Aseneth

I recently bought Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson, The Lost Gospel. This proposes that Joseph and Aseneth, commonly deemed a Jewish fanfiction from the last chapters of Genesis, is a coded Gospel.

Jacobovici is, unfortunately, a Da Vinci Code crank... as the counter-cranks at Answers in Genesis note. But remember: the Baghistan cares not if the author is a crank elsewhere as long as the premise of one particular thesis holds up. G-d knows I am guilty of a few questionable theories myself. I even believe that American liberals got men past the Van Allen Belts onto the barren Moon and back.

As I read Jacobovici-Wilson (I've only just started) I find myself not entirely interested in this thesis itself. Late-Antique students are more interested in what later readers made of it. The story found its home in Syriac Christianity. Here, is where I would ask if some readers did, indeed, read it as coded gospel.

The Copts in parallel were maintaining weird paraBiblical texts of their own - many of them buried at Nag Hammadi [mostly Sahidic] although not this particular one. And J-W make a fair case for J&A themes cropping up (for instance) in nonstandard Biblical-themed Palestinian shrines. If J-W's thesis had been published as two books, one focusing on the reception-history in Syrian Late Antiquity, that one would enjoy inherent value among SLA scholars.

The Syriac MS is bound up with a fifth-century Miaphysite (even Mono-) miscellany, featuring a chronicle by one Zacharias Rhetor - Miaphysitism having spawned from the two synods at Ephesus, never accepted over in Seleucia and subsequently retracted at Chalcedon (de facto). The MS also contains the story of the Sleepers of Ephesus. J-W propose that J&A reaches to Artemisian themes current (until the 380s) among pagans at Ephesus. Given the Ephesian character of the other texts in the MS, so far I agree. I would class the compiler of the MS as a dissident Christian based in Ephesus; a sixth century Ron Unz. UPDATE 7/5/2021 - There is also interest in Amida here.

J-W don't know that gnosticism (full blown) was yet a concern for J&A. There were several writings in early Christianity leaning in that direction, for instance the Gospel of Thomas - also parts of the Gospel of John. Certainly gnostics picked up on J&A's typology, like the Valentinians, although again these cults didn't translate our text into Coptic. J-W make a case that the Syriac theologians Aphrahat and Ephrem also accepted J&A. Although those two preceded Ephesus and were if anything Arian-leaning.

J-W are surely correct that J&A is closer to Christianity than to most Judaisms. They cite the Shepherd of Hermas, dear to Saint Irenaeus and accepted in Sinaiticus but subsequently dismissed as overly Donatist, as thematically closest. But I do wonder if J-W should have considered such early messianic Judaisms as have elevated other Genesis figures to a near-Divine rank. The Similitudes of Enoch and "Slavonic Enoch" are cases in point - early Jewish attempts to steal Jesus' thunder, abortive in Jewish literacy but copied in Christendom. Perhaps J&A is another. Although: Bauckham sees Pauline language in this text [ironic, given J-W's thoughts on Paul].

More toward my interests, as J-W note p. 140, the later reception-history of J&A themes point more to inlining the themes with the Gospel passion-narrative. Perhaps where the Gnostics didn't care about Jesus' cross, and where the Catholics don't care about Jesus' adolescence; the Arians cast about for a full biography of Our Lord which could take in his fullness. (I leave aside whether this project is possible or worth the bother.)

One can certainly fault J-W for sloppiness. They note that Aseneth, gentile who devotes herself to monotheism and to Joseph's God, doesn't follow all Torah. On its face, well... duh: Torah could not exist at a time before Sinai. Jews of the Hellenistic era did, however, believe that God had already ordained laws that would become Torah. Jubilees and the whole Aramaic Levi cycle (Amram, Qahat, Tobit etc) are full of Jewish laws anachronistically backdated into Genesis and early Exodus. By doing so such Israelites had made Torah itself superfluous, to the extent many sectarian authors bypassed Torah when they approached that time in history, as Gabriele Boccacini noted in the 1990s. J&A assumes Genesis and likely had access to Judges as well. But now I must circle back: J&A presents itself as an Israelitish love story, like Tobit and (better) Ruth. It allows to its protagonists only as much (pre)Torah as the story demands.

I agree at least to applaud J-W for giving this story another, closer look. But they overstated their case - or, at least, they demanded too much at once of their readers. They should have hit these themes as publons first: maybe in refereed journals, maybe as blog posts. maybe in some book collecting the arguments more granularly (if that be a word). THEN do the full book.