296 book reviews

Jacobovici, Simcha and The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals ’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene (New York: Pegasus, 2014), xx + 444 pp. isbn 9781605986104. $29.95. Hbk.

The Lost Gospel, co-written by Simcha Jacobovici, documentary film maker, and Barrie Wilson, professor of Religious Studies, cannot leave its readers un- ruffled. This alternative life-story of Jesus rocks the foundations of research and Christian faith in all its strands, while leading us from one formidable as- sertion to another, which coalesce into a wide-ranging canvas combining virtu- ally all types of sources in early Christianity scholarship and the major issues attending it. The book seeks to prove that Jesus was no celibate. Rather, he was married to Mary Magdalene and their union even produced two offspring. We learn that Mary Magdalene was not Jewish, and certainly no prostitute, but a Phoe- nician gentile and priestess modeled on the goddess Artemis; that among her devotees, namely ‘the early Church of Mary the Magdalene’, she was venerated as the incarnate Artemis, wife and co-deity of the god Jesus modeled on He- lios; that the Galilean mosaics depicting Helios and the Zodiac, usually identi- fied with synagogues (such as Hammath Tiberias and Beit Alpha), belonged to churches, in effect ‘Christian synagogues’ dedicated to the cult of Artemis; that the Essenes were Artemis worshippers and among the first believers in Jesus and Mary Magdalene; and most significantly, that the groups of Jesus’ ini- tial believers, who preserved the information about him and Mary Magdalene, were in fact Gnostics, subscribing to the belief that redemption is not through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, as assumed by Paul, but rather through the sexual union of marriage and offspring. The authors base their assumptions on Joseph and Aseneth, a pseudepi- graphic work which narrates Aseneth’s conversion from idol-worshiper to believer in one God and her marriage to Joseph. Largely considered a Jewish book, Jacobovici and Wilson understand it as Christian, virtually a ‘lost Gos- pel’, believing it was already composed during Jesus’ lifetime and predates the canonical gospels;’ and they claim it applies cryptic language to recount what Paul and Pauline Christianity endeavored to conceal – that Jesus was mar- ried and his sex-life was like everyman’s. They consequently interpret Joseph as a type of Jesus, Aseneth as a type of Mary Magdalene and their marriage as the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, with Manasseh and Ephraim ­symbolizing their two sons. The theological identity of Joseph and Aseneth is at the center of scholarly dispute, participating in the wider concern with the theological identity of the

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book reviews 297 so-called ‘Old Testament Pseudepigrapha’: Are these pseudo-biblical books, which do not reveal who wrote them, nor where, when and for what purposes, Jewish or Christian?1 Like many other works belonging to this group, Joseph and Aseneth was ­initially perceived as Christian. Pierre Batiffol, who published the first critical edition at the end of the 19th century, determined it is a Greek literary product of some catholic center in upper Asia Minor, that its protagonists are symbolic figures (with Joseph representing Christ and Aseneth, the consecrated bride, the Church or Virginity) and that the story as a whole is a symbolic interpre- tation of the process of initiation into the sacramental life of the Church.2 ­Batiffol’s view prevailed until the mid-twentieth century, when a new consen- sus began to emerge – that Joseph and Aseneth is rather a Jewish work com- posed in the Hellenistic Diaspora, probably Egypt, sometime between 100 bce and 115 ce, with many assuming it reflects missionary propaganda used by in their efforts to proselytize among their gentile neighbors. Against this consensus, Ross Kraemer3 shows that it could have been au- thored by a Christian. Though she does not take a decisive stand on the work’s religious identity, she does address the many aspects it shares with Christian- ity, notably the similarity of its vocabulary and ideas with those of the ­Syrian Church, most especially with Christian works such as the Odes of Solomon and the Acts of Thomas, and the writings of the fourth-century Syrian church ­fathers – Aphrahat and Ephrem the Syrian. She dates the composition to the third or fourth century ce and argues that it could have originated in Syria. In continuation with Kraemer’s work, but more decisively, I argue4 that ­Joseph and Aseneth is a Christian work, composed by Christians for Christian purposes. Its vocabulary, ideas and concepts, its symbols and images and its entire structure, are fully understood when seen against the background of

1 On this question see Robert A. Kraft, ‘The Pseudepigrapha in Christianity’, in Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha, ed. John C. Reeves, ejl 6 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994); Marinus de Jonge, ‘Developing a Different Approach’, in Pseudepigra- pha of the Old Testament as Part of Christian Literature: The Case of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Greek Life of Adam and Eve, ed. Marinus de Jonge, svtp 18 (Leiden: Brill, 2003); James R. Davila, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Oth- er?, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 2 Pierre Batiffol, ‘Le livre de la Prière d’Aseneth’, in Studia patristica: Études d’ancienne littéra- ture chrétienne, ed. Pierre Batiffol (Paris: E. Leroux, 1889–90). 3 Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph. A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 4 Rivka Nir, Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book, Hebrew Monographs 42 (Sheffield, Phoenix Press, 2012).

journal for the study of the historical jesus 14 (2016) 263-308