The Evangelical Universalist Forum

No, Simon, Joseph and Aseneth isn't a LOST GOSPEL {eyeroll}

Getting a head start on tamping down the sceptical panic-mongering slated for next Easter, several months ahead of time:

christiancadre.blogspot.com/2013 … ckham.html

Might as well post it up here, too, so if people get worried about the marketing foofaraw next year (or whatever year they manage to finally get it printed – it’s been attempted since 2010), and do a search on the site, they’ll see it’s already been accounted for long ago.

In brief, Joseph and Aseneth was a popular Jewish (possibly Jewish-Christian) 1st century poetic romance, which remained popular with both Jews and Christians for several centuries afterward (even up to today among Judeo-Christian scholars), rather like the Song of Songs and for much the same reason. (Go go erotic ethical mysticism, yay! :sunglasses: ) It’s a completely harmless work, that scholars have known about since literally the 1st century; it is not a “Lost Gospel”, because (1) it is not a Gospel at all without deep levels of special “decoding” to eke out a supposed historical narrative code in it; and (2) it was never Lost. There are plenty of translations in many languages, including English already, even though not (strictly) of the Syriac copy of a Greek version included in a Syriac collection of various odds and ends the (quite orthodox but anonymous) collector thought nifty (mostly Zachariah Rhetor’s Ecclesiastical History from about a century prior).

(I say “strictly” because that Syriac copy has most likely already been factored into English critical editions, for whatever worth it has, which probably isn’t much as it’s a late copy by someone who was getting a friend to translate it from Greek into Syriac and his friend may not have done a bang-up job after all.)

There are more links and information in the Cadre article above, including to a nice archive where anyone can read Joseph and Aseneth in many different translations totally for free without having to pay for someone adding an anti-Christian conspiracy theory by creative interpretation of it.

I have just finished reading Joseph and Aseneth (or “Asenath”) for the first time, and don’t understand why anyone would consider this to be a threat.

(True, Asenath is another way to spell her name, and the one I also remembered from seeing it referenced years ago; but Mark et al kept spelling it with -eth, so I figured I ought to follow the lead there, as he’s much more of a geeky fan of the work than I am. :slight_smile: )

Of course no one in their right minds would see it as a threat – unless it’s creatively reinterpreted according to a secret “code”.

Then they’ll show us. THEY’LL SHOW US ALLLLL!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!! :mrgreen:

It’s too bad because it’s a great poem and deserves to be more well known.

Wait…next you’ll be telling me The Davinci Code isn’t real!!!
Come on Jason…you’re playing right into their hands!

:laughing:

The TheVinci Code is not real. :laughing:

:astonished: what a huge shock!

Yeah, there’s no telling how much damage Dan Brown did with that, even though it gave us plenty of opportunity to educate people on the various historical issues which even atheists can work out and theological issues. Some poor visitor to the Cadre earlier this year was still trying to appeal to Dan Brown as an expert researcher we ought to trust – though nowadays such a person might be just a troll, the fact is that he also just outright swindled a lot of people out of their spiritual heritage, too, for literally no good reason (except to earn himself a lot of stew. And a special place in the Stew upcoming if he doesn’t repent beforehand. :wink: :imp: )

Fortunately, God’s Salvation is stronger than any damage such people can do. :slight_smile:

Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure such revisions are so popular because of an underlying feeling that if Jesus had sex then SURELY IT’S OKAY FOR ME TO HAVE WHATEVER SEX I WANT, TOO! Oh, and also the sex must prove He wasn’t actually God after all (somehow, by equally invisible logical leaps.) :unamused:

For this state of affairs I’m inclined to blame our own side, including (as Dr. R’s recent patristic book illustrates as an aside) a number of high ranking ancient Christian universalists who taught that while human gender isn’t necessarily evil in itself, it’s still a punitive result of the Fall which is better to get past as soon as possible.

I’ll doubtless have more to say about that when I catch up with my summaries.

that’s frustrating, isn’t it.

it actually doesn’t make a lick of difference if Jesus got married. He most likely didn’t, but it wouldn’t harm any one…but it’d silence those bloody prudes that are keen to demonise sex (which God invented) and women (which God also invented, along with men).

if some ancient Christians got that wrong…well they did live at a time when that horrible attitude was normal. thankfully with progressive revelation quite a lot of those ancient attitudes have changed. we are deeply fortunate if they got UR right.

maybe it’s that most people want to “get one over” on the puritans that try to over-legalise sex.

i’m going to start using “puritan” as an insult i think. it’s far more insulting than any of the more sexually-themed ones…

C. S. Lewis (and I think maybe Chesterton) used to quip that it would be hard to imagine anyone less “puritanical” than the original (British) Puritans, whom Lewis quite admired. :slight_smile:

LOL! good to know :slight_smile:
puritans have become a joyless bunch, that’s for sure…and not just about sex

had a slight glance. it seems from this and other context that the Book of Life wasn’t viewed simply as a metaphor for being alive (as i and others have speculatively suggested at times)…but as a state of being in God’s will to some degree. i don’t know if this is adequate evidence for that or not.

i like one of Wikipedia’s alternative titles: “The Wholesome Narrative Concerning the Corn-Giving of Joseph, the All-Fair, and Concerning Aseneth, and How God United Them.”
Not long enough, dagnabbit!

The descriptions “wholesome” and “corn-giving” sound hilariously suspicious to me when put together like that. :laughing: “No no no, it isn’t a euphamism, it’s wholesome!”