Located in the British Library is a manuscript dating to around 570 C.E. It was acquired on November 11, 1847. The man who sold it was an Egyptian by the name of Auguste Pacho, a native of Alexandria. Pacho got the ancient text from the Macarios monastery in Egypt. Founded in the 6th century C.E. and located between Cairo and Alexandria in the Nitrian Valley, Macarios is one of the oldest Syrian monasteries in the world. The manuscript left the monastery in July but en route to the UK, Pacho made a stop over in Paris, probably selling other manuscripts to the libraries there. He finally made it to the UK in November and promptly sold the text to the British Museum, which then turned it over to the British Library.
The Macarios Monastery manuscript was filed under the unpretentious name British Library Manuscript Number 17,202. It’s written in Syriac, a Middle Eastern language related to Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and many of his contemporaries. Titled A Volume of Records of Events Which Have Shaped the World, it’s a collection of writings—a kind of miniature library. It represents an anonymous 6th-century monk’s attempt to preserve a record of events which, in his view, were earth-shattering in their import. As a result, he includes in his collection an account of the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity; an important church history that relates the debates over the person of Christ; the finding of key 1st-century Christian relics; and a proof of eternal life provided by the once-famous legend of the “Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.”
All hot topics in his day . . . and for his community of believers.
One manuscript does not seem to fit this collection of ostensibly important writings. It is called The Story of Joseph the Just and Aseneth his Wife. It’s this writing that concerns us here. This is our mysterious text, and it represents the focus of our investigation.
The Story of Joseph the Just and Aseneth his Wife did not originate with the 6th-century monk who preserved it. It was translated into Syriac, as an anonymous letter-writer who introduces the work tells us, from a much earlier Greek work—perhaps a century or more earlier. Even that previous document was most likely a copy of a still earlier work. It was copied, like the New Testament documents themselves, by generations of dedicated scribes who toiled to preserve this precious tale for future readers. The story this Syriac manuscript relates, therefore, stretches back in history—beyond the 4th and 3rd centuries—as far back as the 2nd or perhaps even the 1st century C.E.
Put differently, the story that British Library Manuscript Number 17,202 tells may go as far back as Jesus’ lifetime or shortly thereafter. It reaches back to the time when the canonical Gospels found in the New Testament were being written. We cannot be absolutely sure of its dating. Nor can we be sure of the dating of the Gospels themselves. In this regard, most scholars date the Gospel of Mark to around 70 C.E.; Matthew to the 80s; Luke to the 90s; and John from 90 onwards. These dates for original composition are based on historical reconstructions that take into account when their message would best fit the development of early Christianity within the wider context of the Roman world. There are no New Testament manuscripts dating from the 1st century—hence no originals. The earliest surviving complete copies of the Gospels date no earlier than the 4th century. In both cases—our manuscript and the canonical Gospels—we do not know who the author was. As in the Gospels, there are no dates given within our manuscript concerning its authorship. Nor are there datable originals with which to compare our copy. We only have copies of copies of copies, written centuries after the original, and the manuscript trail takes us back only so far. And yet, our manuscript roughly dates to the same time as our earliest copies of the Gospels—maybe even earlier.
While the document in question went by many names in the ancient world, scholars today refer to it as Joseph and Aseneth. The work is a curious one. For one thing, its name is terribly misleading. It was dubbed Joseph and Aseneth because it purports to be about the ancient Israelite patriarch Joseph and his obscure Egyptian wife, Aseneth. According to the Biblical Book of Genesis (chapters 37–50), these individuals lived some thirty-seven hundred years ago, a few generations after Abraham but long before Moses and 1,500 to 1,700 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
In contrast to the Biblical story of Joseph and Aseneth, the British Library manuscript tells a seemingly different story. It is a tale of love, sacred sex, politics, betrayal, and murder.
Pretty hot stuff, even by ancient standards.
In fact, there is very little in the manuscript that corresponds to the Biblical account of Joseph and Aseneth. It’s not the same story at all. There are too many details within the writing which invite—even demand—that we move beyond its superficial layer to its underlying meaning; a secret history, if you will. In other words, we strongly suspect that the surface narrative is really a cover story for a much deeper message—one that makes eminent sense only in the context of the first days of Christianity.