WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE MANUSCRIPT?
1. It Records a World-Changing Event
We’ve already mentioned that the manuscript—British Library Manuscript #17,202, in which Joseph and Aseneth is found—forms part of a larger collection of writings. A Syriac-speaking Christian monk put the collection together around 570 C.E.1 Since scholars don’t know this monk’s name, they refer to him by the awkward-sounding designation Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor. In academic terms, Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor means “not that Zacharias,” not the Zacharias who was a famous orator. For convenience sake, we’ll call this unnamed monk who preserved our copy of Joseph and Aseneth by the name Second Zacharias.
Second Zacharias gave his work a masterful title: A Volume of Records of Events Which Have Shaped the World. It was an ambitious project by any standard. It seems that Second Zacharias was a monk with a tremendous sense of history who believed that the ancient writings that he was including in his collection were of great importance and had to be preserved for posterity. And so he assembled them in one convenient place. As far as Second Zacharias was concerned, these are not documents that just describe random happenings: they are writings about events that transformed the world . . . his world.
Here’s what Second Zacharias chose to include in this anthology of important ancient documents:
• A work by Sylvester, Bishop of Rome, relating to the conversion and Baptism of the Roman Emperor Constantine;
• A document related to finding the 1st-century relics of Stephen and Nicodemus, two important early followers of Jesus;
• A story of miracles, the Legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus;
• An important church history penned by an eyewitness, the so-called real Zacharias Rhetor; and, central to our interests,
• A translation of the work he called “The Story of Joseph the Just and Aseneth his Wife.”
Note that Second Zacharias didn’t compose this latter writing. It’s not something that originated with him in the 6th century. In his compilation, just before his section on “The Story of Joseph the Just and Aseneth his Wife,” Second Zacharias tells us the origin of the translation that he’s including in his collection. He appends a letter from some anonymous individual—likely a monk—to a man called Moses of Ingila. We know the latter from the historical record. In Appendix II, we have provided the first-ever translation of this letter to Moses of Ingila, which tells us how our manuscript came to be translated from ancient Greek into Syriac. In other words, in his collection of works, Second Zacharias tells us that he is preserving the Syriac translation, one initiated some years earlier at the behest of an anonymous writer. So what prompted the translation?
Around 550 C.E., the anonymous letter-writer tells us that he was in the library of the bishops of Beroea, in the town of Resh’aina located close to the Persian border, in the extreme eastern portion of the Roman Empire. There he found “a small, very old book written in Greek called ‘of Aseneth’.” He asks Moses of Ingila to translate this ancient writing from Greek into Syriac. When we read this previously untranslated almost fifteen-hundred-year-old letter, we were surprised to learn the anonymous letter-writer’s motive for initiating this translation: he suspected that the manuscript contained a “hidden wisdom” and an “inner meaning.” As a result, he asked Moses of Ingila to provide not only a translation, but also an explanation.
In his reply—which we’ve also translated and included in Appendix II—Moses of Ingila agrees to translate the Greek text. Furthermore, Moses confirms that, in his judgment, Joseph and Aseneth contains a hidden message, an “inner meaning.” But he says that he “hesitate[s]” to speculate on what that meaning may be. To justify his silence, he quotes scripture: “the babbling mouth draws ruin near” (Proverbs 10:19)—something akin to “loose lips sink ships.”
More than this, Moses of Ingila hints that dealing with the text’s secrets may put his life in danger. To emphasize the danger, he again quotes scripture: “He who guards his mouth will preserve his life” (Proverbs 13:3). He reiterates that his response is driven by “fear” of revealing what God has concealed, again quoting scripture: “It is the glory of God to conceal things” (Proverbs 25:2). While acknowledging this divine prerogative, however, Moses of Ingila confirms that the document does contain a hidden meaning: it has to do, he says, with the Word becoming flesh—that is, it has something to do with Jesus. In his words: “For I have read the story from the old Greek book you sent to me, and there is inner meaning in it. In short, to tell the truth: our Lord, our God, the Word who, at the will of the father and by the power of the Holy Spirit of the Lord, took flesh, and [became human] and was united to the soul with its senses completely. . . .” and here the manuscript is deliberately cut by someone who wanted to forever obliterate what Moses of Ingila thought the encrypted meaning was.
