CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORYTHE FRAGMENTS
[v]
EDITORS' PREFACE
THE object of this series of translations is primarily to fumish students with short, cheap, and handy text-books, which, it is hoped, will facilitate the study of the particular texts in class under competent teachers. But it is also hoped that the volumes will be acceptable to the general reader who may be interested in the subjects with which they deal. It has been thought advisable, as a general rule, to restrict the notes and comments to a small compass; more especially as, in most cases, excellent works of a more elaborate character are available. Indeed, it is much to be desired that these translations may have the effect of inducing readers to study the larger works.
Our principal aim, in a word, is to make some difficult texts, important for the study of Christian origins, more generally accessible in faithful and scholarly translations.
In most cases these texts are not available in a cheap and handy form. In one or two cases texts have been included of books which are available in the official Apocrypha; but in every such case reasons exist for putting forth these texts in a new translation, with an Introduction, in this series.
W. O. E. OESTERLEY.
G. H. BOX
[ix]
THE SOURCES. -- PATRISTIC QUOTATIONS
THE object of this book is to collect in a form convenient to English readers the remains of some of the apocryphal writings connected with the Old Testament which have not survivcd in their entirety. That there were many such books we know; and the student may find, scattered in dictionary articles, or collected in such works as the -- still unsurpassed -- Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti of John Albert Fabricius, their names and fragments. But there is not a handy English guide to this information, such as I now attempt to supply.
It is impossible in most cases to assign anything like a precise date to these writings; the most we can say is that they are pre- or post-Christian (and even that is not always clear), and that they must have been in existence before the time of the writer who quotes them. That latter point at least is certain. But we shall not be far out if we regard the first century before and the first century after the Christian era (100 B.C.to -A.D. 100) as covering the period during which most of them were produced. Our uncertainty as to their chronological order forbids me to attempt any arrangement of them based upon date; and I have preferred the simpler plan of following the biblical order of the personages to whom they are attributed, or of whom they treat.
Before, however, we consider any of them individually, it will be well to form an idea of the sources from which we get any infomiation about them. [ix]
These are mainly of two kinds: lists of books, and quotations.
The quotations from these books are for the most part to be found in
the writings of the Greek Ante-Nicene Fathers. The so-called Apostolic
Fathers, Clement of Rome, Barnabas, and Hermas, are important
contributors; Justin Martyr and the other apologists give us little.
Clement of Alexandria and Origen are incomparably the richest sources;
Hippolytus has something. In the fourth century the yield is far
smaller: Epiphanius, a determined borrower from earlier writers, is not
to be despised; but for our present purpose such writers as Athanasius,
Basil, Chrysostom, the Gregories, are barren and useless. The next
stratum that is at all productive (and the last) is to be found in the
Byzantine chronographers, George the Syncellus, George Cedrenus,
Michael Glycas.
The Latins are throughout poorer. Tertullian and Cyprian will be referred to; but Jerome hatcs apocryphal literature, and says so, while Augustine, a valuable source of knowledge about some New Testament Apocrypha, never, it so happens, quotes spurious Old Testament literature at all. Yet, if Latin Fathers are poor, we shall see that Latin versions of some very queer books were current, and have left traces in manuscripts.
We can readily understand, or at least imagine, the state of mind which made the later Church writers chary of quoting the extra-canonical books. For one thing, the conception of canonicity had grown much clearer by the fourth century; the experience of the first three centuries had shown the necessity of defining doctrine, and consequently of stating clearly what books purporting to be sacred were really to be considered authoritative and could legitimately be used in public worship. Most of us have very little idea how many gospels, revelations, histories or "acts" of apostles, and books of prophecies were in circulation for which the claim was [xi] set up that they should be so used. It was the recognized method of pushing a particular set of doctrines to produce a writing under some venerable name, in which the special tenets were openly or covertly advocated. The fashion is on the wane now, yet we have heard of the Book of Mormon, of Notovich's Buddhist Life of Christ, and perhaps of an astounding work called the Archko Volume. But though the methods of to-day are of necessity different, it would not be very surprising even now if a coterie of spiritualists were to publish, and to gain some credence for, a Life of our Lord dictated "automatically" by the spirit of one who had known Him in the flesh; and this [first world] war has taught us that apocryphal prophecies are by no means out of date.
