Pursuing Joseph in Early Syriac Literature

Kristian S. Heal. Genesis 37 and 39 in the Early Syriac Tradition. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2023. 

In the late 1990s, when I first thought about writing a PhD thesis on the figure of Joseph in the Syriac tradition, I did what most aspiring graduate students did at that time and consulted Sebastian Brock. He suggested focusing on the long and especially beautiful narrative poem on Joseph written in the fifth century and attributed to both Balai and Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373). This was a good suggestion, and I probably should have taken it! But I felt that before I could tackle one of the great works of Syriac literature, I needed to understand its literary context, so I chose to start at the beginning and redo the work done decades before by the Swiss scholar Heinrich Näf in his brief but brilliant Syrische Josef-Gedichte. I certainly could have built upon Näf’s work, but I wanted to carefully re-survey the surviving Joseph corpus, beginning with the manuscripts, and then start to systematically trace the motifs through these texts. That way, I thought, I would be better able to understand each individual text within the context of the whole. Little did I know where that decision would lead me—that my book would take so long to write, that I would make such interesting discoveries, and that the first part of the study would finally be published exactly a century after Näf’s.[1]

When I began the project, Maren Niehoff and James Kugel had recently published books that demonstrated the rich retelling of the story of Joseph in the Jewish tradition, and I looked to these works as models of research.[2] I was also inspired by the brilliant work of Sebastian Brock on Syriac narrative poetry, especially his work on the retellings of Genesis 22.[3] I found the genre of retold bible to be especially compelling.[4] There seemed to be an irrepressibleness to a good story, especially of biblical lives. It is not simply that these stories demanded to be retold, but they also grew and changed in their retelling. Just how true this was for the story of Joseph only became fully apparent when I read a remarkable but overlooked 1931 study by Frederic Everett Faverty.[5] Faverty looked outward from antiquity and described an expansive diffusion of stories and meandering motifs among late ancient and medieval Joseph texts. Faverty’s approach contended in my mind with Kugel’s efforts to reverse engineer the biblical cruxes that first prompted the creation of these exegetical narrative expansions. I wanted to do similar work for the Syriac tradition. Kugel’s approach won out in the thesis, but for the book, I ultimately found Faverty’s expansive vision more compelling—it seemed to me that there was far more than exegesis going on in the Syriac Joseph tradition. These texts offered a window onto the literary creativity and inventiveness of the early Syriac tradition itself.

Ultimately, however, though useful, no one model proved sufficient. There was too much foundational work to do and the project was too diverse. What I ended up with was a sprawling philological project, which I found oddly conducive, but difficult to tame. My training in Jewish studies and Syriac studies had a decided philological slant. I had teachers who accepted that philology was “the glory of the humanistic sciences,” as it was for such great twentieth century scholars as Gershom Scholem. I enjoyed the “careful tracing of terms and texts to demonstrate their inner relationships, authorship, authenticity, and transmission of ideas” that is at the heart of philology.[6] Philology seemed to offer the right tools for a project that was exploring the nexus of literary criticism, history of exegesis, textual transmission, manuscript studies, and history. The philological inflection of Syriac studies is part of what attracted me to the field. Happily, in both Europe and North America this approach has been revived and augmented as the New Philology or material philology, an approach expertly used in a recent book by Liv Ingeborg Lied, so my old-fashioned training is now on trend!

Genesis 37 and 39 in the Early Syriac Tradition began as a University of Birmingham thesis (2008), supervised by David Taylor, and examined by Alison Salvesen and Charlotte Hempel. I was encouraged to publish the thesis by my examiners, and could have done so more quickly, but the delay turned out to be fortuitous. It gave me time to pursue a series of related projects that deepened my knowledge not only of particular texts and authors, but also manuscript cultures and text transmission.[7] And, this extensive revision was, in many cases, only possible because of what happened in the meantime. A major new edition of the works of Jacob of Serugh (d. 521) appeared, for example, which included his cycle of ten memre (verse homilies) on Joseph—a text that was previously only available in an attenuated form in a damaged Vatican Library manuscript.[8] Also, more attention was given to Syriac narrative poetry and homilies on biblical themes.[9] But, perhaps most importantly, the world of Syriac studies was transformed during this time by the manuscript digitization projects coordinated by Columba Stewart and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library. I suddenly had access to over a dozen additional manuscripts containing known and new Syriac Joseph texts.

