Joseph and Aseneth

Historical English source page 23

INTRODUCTION xix repetitions, the book reaches a literary standard much above that of other similar works, and the simile of the little boy in Ch. xii. is worthy of Homer ; but the story of the plot in Chs. xxiii.-xxix. falls much below the earlier portion. It is interesting to note that many incidents from our book have been incorporated in the lives of St. Barbara and St. Irene. The seclusion in a tower, however, which both these lives have in common with our book, is a common myth, which is found in the Greek legend of Danae and in the Indian story of Buddha.1 For the character of the Jewish work see pp. xiii ff. The Text Though Greek was the original language of the book, the versions contain many passages, absent from the existing Greek text, which have every appearance of genuineness, and we must therefore infer that our MSS. are derived from an abridged edition, and the value of M. Batiffol's careful and scholarly work is impaired by the facts that at the time of editing the Greek he seems to have been unacquainted with the Latin ; ^ that, though he mentions both the Mekhitarist text and Carri^re's edition, he makes no use of the Armenian in his critical notes ; and that he used the Syriac only in Oppenheim's translation, and was apparently unaware of the existence of the Slavonic. Of the ' See A. Wirth, Danae in Christlichen Legenden (Prague, Vienna, Leipzig, 1892). This contains the text of both lives, but that of Barbara has been edited from more MSS. by J. Viteau (Paris, 1897). * The notes contain no references to it.