It was, of course, specially important that the books which professed to contain teachings of Christ or of Apostles should be sifted; but it was also necessary to banish from the churches those which had been fathered upon the prophets and patriarchs of the Old Testament. Many such had been made the vehicle of anti-Catholic, and even of anti-Christian, teaching. We shall encounter instances of these, though they are not so common as writings that are legendary, or apocalyptic.
This necessity for definition led to the drawing-up of lists of the sacred books, and then, naturally, of longer lists, in which apocryphal books were included and expressly reprobated. Such lists form our second main source of knowledge about the lost writings. There are three Greek lists, one Latin, and some in other languages, especially Armenian, which will have to be noticed.
The Greek lists are known as the Stichometry of Nicephorus, the list of the Sixty Books, and that in the Pseudo-Athanasian Synopsis of Holy Scripture. The Stichometry of Nicephorus is a catalogue appended to the chronography called of Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople (806-815), and it is called "Stichometry" because it appends to the title of each book a statement [xii] of the number of stichoi or lines which it contained. The line was the unit of payment for the professional scribe, and was commonly of the average length of a line of Homer, say sixteen syllables or thirty-four to thirty-six letters. It is thought that this particular catalogue must be appreciably older than the ninth century, perhaps as old as the fifth or sixth; but I do not think its date is very important to us. lt seems to have been added to the chronography about 850, at Jerusalem. The list in the Synopsis of Scripture, falsely attributed to Athanasius, is very similar to that of Nicephorus, but not, in the judgment of a good critic, Theodor Zahn, copied from it. In the single section which concerns us, the two are identical. The book in which it occurs is of uncertain date, not earlier than the sixth century.
The list of the Sixty Books is found appended in some MSS., but not in all, to the Questiones of Anastasius of Sinai. By the Sixty Books the Canonical Scriptures are meant. The names of these are followed by nine more, described as "outside the Sixty" (Wisdom, Ecclus., 1-4 Macc., Esther, Judith, Tobit), and these by twenty-four more under the title "apocrypha." Probably this list also may be of the sixth or seventh century.
The three lists contain the following titles of Old Testament apocryphal books:
| Nicephorus (Synopsis) | No. of lines.\1/ | Sixty Books. |
| Enoch | 4800 | Adam. |
| Patriarchs | 5100 | Enoch. |
| Prayer of Joseph | 1100 | Lamech. |
| Testament of Moses | 1100 | Patriarchs. |
| Assumption of Moses | 1400 | Prayer of Joseph. |
| Abraham | 300 | Eldad and Modad |
| Eldad and Modad | 400 | Tesament of Moses |
| Of Elias the Prophet | 316 | Assumption of Moses |
| Of Sophonias the Prophet | 600 | Psalms of Solomon |
| Of Zacharias the father of John | 500 | Apocalypse of Elias |
| Pseudepigrapha of Baruch | Vision of Esaias | |
| Pseudepigrapha of Ambacum (Habakkuk) | Apocalypse of Sophonias | |
| Pseudepigrapha of Ezekiel | Apocalypse of Zacharias | |
| Pseudepigrapha of Daniel | Apocalypse of Esdras |
\1/ In Nicephorus only.
[xiii]
The Latin list of apocryphal books is contained in a document known as
the Gelasian Decree, "concerning books to be received and not
to be received." It pur-ports to have been issued by a Pope acting as
the mouth-piece of a CXouncil of bishops; in most MSS, the Pope is
Gelasius I (496), but in some Damasus (384), and in some Hormisdas
(523). The view expressed by its latest editor, E. von Dobschu%tz, is
that it is not really a papal document at all, but a compilation made
in France in the sixth century. That question is not settled. Whatever
its origin, the Decree gives us several unusual names of
apocryphal books, and omits many, like Enoch, which we should
expect to find and which we know were current in Latin. Its
contribution is as follows:-
The book, concerning the daughters of Adam, or Leptogenesis . . . .
. . . . . . . . . Apocryphal.
The book which is called the Penitence of Adam . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . Apocryphal.
The book concerning the giant named Ogias,
who is stated by the heretics to have
fought with a dragon after the Flood . . .Apocryphal.
The book which is called the Testament of Job . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .Apocryphal.
The book which is called the Penitence of Jannes and Mambres . . . . .
. . . . . . . .Apocryphal.
The writing which is called the Interdiction (or Contradiction) of
Solomon . . . . . .Apocryphal.
The Armenian lists collected by Zahn in 1893 (Forschungen, V. 109) are three in number.