From these letters we now know that the translator of the text into Syriac and the man who commissioned him both believed it had a secret meaning. At least one of them believed that the secret had something to do with Jesus. The latter also believed that revealing the secret could get you killed. What possible secret involving Christianity would make people living in the 6th century feel that their lives were in danger for having come into contact with this text?
We investigate further.
We now know that while the 6th-century Syriac manuscript included by Second Zacharias in his collection is the oldest surviving manuscript of this work, its origins go back to earlier times. On this point, it is important to note that it is not unusual to have a 4th-, 5th-, or 6th-century manuscript of an important early Christian text, even though the original must have been much older. For example, we don’t have any 2nd- or 1st-century originals of the New Testament writings. The oldest surviving manuscripts of the Gospels date from the 4th century,2 roughly the same time as Joseph and Aseneth. As with our manuscript, however, we know—or at least strongly suspect—that the earliest copies of the New Testament in existence were, in fact, composed much earlier. In other words, our text seems to be as old as the New Testament writings—or, perhaps, even older.3
To review—the context in which our work is located gives us vital information about its stature and perceived importance: Joseph and Aseneth is included in a series of writings Second Zacharias considered transformative. Recall that he was a 6th-century Christian monk and concerned about events that shaped the world as he knew it. Let’s take a closer look at what he assembled for posterity.
One text relates to the relics of Stephen and Nicodemus. These are not obscure figures. Rather, these artifacts concern the very beginnings of the Christian Church. According to the New Testament Book of Acts, sometime in the 30s C.E. Stephen became the first Christian martyr (Acts 6:8–7:60). Stephen was a Hellenist, a Jew who spoke Greek and who had possibly also adopted non-Jewish or Gentile practices. He paid with his life for being a member of the early Jesus movement. For his part, Nicodemus was an influential Pharisee and a member of the supreme Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. Along with Joseph of Arimathaea, another influential member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus prepared Jesus’ body for burial (John 19:38–42).
Pairing Nicodemus and Stephen is very significant. One represents continuity with the Jewish tradition. The other represents the embrace of Hellenism (that is, Gentile culture and values). The alleged discovery of 1st-century relics pertaining to these two individuals—one of its first Jewish sympathizers and Christianity’s first martyr—must have been sensational news to devout Christians of the 6th century. But is this why they were included in Second Zacharias’ collection? On a very simple level, what do their lives teach us? Nicodemus kept his faith a secret, and he survived. Stephen was open about it, and he died.
Second Zacharias also included a work of political transformation in his anthology that had a profound impact upon the future of Christianity. This was an important writing about Constantine, the first Christian emperor. Without Constantine, Christianity might have remained a collection of disparate groups—persecuted minorities—fighting amongst themselves: Arians, Gnostics, Ebionites, and many others, as well as the so-called orthodox Christians who stemmed from Paul’s teachings. Through Constantine’s efforts, this latter form of Christianity emerged as the favored religion of the empire. Constantine’s motivation? There are several possibilities, but seeing the sign of the cross in the sky before a crucial battle is the traditional story. Just sensing that the empire required a new, more robust faith to undergird its institutions is another possibility. At any rate, Constantine moved swiftly to reverse the anti-Christian policies of his predecessor, Diocletian. In the Edict of Milan in 313 C.E. he proclaimed tolerance for all religions throughout the empire, Christianity included. By 325 C.E., Christianity was the favored religion, and in that year Constantine assembled the historic Council of Nicea, which issued the defining creed of Christianity, the Nicene Creed. Henceforth, being a Christian meant subscribing to the statement of faith that Constantine created. Clearly, this was a defining moment for the Christian Church. It also defined who got to preserve their texts and their beliefs. This meant that one form of Christianity now had the muscle of the Roman emperor behind it. The others could choose to go the Stephen way and become martyrs, or take the path of Nicodemus and go underground.
