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Prayer of Joseph


The Prayer of Joseph is a pseudepigraphic writing (a text whose claimed authorship is unfounded) of the Old Testament. It was composed either in Aramaic (if Jewish) or in Greek (if Christian) in the 1st century AD. The text is almost lost and only a few fragments have survived in ancient quotations concerning the Biblical patriarch Jacob. The Prayer of Joseph narrates that Jacob was the incarnation of the angel Israel who competed with Uriel over their rank in heaven.

The Prayer of Joseph was well known in the early 3rd century by Origen who speaks of it as a writing not to be despised, and expressly states that it was in use among the Jews. The Prayer of Joseph is usually considered to be part of the Apocalyptic literature.

Only three fragments have survived of the Prayer of Joseph: Fragment A, which is the longest, was preserved in Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John" - Book 2.31(25).186-192. Fragment B, a single sentence, has been found in the Praeparatio Evangelica - Book VI, of Eusebius of Caesarea as well as in the Commentary on Genesis of Procopius of Gaza and in an anthology of the writings of Origen compiled by Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory Nazianzus usually named Philokalia. Fragment C, also found in Philokalia, paraphrases the other fragments. The title itself Prayer of Joseph is found in many ancient documents. The Stichometry of Nicephorus shows that the Prayer of Joseph had a length of eleven hundred lines, thus only a very short part has survived.


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