1. Samuel of Ani (cir. 1179) mentions, among books brought into Armenia about A.D. 591 by Nestorian missionaries, the Penitence of Adam, and the Testament; the latter may be that of Moses, but is more probably that of Adam.
2. Mechithar of Airivank (cir. 1290) has a list closely
resembling the Greek ones. One section of it is headed Secret Books
of the Jews, and runs thus:--
(1) Book of Adam.
(2) Book of Enoch [xiv]
(3) Book of the Sibyl.
(4) The twelve Patriarchs, i. e. the testaments of the twelve sons of
Jacob.
(5) The Prayers of Joseph.
(6) The Ascension of Moses.
(7) Eldad, Modad.
(8) The Psalms of Solomon.
(9) The Mysteries of Elias.
(10) The Seventh Vision of Daniel.
This is essentially the list of the Sixty Books, substituting the Sibyl for Lamech, omitting the Testament of Moses and replacing the last four items by the Seventh Vision of Daniel.
3. A second list in the same writer's chronicle, under the year 1085, mingles some apocryphal titles with the Canon of the Old Testament, viz.:-
The Vision of Enok -- probably a late document (translated by
Issaverdens).
The Testaments of the Patriarchs.
The Prayers of Aseneth.
Tobit, Judith, Esther.
Ezdras Salathiel (i. e. 4 Esdras).
(Job, etc.).
The Paralipomena concerning Jeremiah Babylon (i. e. the Rest of the
Words of Baruch).
Deaths of the Prophets (a version of the Pseudo--Epiphanian Lives of
the Prophets).
Jesus Sirac.
This list consists entirely of books which still exist. The Prayers of Aseneth seems to take the place of the Prayer of Joseph in the former list.
The above lists include nearly all the names which will concern us. Some notice, however, will have to be taken of other writings attributed to some of those whose names occur in the lists, e. g. Moses, and of books fathered upon, or relating to, Eve, Seth, Noah, Ham, Melchizedek, Hezekiah, as well as the ancient Persian king Hystaspes; and a collection of the passages which early writers have quoted without naming their source.
[1]
THE FRAGMENTS
WE hear of quite a considerable number of books attributed to, or relating to, Adam: an Apocalypse, a Penitence, a Testament, a Life, are the foremost. As to the first three of these titles, there is uncertainty as to whether they represent one, two, or three books. Perhaps it will be possible to form an opinion when the evidence has been set out.
The Apocalypse of Adam is expressly and certainly noted only once.
In the Epistle of Barnabas, ii.10, we read: "But to us he speaks thus: ' The sacrifice of God is a contrite heart; a savour of sweetness to the Lord is a heart glorifying Him that hath formed it."' Upon this the Constantinople MS. has this marginal note: "Psalm l. and in the Apocalypse of Adam." The first clause is, of course, familiar, occurrng in Ps. 1. (li.); the second is not from the Bible. Yet two early Fathers, namely, Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus, quote it in this form; Clement twice -- always in connexion with the passage Isa. i.11, which, be it noted, Bamabas has also quoted just before. We need not doubt the statement that the words occurred in the Apocalypse of Adam. They have to do with repentance, and plainly repent-ance was a favourite topic in conriexion with Adam. The Gelasian Decree and an Armenian list, we have seen, [2] mention a Penitence of Adam. in the Gnostic book called the Pistis Sophia, by the way, the word penitence has a technical meaning; it is applied to the hymns sung by the being Pistis Sophia on her progress through the spiritual world; each hymn is called "a penitence."
Further, we have another passage which connects together the ideas
of repentance and of a revelation made to Adam. George Cedrenus, a
Byzantine chronicler, says (ed. Migne, i. 41): "Adam, in the 600th
year, having repented, learned by revelation concerning the Watchers
and the Flood and concerning repentance and the divine incarnation, and
concerning the prayers that are sent up to God by all creatures at
every hour of the day and night, by the hand of Uriel, the angel that
is over repentance. In the first hour of the day the first prayer is
accomplished in heaven, in the second hour is the prayer of angels, in
the third the prayer of winged things, in the fourth the prayer of
cattle, in the fifth the prayer of wild beasts, in the sixth the
assembly (or review) of angels and the discerning (or inspection) of
all creation, in the seventh the entering in of angels to God and their
going out, in the eighth the praise and sacrifices of angels, in the
ninth the prayer and worship of men, in the tenth the visitations of
waters and the prayers of things in heaven and on earth, in the
eleventh the thanksgiving and rejoicing of all things, in the twelfth
the entreatings of men unto well-pleasing." He goes on: "And in the
950th year Adam died, on the very day of his transgression, and
returned unto the earth from whence he was taken, leaving thirty-three
sons and twenty-three daughters."
