Prayer of Joseph

The Prayer of Joseph narrates that Jacob was the incarnation of the angel Israel who competed with Uriel over their rank in heaven.

[1] 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.

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.

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.

The text of Fragment A is: Fragment A is based on the Biblical struggle of Jacob with an angel in (Genesis 32:25–30) and takes a stand on the main issues of such Biblical episode: The presence of angelic rivalry (both Israel and Uriel are here archangels) can be found in other apocryphal texts as the Apocalypse of Abraham and are related to Job 25:2.