The Prayer of Manasseh

The Prayer of Manasseh is a short penitential prayer considered apocryphal in most Christian and all Jewish traditions. It is attributed to the Judean king Manasseh in an attempt to fill the gap of a missing prayer reported in 2 Chronicles. The paper surveys the biblical background of the text, its text-historical origin stemming in the Didascalia, its special circular literary structure, its textual attestations in manuscripts and epigraphic witnesses, as well as the contexts in which it appears. The paper concludes with the examination of the question of authorship of the Prayer, showing that it is impossible to ascertain whether the author was Jewish or Christian, as well as the time and milieu in which the Prayer was composed.