This horary of the day, and also that of the night, we possess in
various other forms. One is in Greek, and has survived under the name,
not of Adam, but of Apollonius (of Tyana), the famous thaumaturge of
the first century. The latest editor of it, Abbe/ F. Nau (in Patrologia
Syriaca, i. 2, Appendix, 1907), is of the opinion that it may
really be attributed to Apollonius or his circle, and that it was
transferred from his book to that of Adam; but his case is a weak one:
the text is full of [3] Christian touches, and the evidence that it was
originally under Adam's name is earlier in date than any that can be
produced for Apollonius.
The horary seems also to have been known in the Latin Church. Nicetas
of Remesiana, writing in the fourth century on the Merit of Psalmody,
has this sentence: "We ought not rashly to receive the book that is
entitled the Inquisition of Abraham, wherein it is feigned that
the very animals, springs, and elements sang, inasmuch as that book is
of no credit and rests on no authority." I conjecture (and others
agree) that Inquisition of Abraham (Inquisitio Abrae) is
a corruption of Dispusitio (i. e. Testament) Adae.
We have it also in Syriac, where it is said to be from the Testament
of Adam. There are two Syriac versions, edited and translated by
Kmosko, in the volume of the Patrologia Syriaca referred to
above. One of these has this introductory note: "When he was sick unto
death, he called Seth his son, and said to him: My son, He that formed
me out of the dust showed me and granted me to put names upon the
beasts of the earth and the fowls of heaven, and showed me the hours of
the day and night, how they stand."
And more than once Adam speaks in the first person, e. g. at the fourth
hour of the night: "The Trisagion of the Seraphim: thus I used to hear,
my son, before I sinned, the sound of their wings in Paradise, and
after I had transgressed the commandment I heard it not."
There is thus a prima facie case for thinking that the Apocalypse,
Penitence, and Testament of Adam, if not identical, at
least contained a good deal of common matter.
The Syriac MSS. of the horary, or some of them, append to it other
passages which purport to come from the Testament. One
of these is a prophecy of the coming of Christ, addressed to Seth. Of
this we have two texts, the second very much amplified. After the
prophecy is another prediction that a flood will come because of the
sin of Cain, and that the world will last 6000 years after that. Then
follows the statement: [4] "I, Seth, wrote this testament: Adam died
and was buried on the east of Paradise, over against the first city
that was built, named Henoch. He was buried by the angels, and the sun
and moon were darkened seven days. Seth sealed the Testament and laid
it up in the Cave of Treasures with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh
which Adam brought out of Paradise, and which the Magi are to offer to
the Son of God in Bethlehem of Judah."
This, of course, is throughout Christian, and the mention of the Cave of Treasures links it up with a whole series of Eastern books, such as the Book of Adam and Eve (tr. S.C. Malan), the Cave of Treasures (ed. Bezold), the Book of the Rolls (Gibson, Studia Sinailtca, viii.).
The last fragment has really no claim to be connected with Adam at all. It is an account of the nine orders of angels in which there is mention of David, Zechariah, and Judas Maccabaeus.
If the horary and the prophecy were parts of the same book, it was a Christian, or at least a fully Christianized text, and not a very early one. Yet I find it difficult not to suspect the existence of an early book behind it. The last words of Tertullian's book On Penitence seem to imply that he knew of some writing in which Adam's praises of God after his repentance were recorded. He says; "For, since I am a sinner of the deepest dye, and not born for any end except repentance, I cannot easily keep silence about it (i. e. repentance), and no more does Adam the beginner both of the race of men and of sin against the Lord when by confession he has been restored unto his Paradise." No more may be meant than that Adam, now that he is redeemed and restored, sings praise to God; but the other view has usually been taken, and if it is correct it means that there was in the second century a book that contained hymns uttered by Adam after his fall and repentance. The phrase quoted from the Epistle of Barnabas might well be a fragment of such a writing.