One of the most interesting texts Second Zacharias included in his anthology deals with personal transformation. Should anyone doubt, here was proof positive of eternal life: The Legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. This legend constituted a key miracle narrative, one that was more up-to-date than the miracle stories of Jesus’ own time. The text concerns Christian believers who were walled up in a cave during the persecutions of Emperor Decius around 250 C.E. Over a century later they were discovered . . . no, not dead as we might expect . . . but, remarkably, just sleeping. According to the story, they then awakened.4 For Christians like Second Zacharias, this was proof that God preserves the faithful. Again, on a very simple level, it teaches that during times of persecution it’s good to hide because the day will come when your beliefs—assumed dead—can see the light of day again.
Another text included in Second Zacharias’ anthology relates to an important theological transformation that the church of his time was undergoing. The 5th and 6th centuries were remarkably fruitful in terms of theological development as Christians strove to thrash out the correct formulation of Jesus’ identity. In those days, one set of issues concerned what Christian theologians call “the person of Christ”—was he really, truly, and fully human? If he was, then perhaps he had a wife and children. Or was he wholly divine and only appeared to be human? Or was he, perhaps, part human and part divine?
If the latter, a divine-human, then how should certain puzzling New Testament texts be explained? Two key passages are at stake. Jesus’ Baptism by John, for instance, would imply sinfulness on the part of Jesus, since John’s Baptism was for the remission of sin. Was Jesus sinful? Similarly, Jesus’ suffering and death upon the cross—did he really die? If Jesus were solely divine, the crucifixion would be a sham execution and sacrifice of his human avatar. If Jesus were partly divine, then only one part of him died. After all, by definition, God cannot die. In the alternative, if Jesus were fully human, are we speaking about human sacrifice here? All these seemingly arcane questions are actually connected to Jesus’ relationship to God—was he God? Or was he, while divine, in some way subordinate to God? Was he, perhaps, an angelic being—quasi-divine, as it were?
This debate is preserved in the Church History composed by the real Zacharias Rhetor. This original Zacharias was a Christian born in Gaza who subsequently practiced law in Constantinople before becoming the Bishop of Mytilene. In his day, the original Zacharias participated in some of the most important Christian councils of the 5th century. Out of these experiences, Zacharias wrote a Church History still consulted by scholars today. It’s because of the prominence given to this history in Second Zacharias’ compilation that the anonymous monk was given the scholarly nickname of Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor.
The Church History of the real Zacharias Rhetor covers the crucial period between 451 and 491 C.E., outlining the struggles of the church to express the doctrine of Christ in precise theological terms. Zacharias seems to have leaned toward monophysite Christianity, meaning the belief in Jesus’ mono or single nature. But this doctrine did not win out. The theological and power-politics debate led to the doctrine of the Trinity, the view that Jesus is fully divine and fully human, and that God is to be spoken of as three-in-one: Father, Son, and Spirit. Put differently, Zacharias’ history records the victory of one version of Christianity over all others. It also explains why the texts of the losers had to be encoded.
As can be readily seen, all the writings included in A Volume of Records of Events Which Have Shaped the World pertain to Christian transformation. All, that is, except—on the surface—Joseph and Aseneth, which seems to stand out as an anomaly in this collection. More than this, all the texts seem to point to the need to hide one’s beliefs from the empowered authorities, if one’s beliefs do not jibe with their official versions.
