The Manuscript Trail
So far we have noted that around 550 C.E., Moses of Ingila made the Syriac translation of Joseph and Aseneth included in Second Zacharias’ compilation. An anonymous individual had come across a very ancient Greek manuscript in a library and had sent it to Moses for translation. That individual’s covering letter and Moses’ reply and translation are included in Second Zacharias’ compilation some twenty years later. It is evident he was being very careful to establish this writing’s lineage—and history—so far as he knew it.
But here our trail ends. How ancient was the Greek manuscript that Moses used for his Syriac translation? Was it a 5th-century, 4th-century, or perhaps even a 3rd-century document? What, moreover, was its lineage? Was the earlier Greek version itself a copy of an older Hebrew, Aramaic, or even Greek manuscript? And, if so, how far back in time does this copying and recopying process extend?
We’d really like to know when Joseph and Aseneth was originally composed. After all, if it can be dated to the time of Jesus, maybe it preserves not only a forgotten theology, but also a lost history penned by the people who knew him.
A manuscript trail—back to an existing 4th-century version with tantalizing possibilities of even earlier manuscripts—is not at all uncommon in the study of early church writings. As we’ve seen, very rarely do earlier manuscripts exist, even for such foundational Christian writings as the Gospels and Paul’s letters that most scholars agree date from the 1st century. Just because the earliest existing copies of these documents come from the 4th century, no one argues that they were first written in that century. Given what we know of the Roman Empire at the time, and the likely course of Christian theological development, most scholars attempt to find a niche for the Gospels within earlier Christianity when Christian writings could logically have first been written.1
The same is true of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which in addition to the community’s own sectarian writings also preserved the oldest known manuscripts of virtually all of the books of the Hebrew Bible. Based on this find, we can now trace most of the books of the Hebrew Bible to at least the 1st century B.C.E. But this doesn’t mean that this is when they were first composed. The presumption for both the Christian Scriptures and the Hebrew Bible is that the existing manuscripts represent copies of copies of copies of much earlier writings.
The key point is that the date for the initial composition of an ancient writing cannot be established solely on the basis of manuscript lineage. Evidence of when a document was originally composed is circumstantial. It’s essentially an argument from fit—that is, the congruence between that about which the text speaks and the historical circumstances we think it addresses. In an attempt to date the composition of a text, scholars also use quotations by earlier ancient authors.
For assistance in dating the composition of Joseph and Aseneth, therefore, we turned to the few scholars who have examined this text over the past century. For various reasons, but primarily because the main characters seem to be the Hebrew patriarch Joseph and his wife, Aseneth, most of these scholars believe that the author of Joseph and Aseneth is likely Jewish and that the text should be placed in a Jewish context. Some, like Ross Shepard Kraemer and Rivka Nir, however, believe that the work is Christian in origin, not Jewish.2 Surprisingly, as we shall soon see, we discovered that many date its original composition to early Christian times—1st century C.E. In other words, according to many of the scholars who studied the text, our manuscript may very well have been written when Jesus, Mary the Magdalene, and Jesus’ disciples were still alive.
A 1st-Century Origin?
There are a number of ancient writings relating to the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament that were not included in any Bible—Jewish or Christian. These works were influential in their day, at least in some circles; but for some reason, they were not deemed by religious authorities to be sufficiently meritorious to be canonized as sacred scripture. Scholars call this literature Apocrypha or Pseudepigrapha. Many of these writings were produced—close to the 1st century C.E.—by apocalyptically-minded individuals, devout people who were convinced that the end of the present age was at hand. These collections include such important ancient writings as the Book of Enoch, Jubilees, the Psalms of Solomon, and other writings attributed to notable figures such as the prophet Ezra, Adam, Jacob, and Moses.
Apocryphal and pseudepigraphal texts have been collected in recent years by H. F. D. Sparks and by James H. Charlesworth.3 The latter, for instance, has assembled over sixty such pseudepigraphal writings, and both his book and Sparks’ contain translations as well as useful introductions to each work. Interestingly, Joseph and Aseneth is present in both collections. The inclusion of this document in a group of apocryphal or pseudepigraphal writings indicates that these compilers think it originated in early or even pre-Christian times.