Certain it is that legend was busy with accounts of [5] the penitence of Adam: of the attempt made by him and Eve to do penance apart for forty days in the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates -- an attempt frustrated by Satan, who disguised himself as an angel and induced Eve to come out of the water on the pretence that God had forgiven and forgotten all. This story appears both in the Eastern Book (or Conflict) of Adam and Eve, and in the Latin Life of Adam. The common source of these widely divergent streams must lie far behind both.
The Life of Adam has been mentioned. In some form it has made its way into most of the vernaculars of Europe, usually by means of the Latin version, which is common in MSS. from the ninth to the fifteenth century. It and its elder sister, or parent, the Greek, may be read in English in Charles's Pseudepigrapha,, and I need not analyze either further than to say that the Greek and Latin both contain detailed accounts of the Fall, and of the Death and Burial of Adam, while the Latin also has, as noted above, something about his Penitence. But these were not the only Lives of Adam that were current. A text of a different kind is quoted by George Syncellus in his Chronography, p. 5. He says: I have been necessitated (by the silence of the canonical Scriptures, he means) to give some explanation of this matter (i. e. the dates of Adam's life), such as other historians of Jewish antiquities and Christian history have recorded out of the Leptogenesis (i. e. the Book of Jubilees) and the so-called Life of Adam -- though they may not seem authoritative -- lest those interested in such questions should fall into extravagant opinions. In the so-called Life of Adam, then, is set forth both the number of the days of the naming of the beasts, and that of the creation of the woman and of the entrance of Adam himself into Paradise, and of the precept of God to him about the eating of the tree, and of the entry of Eve into Paradise with him, and the story of the Fall and what followed it, as is subjoined.
"On the 1st day of the week, which was the 3rd day [6] of the creation of Adam and the 8th of the 1st month Nisan, and the 1st of the month of April, and 6th of the Egyptian month Pharmouthi, Adam by a divine gift of grace named the wild beasts. On the 2nd day of the 2nd week he named the cattle; on the 3rd day of the 2nd week he named the fowls; on the 4th day of the 2nd week he named the creeping things; on the 5th day of the 2nd week he named those that swim. On the 6th day of the 2nd week, which was, according f o the Romans, the 6th of April, and according to the Egyptians the 11th of Pharmouthi, God took a part of the rib of Adam and formed the woman.
"On the 46th day of the creation of the world, the 4th day of the 7th week, the 14th of Pachon, and 9th of May, the sun being in Taurus and the moon diametrically opposite in Scorpius, at the rising of the Pleiads, God brought Adam into Paradise on the 40th day from his creation.
"On the 50th day of the creation of the world, and 44th of that of Adam, being Sunday the 18th of Pachon and 13th of May, three days after his entry into Paradise, the sun being in Taurus and the moon in Capricorn, God commanded Adam to abstain from eating of the tree of knowledge.
"On the 93rd day of the creation, the 2nd day of the 46th week, at the summer solstice, the sun and moon being in Cancer, on the 25th of the month of June and 1st of Epiphi, Eve the helpmeet of Adam was brought by God into Paradise, on the 80th day of her creation, and Adam took her and named her Eve, which is interpreted Life. Therefore God ordained by Moses in Leviticus, on account of the days of the separation (of Eve from Adam) after her creation, out of Paradise, that the woman should be unclean 40 days after the birth of a male child, and 80 days after the birth of a female. For Adam was brought into Paradise on the 40th day of his creation, wherefore also they bring male children into the Temple on the 40th day according to the Law. But for a female child she is to be unclean 80 days, both because Eve entered into Paradise on the [7] 80th day, and also because of the impureness of the female compared with the male; for when she is unclean she does nor enter the Temple until 7 days after, according to the Law of God.
"This we have copied shortly out of the so-called L ife of Adam for the information of students."
Now, although George Syncellus expressly distinguishes the Leptogenesis (Book of Jubiiees) from the Life of Adam, and subsequently gives quotations avowedly made from it, the fact remains that practically all that he quotes from the Life of Adam occurs in Jubilees (iii. 1-11): The monthly reckonings and the astronomical details are not there, but all the facts are. It has been held that the Life was an amplified episode taken from Jubilees, or that it is merely another name for Jubilees. The former is to my mind the more likely explanation, for there is another bit of evidence in favour of the separate existence of such a writing. Anastasius of Sinai, writing at the end of the sixth century, says (on the Hexaemeron, vii. p. 895): "The Hebrews assert, on the authority of a book not included in the Canon, which is called the Testament of the Protoplasts, that Adam entered Paradise on the 40th day, and that is the view also of a historian, the chronographer Pyrrho, and of manv commentators."
This Testament may very well have been the same as Syncellus's Life. I think we need not greatly regret that we do not possess this Life or Testament: we probably have most of the matter of it either in Jubilees or in the Greek and Latin texts I have described.
The Apocalypse-Testament would have been more interesting, with its hymns of the repentant Adam and the Messianic predictions which I do not doubt that it contained One more testimony to its existence must be put on record. Epiphanius (Heresy, 26), treating of the "Borborite "Gnostics, makes (in § 5) this quotation: "Reading in apocryphal writings that 'I saw a tree bearing twelve fruits in the year, and he said to me, "This is the tree of life," ' the heretics interpret it in a way which need not be remembered." Later on [8] (in § 8) he says that they use "Apocalypses of Adam" as well as other spurious books. The plural is merely rhetorical. It has been assumed, plausibly enough, that the quotation about the tree -- which nearly coincides with Rev. xxii. 2 -- is from the Apocalypse of Adam: but this is no more than an assumption. The importance of the passage is that it gives fourth-century evidence of the currency of the Apocalypse.
Upon the whole I incline (in spite of the evidence of Samuel of Ani) to the opinion that there were two outstanding Adam-books of Jewish origin. One, the Apocalypse (Testament, Penitence), which is gone, except for a few quotations; the other the Life, which is represented in its main features by the Latin and Greek texts (Vita Adae et Evae, and "Apocalypse of Moses").
The only book current under this name was a "Gospel," and Epiphanius is the only authority for its existence. In the same 26th Heresy (2, 3) he says: "Others do not scruple to speak of a Gospel of Eve, for they father their offspring upon her name, as supposedly the discoverer of the food of knowledge by revelation of the serpent that spake to her." "Their words," he goes on, "like those of a drunkard, are fit to move sometimes laughter, sometimes tears. They deal in foolish visions and testimonies in this Gospel of theirs." Thus: "I stood upon a high mountain, and I saw a tall man and another, a short man, and I heard as it were the voice of thunder, and drew near to hearken, and he spake to me and said: 'I am thou and thou art I. And wheresoever thou art, there am I, and I am dispersed among all things, and whence thou wilt thou canst gather me, and in gathering me thou gatherest thyself.' "This is pantheistic stuff, of a kind, one would suppose, very easy to write, if a model were furnished. I give it a place here only for the sake of completeness: it is no more an Old Testament apocryph than it is a gospel. [9]
Seth was in like manner the ostensible author of many Gnostic books. But there is a passage both in Syncellus and Cedrenus which deserves to be quoted as possibly preserving a notice of a lost writing under his name, of less eccentric character. I quote Cedrenus (ed. Migne, col. 8): "Seth is recorded as the third son of Adam. He married his own sister, called Asouam, and begat Enos. Seth signifies resurrection. He was also called God, because of the shining of his face, which lasted all his life. Moses also had this grace, and so veiled himself when he spoke with the Jews, for forty years. Seth gave names to the seven planets, and comprehended the lore of the movements of the heavens. He also prepared two pillars, one of stone and one of brick, and wrote these things upon them." (The rest of this familiar story from Josephus is then given.) "He also devised the Hebrew letters. Now Seth was born in the 230th year of Adam, and was weaned when he was twelve years old, and in the 270th year of Adam Seth was caught away by an angel and instructed in what concerned the future transgression of his sons (that is to say, the Watchers, who were also called Sons of God), and concerning the Flood and the coming of the Saviour. And on the fortieth day after he had disappeared, he returned and told the protoplasts all that he had been taught by the angel. He was comely and well-formed, both he and those that were born of him, who were called Watchers and Sons of God because of the shining of the face of Seth. And they dwelt on the higher land of Eden near to Paradise, living the life of angels, until the 1000th year of the world."
Dr. Charles may be right in regarding this statement (about the revelations made to Seth) as an attempt to transfer to him the wisdom and the position which properly belonged to Enoch. Still, there is evidence, at any rate, of Messianic prophecies attributed to Seth, besides those which Adam revealed to him, and which [10] are recorded in the fragments of the Testament, and more shortly in the Life.