Why did Second Zacharias include Joseph and Aseneth? The simple answer is that it, too, must be a Christian text. Meaning, the only reason why he would include it in a collection of texts dealing exclusively with Christian history and theology is because it is not a Jewish exegesis on Joseph, but a Christian exposition on Joseph. But why include an encoded Christian text? The other manuscripts in this anthology, especially original Zacharias’ Church History, provide the answer. At the time of Second Zacharias’ compilation, one form of Christianity had triumphed over the others. If it were to survive, any text that diverged from the official line would have had to be either hidden or encoded.
Let us elaborate. The 4th and 5th centuries were truly dangerous times. Christians with differing views—their churches, writings, and leaders—were often persecuted or suppressed by the faction that had won. One example of this was Athanasius’ Festal Letter of 367 C.E., circulated to all the churches and monasteries under his supervision. In this document, he outlined the twenty-seven authoritative books that he believed should make up the New Testament. Athanasius was the highly influential bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, one of the most important Christian centers of the ancient Roman world. Over the course of the next fifty years, other bishops agreed with Athanasius’ selection of authoritative books. As a result, his letter had the honor of defining the set of writings that would eventually constitute the New Testament.
But by defining what was in, Athanasius’ letter also defined what was out. By identifying twenty-seven authoritative texts, his letter excluded Gospels and letters that other communities of Christians considered authoritative. His letter excluded texts that certain Christian communities used in their worship services and in formulating their doctrines. Basically, these other sets of authoritative writings from other Christian communities—those not on Athanasius’ privileged list—were now consigned to the fire.
If you were a monk who did not agree with Athanasius, and if you were not prepared to give up your holy scripture just because some powerful bishops decided to exclude them, what did you do? What were your options? Basically, you only had two: physically hide your scriptures, or alter them slightly so that they can be hidden in plain sight.
Unbeknownst to Athanasius, for example, a group of monks under his authority in Egypt buried some of their library codices in jars and placed these in caves near Nag Hammadi. Like the Seven Sleepers, these hidden manuscripts—once thought dead—came back to life. They were found in 1945 and now provide us with some fifty Christian writings that we did not have previously because Athanasius designated them as unacceptable. The Nag Hammadi writings include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Dialogue of the Savior, and the Gospel of Truth—all-important texts read, discussed, preserved, and transmitted by a segment of early Christianity.5 From these texts we know that the monks who buried them may have pretended to be orthodox but were, actually, preserving dissenting opinions—just as Second Zacharias does with Joseph and Aseneth.
So why did our monk choose to include Joseph and Aseneth in his remarkable collection of Christian texts? What is the world-changing event to which this manuscript is hinting? What are its secrets?
2. It’s Written in Syriac, an Ancient Christian Language
The oldest version of Joseph and Aseneth is written in Syriac. If we could figure out when the original story was composed, clearly, this would help us decode the historical context it’s referring to.
Syriac, along with Greek and Latin, was one of the three major languages used by ancient Christians. In fact, Syriac Christianity preserved traditions and beliefs that were unique to its culture. Not infrequently, Syriac Christians in the eastern Roman Empire and beyond saw matters differently from Christians in the western portion of the empire. Many Syriac Christians, for instance, refused to honor the title given to Mary, mother of Jesus, at a church council in 431 C.E. That council—the Council of Ephesus—acclaimed Mary as theotokos, that is, Greek for “God-bearer” or “Mother of God.”
Many Syriac Christians preferred a more modest theology, one that would speak of Mary as the mother of Jesus’ humanity. For them, the phrase Mother of God sounded blasphemous if not utterly impossible, a view shared later on in history by Protestant Christianity. The Syriac Christians didn’t win this battle. To this day, the most popular prayer in millions of Christian homes goes as follows: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” This prayer to Mary to intercede with her son probably surpasses the number of daily recitals of the Lord’s Prayer.
