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The Prayer of Joseph is a pseudepigraphic writing (a text whose claimed authorship is unfounded) of the Old Testament. It was composed either in Aramaic (if Jewish) or in Greek (if Christian) in the 1st century AD. The text is almost lost and only a few fragments have survived in ancient quotations concerning the Biblical patriarch Jacob. The ''Prayer of Joseph'' narrates that Jacob was the incarnation of the angel ''Israel'' who competed with Uriel over their rank in heaven.〔 The ''Prayer of Joseph'' was well known in the early 3rd century by Origen who speaks of it as ''a writing not to be despised'', and expressly states that it was in use among the Jews.〔Emil Schürer, ''The Literature of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus'', pp. 127-128 (EarlyJewishWritings )〕 The ''Prayer of Joseph'' is usually considered to be part of the Apocalyptic literature. ==Manuscript tradition and Provenance== Only three fragments have survived of the ''Prayer of Joseph'': Fragment A, which is the longest, was preserved in Origen's ''Commentary on the Gospel of John" - ''Book 2.31(25).186-192''. Fragment B, a single sentence, has been found in the ''Praeparatio Evangelica - Book VI'', of Eusebius of Caesarea as well as in the ''Commentary on Genesis'' of Procopius of Gaza and in an anthology of the writings of Origen compiled by Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory Nazianzus usually named ''Philokalia''. Fragment C, also found in ''Philokalia'', paraphrases the other fragments. The title itself ''Prayer of Joseph'' is found in many ancient documents. The ''Stichometry of Nicephorus'' shows that the ''Prayer of Joseph'' had a length of eleven hundred lines, thus only a very short part has survived. Due to the shortness of the extant text, it is almost impossible to determine the provenance. Some scholars suggest it should be considered Jewish-Christian, others gnostic, others Jewish anti-Christian, others Christian anti-Jewish, while the probable thesis according to J. Z. Smith and others is that Origen was right to consider it Jewish.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Prayer of Joseph」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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