Men and Women as Angels in Joseph and Aseneth

Abstract

This article compares the understanding of angels in the sectarian scrolls from Qumran with the angelomorphism of Joseph and Aseneth. The sectarian Qumran scrolls are used as a comparator with Joseph and Aseneth because they are all clearly Jewish and predate the fall of the Temple in 70 CE. For the Qumran texts the views of D. Dimant (1996), B. Frennesson (1999) and C.H.T. Fletcher-Louis (2002) stress the communion of the community with the angels and even the possibility of human angelomorphism. When set alongside the angelic transformations of Joseph, Aseneth and Jacob as described in Joseph and Aseneth, it is possible to argue that this dominant feature of the narrative, especially Aseneth’s ‘conversion’, helps to date the text to a similar time as the sectarian scrolls over against the fourth-century CE date argued for by R.S. Kraemer, who misrepresents as an adjuration Aseneth’s prayer leading to her conversion.