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and his early disciples. It is written from right to left, like Hebrew and Arabic. Reading the Gospels in Syriac is the closest we can come today to the sound and nuances of the original words uttered by Jesus. For centuries, many Christians in the eastern Roman Empire used Syriac in their liturgy, gospels, hymns, and theological writings. In its heyday, from the 3rd through the 7th centuries, Syriac-speaking Christianity rivaled Greek and Latin-speaking Christianity in size, stretching from modern-day Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan into regions of India and even, eventually, Mongolia and China. While suffering from assimilation after the Islamic conquests of much of its historic territory, several Syriac-speaking churches still survive today, including the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East (Nestorian).
Syriac Christianity represents an important religious tradition, little known in Protestant and Catholic North America and Europe today. It preserves texts and writings not widely distributed in the West. The Syriac Christians were closer in thought and spirit to their Jewish counterparts living in the same geographical areas. They were also less dismissive of the Old Testament than their Western counterparts. For example, well-known Syriac leaders such as the church father Aphrahat, who lived in the late 3rd century C.E., engaged in dialogue with Jewish leaders. Also, a prominent early 4th-century composer, Ephrem the Syrian, wrote thousands of hymns as teaching vehicles, often on Old Testament themes.
Syriac Christianity traces its origins to a letter that it claims was written to Jesus in the late 20s C.E. by King Abgar V of Edessa in what is now southeastern Turkey. In that letter, the ailing Abgar begged Jesus to come and heal him. In exchange, he offered Jesus sanctuary from those who would seek to kill him. This incidentally underscores that, during the time of his activism, it was well known that Jesus’ life was threatened. According to the traditions of the Syriac Christians, although Jesus did not flee to Edessa, he did take the time to dictate a personal response to King Abgar. In this letter, he assured the King that an emissary would be sent to heal him, but only after his own death and resurrection.
Modern scholars think this correspondence is mythical, but that was not the perception in the early church. Eusebius, the influential 4th-century church historian, thought that the letters were genuine (Ecclesiastical History, Book 1, Chapter 13). He tells us that the originals were stored in the Archives of Edessa, and he conveniently provides a translation of these Syriac documents. He also says that Jesus kept his promise to King Abgar. Eusebius relates that after Jesus’ ascension, Judas Thomas, one of Jesus’ original disciples, sent Thaddeus (also known as Addai), an intimate of the group, to heal Abgar.
According to these traditions, therefore, Jesus kept his promise to King Abgar. But what about King Abgar’s promise to provide Jesus with refuge? In the Eastern tradition a king never went back on his word—recall, for example, the Book of Esther and the edicts of the Persian ruler. If the Kingdom of Edessa preserved what it believed was King Abgar’s promise of refuge for Jesus, how did its inhabitants believe that the promise had been kept? Is it possible that after Jesus’ crucifixion, this kingdom provided refuge for his biological family? Or perhaps in return for curing King Abgar, the kingdom provided refuge for Jesus’ “theological” descendants, that is, his “true” church? Perhaps Syriac-speaking monks saw it as their duty to preserve texts banned by the Western church—to give them refuge, so to speak. In any event, the Kingdom of Edessa was one of the earliest kingdoms to convert to Christianity.
This reinforces the question: whatever the connection between Syriac Christianity and Joseph and Aseneth, what does its preservation among this particular group of Christians tell us about the meaning of the text?
3. It Was a Popular Story
Although the text is now virtually unknown, numerous manuscripts of Joseph and Aseneth have come down to us from antiquity. These are all later than the Syriac one. Not a single one was transmitted by Jews. It should be noted that Greek, Armenian, Slavonic, and Romanian manuscripts survive only in Christian contexts,6 nowhere else. But, as this manuscript’s legacy indicates, the text was preserved primarily in Eastern Christian circles—Syriac, Armenian, and Greek Christian traditions. Moreover, regardless of the textual family to which they belong, more than half of the Greek manuscripts of Joseph and Aseneth also contain another work called The Life of Joseph. This work is associated with the great 4th-century Syrian Christian hymnist Ephrem. Although The Life of Joseph does deal with the Biblical Joseph, there is no question that it is a Christian retelling of the story. Because of this, Kraemer concludes that “the composition of Aseneth by a Christian is inherently plausible.”7
Joseph and Aseneth only entered western Christianity very, very late, in the 13th century; and from that time onwards a number of Latin copies were made. For the most part, scholars have ignored the Syriac manuscript. While several English translations of Joseph and Aseneth are available, all of these are based on later Greek manuscripts. Until now, except for the Latin version, there has been no translation based on the Syriac text.
