ideas about bread, cup and new life.

  • 1st century BC to 2nd century AD
  • Greek
  • Protestant Catholic Orthodox Ethiopian

Should it be in the Bible?

The case for

  1. It answers a real puzzle in Genesis: how Joseph could marry the daughter of a pagan priest, and how the mother of Ephraim and Manasseh came to belong to Israel.

    The evidence

    Genesis 41:45 says only that Pharaoh gave Joseph 'Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On' as his wife. Later Jewish writers also worried over this marriage (for example, a midrash in which Aseneth is Dinah's daughter), which shows the question was a live one, and this book is the fullest ancient answer to it.

  2. Christian communities copied it and valued it for centuries, and in one tradition it sat alongside scripture.

    The evidence

    A 6th-century Syriac translation survives in the chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor. Armenian copies number in the dozens, and some Armenian Bible manuscripts include it among the Old Testament books. Medieval Latin readers knew it through Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum Historiale.

  3. Its teaching fits closely with the Hebrew Bible and with the ethics of the New Testament.

    The evidence

    Aseneth's repentance (rejecting idols, fasting, wearing sackcloth and ashes, confessing her sins) follows biblical patterns of turning to God. The repeated rule that a God-fearing person must not 'repay evil for evil' (23:9; 28:5; 29:3) matches Romans 12:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:15 and 1 Peter 3:9.

The case against

  1. No Jewish or Christian body has ever treated it as scripture, and it is missing from every canon list.

    The evidence

    It does not appear in the Muratorian fragment, Athanasius' letter of 367, the councils of Hippo and Carthage, Trent, or the Ethiopian canon. Its place in some Armenian manuscripts never became official status in that church.

  2. Nobody is sure when, where or by whom it was written, or even what the original text said.

    The evidence

    Proposed dates run from the 1st century BC to the 4th century AD, and scholars disagree over whether a Jew or a Christian wrote it. The Greek survives in four families of manuscripts, and modern editors (Philonenko's shorter text, Burchard's and Fink's longer text) disagree about which form is original.

  3. It reads as a romance novel with features that are hard to square with the biblical narrative.

    The evidence

    It is full of conventions from Hellenistic love stories, such as a beautiful secluded heroine, love at first sight and a kidnapping plot. Its central scene has an angel feeding Aseneth a honeycomb that bees then form around her, and Dan and Gad plot with Pharaoh's son to murder Joseph, a story Genesis knows nothing of.

Both sides are written as strongly as the honest evidence allows, so you can decide for yourself. Researched by claude-opus-5-5.

When, where and by whom

It has no traditional author, and no ancient tradition credits it to a biblical figure. Most scholars (Burchard, Philonenko, Chesnutt) see it as a Jewish work from Egypt written between about 100 BC and AD 115, but Ross Kraemer argues for the 3rd or 4th century AD, and Rivka Nir argues that a Christian wrote it.

Jesus, the New Testament and this book
  • The ban on repaying evil for evil (23:9; 28:5; 29:3) closely matches Paul's and Peter's teaching (Romans 12:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:15; 1 Peter 3:9). This is a shared idea, not a quotation. (likely link)
  • Joseph eats the 'blessed bread of life' and drinks the 'blessed cup of immortality' (8:5; 15:5; 16:16), language much like Jesus as the bread of life (John 6:35, 48–58) and the Lord's Supper cup (1 Corinthians 10–11). Which way any influence ran depends on the disputed date. (possible link)
  • Aseneth's conversion is pictured as being renewed, re-formed and made alive again (8:9; 15:5), like Paul's 'new creation' (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15). (possible link)
  • Aseneth is renamed 'City of Refuge' for all who turn to God (15:7), an image that recalls the heavenly city and the church as a refuge (Hebrews 11:10, 12:22; Revelation 21). (possible link)
  • Joseph is called 'son of God' (6:3, 6:5; 13:13) and the angel comes as a radiant heavenly man (14:9), echoing New Testament language and transfiguration-style descriptions. (possible link)
  • The heavenly honeycomb that gives immortality (16:14) has been compared with the honeycomb the risen Jesus eats in some manuscripts of Luke 24:42. (possible link)
How it came down to us

No ancient Jewish copies survive. There are no Dead Sea Scrolls fragments and no rabbinic quotations, so the book came down to us entirely through Christian copyists. About 16 Greek manuscripts survive, the oldest from around the 10th–11th centuries, and they fall into four textual families. There is also a 6th-century Syriac translation preserved in the chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor, more than 40 Armenian manuscripts (some inside Bibles), two medieval Latin translations, and later Serbian Slavonic and Modern Greek versions.

  • Greek manuscript families a, b, c, d and the critical editions of Marc Philonenko (1968), Christoph Burchard (2003) and Uta Barbara Fink (2008)
  • C. Burchard's English translation and introduction in J. H. Charlesworth, ed., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha vol. 2 (1985)
  • Syriac version in the Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor (6th century)
  • Studies of the Armenian manuscript tradition and its presence in Armenian Bibles
  • Latin versions and Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum Historiale
  • Ross S. Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph (1998); Rivka Nir, Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book (2012); Randall Chesnutt, From Death to Life (1995); Angela Standhartinger (1995)
  • Ancient canon lists: Muratorian fragment, Athanasius' 39th Festal Letter (367), councils of Hippo and Carthage, Council of Trent, Ethiopian canon
  • Genesis 41:45, 41:50, 46:20 and New Testament parallels (John 6; Romans 12:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:15; 1 Peter 3:9; 2 Corinthians 5:17)

Chapters

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