This first volume (of two) introduces the project and explores episodes from Genesis 37 and 39. The main contribution of the introduction is a discussion of the genre of the Syriac Joseph texts and a presentation of my approach to the sources. I argue that the genre of a text matters, not simply formally or in terms of classification, but as a starting point for literary analysis. The Syriac titles can both obscure differences in kind, for example between homilies and narrative poems, both of which are called memre in the manuscripts, but also help suggest the kinship connections between different genres. I classify the Joseph texts into four genres: prose narratives, narrative poems, including epic poems, verse homilies, and dialogue poems. I conclude the introduction with some basic assumptions that guide my reading of the texts.

Chapter 1, A Survey of the Sources, is the longest in the book, and almost entirely new. Thanks to the additional manuscripts that became available since 2008, I was now able to provide a state-of-the-art description of all the known Syriac Joseph texts, including their manuscript witnesses. I identified 34 Joseph sources that are either found in Syriac manuscripts or are closely related to the Syriac tradition. The first source is the Peshitta translation of the Hebrew book of Genesis; sources 2-26 are original Syriac Joseph texts retelling all or part of the Joseph story; sources 27-28 are translations into Syriac of original Greek texts; sources 29-32 are Greek texts that seem to belong to the same imaginative world as the Syriac sources, or exhibit significant influence from Syriac texts; and sources 33-34 are Armenian sources that are either translated from Syriac, or highly influenced by the Syriac sources. What emerges is a much more complex and richer corpus of Joseph texts than those known to Näf. The additions range from late antique sources, such as Narsai’s genuine homily on Joseph and an early narrative poem mis-attributed to Jacob of Serugh, to later compositions, and finally, a collection of texts that illustrate the dynamic transmission of the sources, many of which involve some kind of rewriting.[10] The description of the Joseph corpus is not just foundational to the subsequent chapters but illustrates the sheer creativity of the Syriac tradition. When tracing the early history of exegesis in Syriac, we are so often only left with a text by Narsai (d. ca. 500) or Jacob of Serugh on a particular biblical figure or story.[11] This survey suggests that there were many more authors and a much more dynamic and creative tradition than the accidents of survival might indicate.

In Chapter 2, I investigate the important matter of how Joseph is presented as a type of Christ in the sources. The Syriac tradition took an established typological connection and supercharged it. Beginning with Aphrahat, whose favorite party trick was to present long series of comparisons between Jesus and various figures from the Hebrew Bible, this chapter exposes the various ways, subtle and not so subtle, that Syriac authors ensured that when the story of Joseph was read what was heard was the story of Jesus. The significance and pervasiveness of the typological connection become clear in the later chapters of the study, for example in Chapter 4, where I show how New Testament language funds the aesthetic of violence in the descriptions of Joseph’s brothers.

The body of the book (Chapters 3-8) offers an analysis of the major episodes from Genesis 37 and 39. This is where I was able to trace motifs, explore the tradition and expose the originality of the sources. These chapters were fun to research and difficult to write. I first produced a systematic description of how the sources construed these chapters, noting not just how the narrative is expanded, but also additions to and omissions from the biblical narrative, which are often just as interesting. This document was effectively a commentary on these two chapters in the early Syriac tradition. But I wanted to ensure that the chapters were readable, and not just commentary in prose. So, I focused on literary influence, the work of the narrators, exposing creativity and originality, and organized the chapters around particularly difficult or striking questions.

The Syriac Joseph texts include some of the finest works in the early Syriac tradition, but also produced some of the most derivative. I would suggest that only when we recognize both ends of the spectrum do we start to see the full scope and range of a literary culture. This is perhaps my way of confessing that the book presents as a contribution to the history of exegesis, and it certainly is that, but my highest hope is that I contributed to better understanding the Syriac literary tradition, especially the tradition’s creative, dynamic, and prolonged imaginative engagement with biblical stories.

Kristian S. Heal is a Senior Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.

[1] Näf, Heinrich, Syrische Josef-Gedichte: Mit Uebersetzung des Gedichts von Narsai und Proben aus Balai und Jaqob von Sarug (Zurich: Buchdruckerei A. Schwarzenbach, 1923).

[2] Niehoff, Maren, The Figure of Joseph in Post-Biblical Jewish Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1992); Kugel, James L., In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretative Life of Biblical Texts (2nd ed.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).

[3] Beginning with Brock, Sebastian P. “Genesis 22 in Syriac Tradition.” Mélanges Dominique Barthélemy: Études Bibliques Offertes a l’occasion de Son 60e Anniversaire, edited by Pierre Casetti et al., Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981, pp. 1–30.

