Home / Related Ancient Texts
Joseph and Asenath Pseudepigrapha — not canonical
A Jewish romance composed in Greek probably in the first century AD, expanding the brief Genesis 41:45 notice that Joseph married Asenath, daughter of Potiphera the priest of On. The narrative is half wisdom-tale, half apocalypse: Asenath repudiates the Egyptian gods (chs 1–8), undergoes a seven-day penitence in sackcloth and ashes (chs 9–13), is visited by a 'man from heaven' who renames her 'City of Refuge' and writes her name in the book of life (ch 15), then feeds her honeycomb from the heavenly bees (ch 16, a clear immortality-and-eucharist motif), and she is transformed and married to Joseph (chs 18–21). The new-name + book-of-life + bread-of-life passage in chapters 15–16 is one of the most LDS-resonant scenes in Second Temple literature — Asenath eats a food that makes her 'live forever and ever.' The marriage-and-temple typology threaded through it makes Joseph and Asenath one of the most quietly important pseudepigraphal texts for the Restoration. 29 chapters · E.W. Brooks, 1918 (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge)
Where chapter text has not yet been imported, the chapter page shows a placeholder with a pointer to the importer script. Run python3 scripts/import_pseudepigrapha.py from the project root to populate.