In the late 19th century, one of the earliest scholars to examine Joseph and Aseneth, Pierre Batiffol, at first dated the writing to the 5th century C.E., surmising that it was based on a legend originating in the 4th century. Later on, however, he changed his mind, re-dating it to the 1st century C.E. This dating seems to have stuck with later 20th-century scholars.4 A French scholar, Marc Philonenko, for instance, dated it to around 100 C.E.5 In 1985, Christoph Burchard—who translated Joseph and Aseneth in Charlesworth’s compilation from a variety of later Greek manuscripts—contended that the writing originated either in the 1st century B.C.E. or the 1st century C.E.6 In 1996, Gideon Bohak placed the origin of the work even earlier than all others, dating it to the time of the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century B.C.E.7
Summarizing scholarly opinion in the mid-1980s, Burchard notes that “none has put the book much after A.D. 200, and some have placed it as early as the second century B.C.”8 More recently, however, Ross Shepard Kraemer arrived at a different date. She concludes: “the cumulative evidence overwhelmingly places our Aseneth no earlier than the third or fourth century C.E.”9
So all the scholars are clear that Joseph and Aseneth represents a very ancient text, the origins of which go well beyond the 6th-century Syriac manuscript in our possession. But how far back is a question open to debate. Many think the 1st century C.E. is likely—that is, during early Christian times, perhaps dating to Jesus’ lifetime, or some time right after his crucifixion.
For our part, we believe that there are several indications within the text itself that favor an early dating—to the 100s or even earlier. Like other scholars, our arguments are circumstantial, so they’re open to the charge of being speculative. But circumstantial evidence is still better than none at all. Let’s turn to it now.
First, we note the imagery of the bridal chamber in the scenes where Aseneth shares her bed, so to speak, with the angelic Joseph. In our text, this idea is central to understanding the union between the transformed Aseneth and the heavenly Joseph. Gilles Quispel has suggested that a heavenly journey resulting in a meeting with a cosmic twin can be found in some forms of early Jewish mysticism. Perhaps here we have a missing link between early heretical Jewish mysticism, Jewish Christianity, and Gnosticism.10 In any event, sharing a bed with Joseph’s heavenly twin is not an accidental feature of the Joseph and Aseneth story. It tells us a lot about how this marriage was understood theologically by the people who preserved this text. Later, we’ll discuss in detail the significance of this powerful imagery. In the meantime, we draw your attention to the fact that for at least one influential form of early Christianity—Valentinian Gnosticism—the ceremony of the bridal chamber constituted one of their most sacred rituals, having to do with the real meaning of human redemption. The leader of this movement, Valentinus, lived during the first half of the 2nd century, from approximately 100 to 160 C.E. Interestingly, he almost became bishop of Rome, the Pope.11
Gnosticism derives its name from gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge. Pagans, Jews, and Christians all had esoteric knowledge streams in their respective religions. These represented an attempt to glean hidden knowledge from the various traditions. Christian Gnosticism was a form of Christian mysticism. Within this tradition, there were various teachers and various schools. According to Jonathan Hill, “some of the most important Christian teachers of the 2nd century are thought to have been Gnostics.”12 Within Gnosticism, Valentinians formed one of the major groups. For them, the bridal chamber was at the center of their theology.
Since Joseph and Aseneth uses bridal chamber imagery to convey the inner meaning of the sacred union between Joseph and Aseneth, we are inclined to posit the heyday of this writing no later than the 2nd century, when this kind of theology was vigorous and widespread. After all, by the 3rd century, Valentinian Christianity had dwindled and by the 4th century it had virtually disappeared.
In fact, our document likely comes from the 1st century. While Joseph and Aseneth uses bridal-chamber imagery for interpreting the significance of the marriage, it interestingly does not set forth a bridal-chamber ritual or sacrament for its followers. That is, the manuscript is content to report on the marriage using bridal-chamber symbolism. But it stops there. It does not go on to institutionalize this unique event as a ritual, as a way in which faithful followers could memorialize, celebrate, or participate in its meaning. This gap between reporting and ritualizing is significant. Judaism, for instance, doesn’t just report on the Exodus from Egypt, it ritualizes it in the annual commemoration of Passover. Paul, moreover, didn’t just report Jesus’ death. By the mid-50s, he had memorialized that unique event in his Eucharistic ceremony so that his followers could participate in the body and blood of the Christ. In this way, they could vicariously experience Jesus’ suffering on the cross. Likewise, by the 80s, in the Didache, the Jesus Movement members in Jerusalem—later called Ebionites—developed their own version of the Friday night Jewish prayers, celebrating the life and teachings of Jesus.