[4] I use retold and rewritten bible interchangeably, and broadly embrace the genre definition offered in Philip S. Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament,” in It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture: Essays in Honour of Barnabas Lindars, SSF (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 99-121, esp. 116-118. The genre deserves more careful consideration, however, as is shown in George J. Brooke, “Genre Theory, Rewritten Bible and Pesher.” Dead Sea Discoveries 17 (2010): 332-357. Moreover, careful consideration needs to be given to the adaptation of a genre definition used for early Jewish literature to contemporaneous Syriac literature.

[5] Frederic Everett Faverty, “The Story of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife in Mediaeval Literature.” Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 13 (1931): 81-127.

[6] David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Master of Kabbalah. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018: 63.

[7] Related publications between 2008 and 2023 include: “Identifying the Syriac Vorlage of the Ethiopic History of Joseph.” Pages 205-10 in Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock, edited by George Kiraz. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2008; “A Note on Jacob of Sarug’s Memre on Joseph.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 14.2 (2011): 215-223; “The Syriac History of Joseph: A New Translation and Introduction.” Pages 85-120 in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. Volume 1, edited by Richard Bauckham, James Davila and Alex Panayotov. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013; “Notes on the Acquisition History of the Mingana Syriac Manuscripts.” Pages 11-38 in Manuscripta Syriaca. Des sources de première main (Cahiers d'études syriaques 4) edited by Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet and Muriel Debié. Paris: Geuthner, Société d'études syriaques, 2015; “Five Kinds of Rewriting: Appropriation, Influence and the Manuscript History of early Syriac Literature.” Journal of the Canadian Society of Syriac Studies 15 (2015): 51-65; (edited with Jeffery T. Wickes), Studia Patristica. Vol. LXXVIII - Papers presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2015.Volume 4: Literature, Rhetoric, and Exegesis in Syriac Verse. Leuven: Peeters, 2017. Pp. XIV, 106; “Construal and Construction of Genesis in early Syriac Sermons.” Pages 25-32 in Studia Patristica. Vol. LXXVIII - Papers presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2015.Volume 4: Literature, Rhetoric, and Exegesis in Syriac Verse. edited by Markus Vincent, Jeffery T. Wickes and Kristian S. Heal. Leuven: Peeters, 2017; (with Aaron Butts, Geoffrey Moseley, and Joseph Witztum), “Notes on the History of Joseph (CAVT 113, 114) and the Death of Joseph (CAVT 116, 117).” Apocrypha 28 (2017): 233-37; “Catalogues and the Poetics of Syriac Manuscript Cultures.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 20 (2017): 375-417; (with John R. Manis) “New Sources for the Armenian Commentary on Genesis Attributed to Ephrem.” Pages 522-32 in The Embroidered Bible: Studies in Biblical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Honour of Michael E. Stone (Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha) edited by Lorenzo DiTommaso, Matthias Henze, and William Adler. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018; “Narsai and the Scriptural Self.” Pages 133-143 in Narsai: Rethinking his Work and his World, edited by Aaron M. Butts, Kristian S. Heal and Robert A. Kitchen. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020; (edited with Aaron Butts and Robert Kitchen) Narsai: Rethinking his Work and his World. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020; (with Aaron M. Butts and Sebastian P. Brock) Clavis to the Metrical Homilies of Narsai. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 690. Leuven: Peeters, 2021; Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on Aaron the Priest. Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 71. Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press, 2022.

[8] Akhrass, Roger-Youssef, and Imad Syryany. 160 Unpublished Homilies of Jacob of Serugh. Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate, 2017. Previously most completely available only available in Vatican Syriac 117.

[9] I give just five examples: Sebastian P. Brock, Treasure-House of Mysteries: Explorations of the Sacred Text through Poetry in the Syriac Tradition. St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012; Maria E. Doerfler, Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity. University of California Press, 2019; Sidney H. Griffith. “The Poetics of Scriptural Reasoning: Syriac Mêmrê at Work.” Studia Patristica, vol. 78, 2017, pp. 5–24; Susan Ashbrook Harvey. Song and Memory: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition. Marquette University Press, 2010; Erin Galgay Walsh. Sanctifying Boldness: New Testament Women in Narsai, Jacob of Serugh, and Romanos Melodos. 2019. Duke University, Ph.D. dissertation.

[10] I examine some of these sources in my “Five Kinds of Rewriting: Appropriation, Influence and the Manuscript History of early Syriac Literature.” Journal of the Canadian Society of Syriac Studies 15 (2015): 51-65.

[11] I provide a complete bibliography of Syriac metrical homilies and narrative poems on episodes from the Hebrew Bible in my “Retelling and Interpreting the Old Testament in Syriac Metrical Homilies.” In Preaching in the Syriac Tradition: Reassessing the Homiletical Genre in Syriac Literature, edited by Philip M. Forness and J. Edward Walters. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming.