Prayer of Joseph

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.^[1] 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.^[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.^[2] The Prayer of Joseph is usually considered to be part of the Apocalyptic literature.