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Joseph and Aseneth, a book of the Old Testament Pseud-
-epigrapha, is a love story about the biblical Joseph and his
Egyptian wife Aseneth which, in richly symbolic language,
tells how the idol worshipper Aseneth was converted to belief
in the one God. In recent decades, it has featured prominently
in discussions of Second Temple Judaism as a testimony to a
Hellenistic diaspora Judaism that neither observed the rules of
conversion to Judaism (giyyur) nor cared much for the laws
of the Torah.
Rivka Nir offers a completely different understanding. Joseph
and Aseneth, she argues, teaches us nothing about Second
Temple Judaism. Rather, its vocabulary, ideas, symbols and
structure become fully comprehensible only when viewed
against the background of Syriac Christianity of the third and
fourth century. In this setting, Aseneth and Joseph are
symbolic and typological images: Aseneth symbolizes the
church, Joseph is a prototype of Christ, and their marriage is a
symbolic representation of the eternal marriage between
Christ and the church. Aseneth's religious transformation
should be understood as conversion to Christianity, an
example for polytheists to follow. Turning our attention to the
central role virginity plays in the story, Nir addresses the
problematic scene of the honeycomb and the bees, reading it
as a call to those joining the church to take a vow of virginity
and resolve to lead a life of sexual abstinence.
Through Nir's detailed analysis of the symbols and metaphors
of Joseph and Aseneth in a Christian context, the book
coalesces into a tightly integrated and meaningful whole, on
both the theological and the symbolic levels.
About the author
Rivka Nir has been teaching in the Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies in the Open University of Israel.
