Aseneth

ASENETH (Heb. ʾĀsēnath; Septuagint ʾAσενέθ [in manuscripts of Egyptian origin often ʾAσεννέθ]; Egyptian name: ʾivs-n-nt "she belongs to Neith" [goddess of Sais]). - Wife of the patriarch Joseph, daughter of the Egyptian priest Potiphar (Potiphera) of On (Heliopolis), mother of Manasseh and Ephraim (Gen. 41:45, 51 f.; 46:20).

Wishing to explain why the Hebrew Joseph, in contrast with the (later!) Law, had contracted marriage with a foreign woman of another religion, the Targum of Ps. Jonathan (not earlier than the 7th century) spread (on Gen. 41:45; cf. Walton's Biblia polyglotta, IV) the legend that A. was the daughter of Dinah, born as a result of the sin of Shechem. The Pirqē Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 38, recount the legend in a developed form (cf. Midhrāf Jalqūṭ, § 134). With this explanation A. had become a Jewess, and the scandal of the mixed marriage was eliminated.

This haggādāh was known to the Christian Syrians (cf. Sachau, Kurzes Verzeichnis der Sachau'schen Sammlung, p. 7; G. Oppenheim, Fabula Ioseph et Asenethae e libro syriaco latine versa, Berlin 1886, p. 6 f.).

BOOK OR PRAYER OF ASENETH

An apocryphon in Greek, variously titled, concerning Joseph and A. (Gen. 41:45). There exist translations into Syriac (6th century), Armenian (before the 11th century), Ethiopic, Slavonic and Latin (13th century).

Batifol (p. 36 ff.) formulates the most common opinion of scholars (E. Schürer, W. Bousset): "An haggadic legend, probably fixed in the 5th century and found in the Targum of Ps.-Jonathan, in the Midrash of R. Eliezer, in other rabbinic compilations — this legend becoming the theme of a Christian development, in the taste of post-Constantinian hagiographic legends, probably in the 5th century — such is the Prayer of A." It would therefore be a Jewish apocryphon, subsequently Christianized. For P. Riessler the little work was written in Essene circles. Neither opinion seems well founded. A connection with the Jewish haggādāh does not exist, because in our text Joseph marries the Egyptian A. when she abandons the religion of her country with a true conversion, whereas for the haggādāh the mixed marriage became possible as a result of the fact that A. was not of foreign origin, but of Hebrew descent (daughter of Dinah). There is therefore nothing in common between the two attempts to explain Joseph's mixed marriage with the Egyptian woman.

The work is of Christian origin, probably from the Byzantine era; it presupposes knowledge of the Septuagint and of the liturgical customs of the Church (prayer is directed toward the East and not, as with the Jews, toward Jerusalem), whose liturgical language it even uses. It is an allegory, probably developed in a monastic milieu. Joseph is a type of Christ, who appears under the forms of the archangel Michael. There are evident allusions to the Eucharist, as well as reminiscences of the life and of virginal asceticism in the Church.

Erik Peterson