An Unusual Joseph Manuscript Gives Up Its Secrets – and More

Abstract This article explores the extensive illustrations of the life of the Patriarch Joseph in a handsome Greek book, the “McKell Manuscript” (Walters Art Museum TL.2022.13.1), created in the later sixteenth century in the Romanian principality of Wallachia by Luke the Cypriot. The manuscript comprises two apocryphal biblical texts: the Life of Joseph attributed to Saint Ephraem the Syrian (d. 373) and the anonymous Romance of Joseph and Aseneth, which likely originated in the Hellenized Jewish community of Egypt between 200 BCE and 200 CE. The former is a storybook retelling of the life of the Patriarch Joseph up to his dramatic reunion with his father, Jacob (Gen 37–46), embellished with events and characters drawn from Jewish legends, while the latter is a thoroughly fanciful account of Joseph’s marriage to Aseneth, the daughter of the Priest of Heliopolis (Gen 41:45), who converts to Judaism. The questions explored are: when was this two-part Joseph story first illustrated, and what visual models (if any) did that first illustrator draw upon? And, most important, is this book revealing of the art of Jews in late antiquity?