Moreover, the manuscripts vary considerably—some are longer than others.8 It’s hard to tell if the original was a simple text elaborated on by later copyists, or if the original was longer and was edited down by later censors.9 The Syriac manuscript in the British Library belongs to one of the longer versions of the story.
The sheer number of surviving manuscripts and variants, therefore, makes clear that this was at one time a popular story. It’s possible that Joseph and Aseneth changed and expanded over the centuries to suit different occasions and audience interests, and to put down in writing what had previously been understood. This is not unusual. Texts composed during the early Christian period were not treated as the unalterable or inerrant word of God. The author of the Gospel of Matthew, for example, felt perfectly free to correct the Gospel of Mark.10 The author of the Gospel of Luke also altered Mark. Consider, for example, how Luke handles Jesus’ Baptism. Mark confidently has Jesus baptized by John (Mark 1:9). Writing some twenty years later than Mark, Luke senses a theological problem. Namely, John the Baptizer’s Baptism was for the remission of sin. So Jesus being baptized by him might suggest that Jesus was a sinful human being. As a result, Luke fudges the account. He notes that John had been arrested and then mentions that Jesus was baptized, but he doesn’t indicate how or by whom (Luke 3:15–21). Put simply, New Testament manuscripts were altered in the process of transmission so as to bring their point of view into conformity with the growing theology of the early church.11
Manuscript variation is also not foreign to the Christian Biblical tradition. Various endings to the Gospel of Mark are well known to scholars, and many editions of the New Testament include both a shorter and a longer ending. There’s even an entirely different version that scholars refer to as Secret Mark, a document Morton Smith claimed to have found in the Mar Saba Monastery in the Judaean desert.12
The Gospel of Matthew also existed in several forms in the early church. The Ebionites, an early Jewish/Christian group, for instance, used a version of Matthew that did not include any reference to a virgin birth, believing that Jesus had a natural birth like any other human. Another version of the Gospel of Matthew, based on a different manuscript tradition, has recently come to light. It was preserved in Jewish circles and was found in the writings of the 14th-century Jewish philosopher Shem-Tob ben-Isaac ben-Shaprut.13
These kinds of variations are not unique to New Testament texts. For example, the Greek or Septuagint version of the Book of Esther is considerably longer than the Hebrew account: it makes the character of Esther less idealized and more human than the Hebrew version. Likewise, the Septuagint version of the Book of Daniel contains passages not found in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., the Prayer of Azariah in the furnace, the story of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon).
So textual variants are not at all unknown when it comes to influential Biblical writings. But these variations always serve some kind of theological agenda. What theological agenda is Joseph and Aseneth serving? What Christian story is it refining? Furthermore, what accounts for the extraordinary popularity of the Joseph and Aseneth tale?
To sum up: what we now know about the manuscript heightens the intrigue. It’s ensconced in an anthology of writings that relate to world-transforming events. It was preserved by an ancient Christian community, one that used a language very similar to that spoken by Jesus and his followers. And it was exceedingly popular.
If it were just a story about two figures from ancient Jewish history, why would successive generations of Christians have read, treasured, translated, expanded, and preserved this writing? No other figure from the Hebrew Bible received such popularization at Christian hands—not Abraham, not Moses, not David, not Ezra. Just Joseph. Why him alone of all the available figures? And why Aseneth, about whom the Bible is relatively silent? Why her?
Is it, perhaps, because Joseph and Aseneth is an extremely good ancient yarn . . . or is there more to the story?