Primary source · Sahidic Coptic (lost original); surviving in Bohairic Coptic and Arabic
The History of Joseph the Carpenter
Anonymous (Egyptian) · 4th–7th c., Egypt — disputed
What this text is
The fullest ancient life of Joseph, framed as Christ telling the apostles on Mount Olivet the death of his foster-father. Joseph dies at 111, lamenting each part of his body in turn while Death and all Gehenna wait at the door.
Public-domain translations
Alexander Walker, *Apocryphal Gospels, Acts and Revelations* (T. & T. Clark, 1873); repr. Ante-Nicene Fathers 8 (1886) — **complete, public domain**, from Tischendorf’s Latin of the **Arabic**
Woe to the day on which I was born into the world! Woe to the womb which bare me! … Woe to my body; and woe to my miserable soul, which has already turned aside from God its Maker!
Bart D. Ehrman & Zlatko Pleše, *The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations* (Oxford, 2011), 157–93 — complete, from de Lagarde’s **Bohairic**; in copyright
[Not quoted — in copyright. Cited for the Bohairic recension, which differs from the Arabic that Walker translated.]
M. R. James, *The Apocryphal New Testament* (Oxford, 1924), 84–86 — a **synopsis** of Wallin’s Arabic with extracts, not a full translation; public domain
the glorification of St. Joseph and his feast-day: his cult, so popular in the West, was long confined to Egypt
Manuscript witnesses
Arabic recension
14th c. onwardComplete and fragmentary witnesses; first published by G. Wallin in 1722 with his own Latin translation. The base of Walker’s English.
Bohairic Coptic — Vatican MS
11th c.The complete Bohairic version, reported by E. Quatremère in 1808 in an 11th-century Vatican manuscript then held in the Royal Library in Paris; critical edition by Paul de Lagarde. The base of Ehrman and Pleše’s English.
Sahidic Coptic — fragments
10th–11th c.Fragmentary only. The lost original is generally taken to have been Sahidic. Cairo, Coptic Museum 6425+6427(C); Wadi El Natrun, Dayr Qiddīs Anbā Maqqār 404.
P. Duk. inv. 239
identified 2013A new Sahidic fragment found in the Duke University Special Collections and published by Alin Suciu in the *Harvard Theological Review*, supplying text previously unattested in Sahidic and carrying at least one variant found in neither the Bohairic nor the Arabic.
Latin — from the Arabic
14th c.A version noted by M. R. James, never printed.
No Greek witness
—Reference works crediting this text with Greek papyri (British Museum, Bodleian, Louvre) have taken them from G. T. Zervos’s “History of Joseph” in Charlesworth, *Old Testament Pseudepigrapha* 2 — which is a different work, *In pulcherrimum Ioseph*, on Joseph son of Jacob. The same conflation attaches W. A. Craigie’s *Narrative of Zosimus* (ANF 10) and Budge’s 1896 Ethiopic to this text; both belong elsewhere.
Provenance
Egypt, and the date is genuinely disputed — the archive records the range rather than choosing within it. M. R. James (1924): “not earlier than the fourth century in date, and very probably later.” Recent summary accounts: fourth to sixth centuries. Ehrman and Pleše: “most likely composed in Byzantine Egypt in the late sixth or early seventh century.” Only the earliest edge falls inside this archive’s attestation horizon of AD 500, and the work is held as a witness to Egyptian devotion to Joseph rather than as evidence for the first century.
Its purpose is not concealed. M. R. James read it as “the glorification of St. Joseph and his feast-day: his cult, so popular in the West, was long confined to Egypt” — and the text says as much itself, promising in chapter 26 that whoever makes an offering on Joseph’s commemoration, or feeds the widow and orphan in his name, or writes out this very narrative, will have the book of his sins burnt and cross the sea of flames unharmed. The first part reworks material from the *Gospel of James* and the *Infancy Gospel of Thomas*; it presupposes Mary’s perpetual virginity throughout, giving Joseph four sons and two daughters by an earlier marriage.
**The two complete translations render different recensions, and they do not agree.** Walker (1873) worked from Tischendorf’s Latin of the Arabic; Ehrman and Pleše (2011) from de Lagarde’s Bohairic. The Arabic names Joseph’s daughters Assia and Lydia, dates his death to the 26th of **Abib**, and has **Death and all Gehenna** approach the bed with an army whose “clothes, their faces, and their mouths poured forth flames” until Christ drives them back. The Sahidic tradition summarised by James names the daughters Lysia and Lydia, gives the month as **Epep**, and has **Amente** at the door and the angel **Abbaton** sent in to take the soul gently. Quotations in this archive name which translation they follow.
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- A Coptic Fragment from the History of Joseph the Carpenter in the Collection of Duke University LibraryAlin Suciu, Harvard Theological Review (2013)Publishes P. Duk. inv. 239 and gives the authoritative witness list — fully preserved in Arabic and Bohairic, fragmentarily in Sahidic. BHO 532–533; CANT 60; clavis coptica 0037.
- The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and TranslationsBart D. Ehrman & Zlatko Pleše, Oxford, 2011Complete text and translation of the Bohairic, from de Lagarde. Dates the compilation to late sixth or early seventh century Byzantine Egypt.
- Edizione critica del testo arabo della Historia Iosephi fabri lignariiAntonio Battista & Bellarmino Bagatti, SBFCMi 20 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1975)The critical edition of the Arabic.
- Recent research on the so-called Life of Joseph also known as In pulcherrimum IosephAngela Standhartinger, Currents in Biblical Research (2024)On the other Joseph text — the one that does survive in Greek, and the source of the papyrus claim wrongly attached to this work.