By way of contrast, the community for whom Joseph and Aseneth was a key writing had not yet created a ritual around it. There is no mention in the text that readers of this writing should participate in some rite that would perpetuate that unique event, namely Jesus’ marriage to Mary the Magdalene. So, we suggest, this points to an early dating for our manuscript, likely sometime in the 1st century C.E., during the interval between when the marriage was reported and when the event became ritualized in the bridal chamber sacrament.
So the work probably already existed in the 2nd century. But that doesn’t mean that it originated then. The story, as we have it now, likely grew somewhat in the telling. Just because it contains Valentinian Gnostic imagery doesn’t mean that the writing as a whole was composed in Valentinian circles. The nucleus of the tale, and the ideas it represents, may have existed earlier, receiving Valentinian coloring in the 2nd century.
Second, as we will soon see, it seems that the text is referring to an actual community, a hitherto unknown form of early Christianity that sprang from Jesus himself and survived among his earliest Gentile followers.13 This group may represent the missing link between Jesus and Gnostic Christianity which emerges full-blown on the historical scene in the 2nd century, its origins unknown. Put differently, scholars have no idea what led to the creation of Christian Gnosticism, which seems to appear on the historical scene fully formed in the 2nd century. Gnosticism’s origins are a mystery to scholars of early Christianity. How did it come to be? In Joseph and Aseneth, we may indeed have discovered the roots of Gnostic Christianity.
Many Pauline traditionalists like to dismiss the Gnostics. For example, as Bernard Green condescendingly writes, “Lost gospels, secret teaching, hidden mysteries: these all sound intoxicating to the modern reader but when the myths are written out in cold prose they sound banal and absurd.”14 This is obviously not an objective assessment. This is Green’s theology. As we will show, these “banal” myths may be better grounded in history than the canonical Gospels.
At any rate, the earliest Christian community constitutes the natural environment in which the text itself could have been composed—perhaps in northern Israel, or what is today Syria or southeastern Turkey—right where our manuscript was preserved.
Third, there is no indication in our text of any preoccupation with the stature of Joseph other than to indicate that he is both human and angelic—that is, divine. Whoever Joseph represents, if it is a Christian text, the writer does not betray any preoccupation with such theological matters as the incarnation of God, the person of Christ, or the relationship of the Son to God the Father. These so-called Trinitarian disputes were characteristic of the 3rd and 4th centuries. Because our text is not concerned with these subtleties, we suspect that its composition would have had to occur prior to these times.
Fourth, a 2nd-century or earlier dating would fit what we know of other writings produced during this era. By the time of the 2nd century, Christians were attempting to fill in the historical gaps. Many undoubtedly asked: What was Jesus’ young life like? And so we get tales like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, telling us of Jesus’ boyhood adventures. Others asked: Why was Mary, Jesus’ mother, so special? Why was she chosen to be the “God-bearer”? And so we have the Infancy Gospel of James, which tells us of Mary’s own immaculate conception and her very special upbringing, first in her own home and then in the Jerusalem Temple under the guidance of the priests. Still others wanted to know: What was Paul’s real message? And so we have The Acts of Thecla, tracing Paul’s ascetic preaching in a place called Iconium and examining his impact upon an impressionable teenage girl called Thecla. Others asked: Who was Thomas and where did he go after the crucifixion? Hence The Acts of Judas Thomas was produced, which traces his route through Syria into India.
In other words, the 2nd century was a rich time for supplementing what we know from the Gospel writings, to satisfy early Christian curiosity concerning details about which the canonical texts are silent. All or some of these texts may have been based on more or less historical material. In any event, the 2nd century represents an excellent environment in which Joseph and Aseneth could have developed from an earlier story set in Jesus’ lifetime. This is all-important. Put simply, the evidence suggests that Joseph and Aseneth is not some late work of fiction, but an early writing preserving some kind of encoded history.
Taken together, it is clear from the scholarly literature that it is not outlandish to date the text—at least the nucleus of the text—to the time of Jesus or shortly thereafter. More than this, many of the scholars contend that Joseph and Aseneth dates to a time earlier than our earliest Gospels. In other words, we are on solid scholarly ground when we suggest that the work is both early and Christian.