In particular, the Arian author of a commentary on St. Matthew, printed with the works of St. Chrysostom and known as the Opus Imperfectum, quotes a story about the Magi, "among whom (in their own country) was current a writing inscribed with the name of Seth, concerning the star which was to appear and the gifts that were to be offered to Christ." In the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, translated into French by P. Peeters (19I4), the Magi are represented as bringing with them a Messianic prophecy by Adam which Seth had received and handed on to his posterity. These are, of course, Christian compositions, and not necessarily or probably of early date.
Lamech is the next title in the lists of Apocryphal books which concerns us. There are two antediluvians of the name recorded in Genesis: in iv. 25 ff. we have the descendant of Cain, the author of the Song; in v. 25 ff. the descendant of Seth and father of Noah. The former has been the subject of more legend than the latter. The enigmatical Song has had explanations invented for it, of which that which has attained the widest currency is as follows. Lamech was blind, and used to go out shooting with bow and arrow under the guidance of the young Tubal Cain. The function of Tubal was to tell the old man where the game was, and direct his shot. One day Tubal was aware of something moving in the thicket; he turned Lamech's aim upon it, and the creature fell dead. It proved to be their ancestor Cain -- covered with hair and with a horn growing out of his forehead -- for such was the mark set upon him by God. Lamech, on learning what he had done, smote his mighty hands together in consternation, and in so doing smote and slew Tubal Cain. Thus it was that he "killed a man to his wounding and a young man to his hurt."
This tale is current in a separate form in Slavonic. [11] No one has made a better conjecture than that the lost book of Lamech had this for its principal subject. Many are the Jewish writers and mediaeval Western commentators who tell the story, and through the medium of the latter it became one of the regular episodes to be illustrated in continuous Bible histories of the twelfth and later centuries. In England it may be seen on the west front of Wells Cathedral and in the bosses of the nave of Norwich Cathedral; abroad, on the west front of Bourges, of Auxerre, at Toledo, at Orvieto -- all these showing it in sculpture; while in MSS. it is very frequently to be met, and in glass -- in "Creation" windows -- is by no means uncommon.
The literature attributed to Noah and his family is various. We hear of writings under his name and under those of his wife and of one of his sons.
The Book of Noah seems nowhere to be mentioned by any ancient writer; but pieces of it have been incorporated with the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. It must, therefore, be at least as old as the early part of the second century B.C.
The portions of Enoch which Dr. Charles (Jubilees, p. lxxi) describes as Noachic are chapters ii.-xi.; lx.; lxv-lxix.25; cvi. -cvii.; and probably xxxix. 1. 2a; xli. 3-8; xliii.- xliv.; liv- 7-lv. 2; lix., but this second set has been modified.
Of these chapters, vi.-xi. contain the story of the fall of the Watchers. The most tell-tale passage is x. i, where the Most High sends an angel (Arsalaljur, Istrael, or Uriel) "to the son of Lamech, saying, 'Go to Noah and tell him in my name,"' etc.
lx. is a vision, abruptly introduced, concerned largely with the two monsters Leviathan and Behemoth.
lxv. begins: "In those days Noah saw how the earth bowed itself," etc. In 5 the first person appears, and we read of "my grandfather Enoch." lxvii. 1, has, "The word of God came to me and spake, 'Noah, thy [12] lot is come up before me,' "etc. It is mainly a prophecy of the Flood.
cvi., cvii. may possibly be the beginning of the Book. They deal with the birth of Noah. But Enoch is the speaker.
The second set of passages does not contain Noah's name.
In Jubilees, the Noah-passages are vii. 20-39, x. 1-15.
The former gives Noah's commandments to his sons. At v. 26 he begins abruptly to speak in the first person: "And we were left, I and you, my sons."
The other (x. 1-15) tells how the demons afflicted Noah's posterity, and how at his prayer all but a tenth part of them were bound in the pllace of condemnation, and how the angels taught Noah all the remedies for the diseases which tile demons had introduced, which he recorded in a book and gave it to Shem.\2/ Parts of this section exist in Hebrew in a Book of Noah, printed by Jellinek and by Charles, and analyzed by Ro%nsch in his Buch der Jubila%en.
\2/ There is in Syriac a book of prognostics under Shem's name recently edited by Dr. Mingana (Rylands Library Bulletin).
It will be seen that the book was of miscellaneous character; partly legendary and haggadic, partly apocalyptic: not unlike the Book of Enoch, in fact. As to its original compass, we have no indication whatsoever, and the absence of references to it in literature seems to show that it went out of sight and use at an early date. Possibly the speeches of Noah in theSibylline Oracles (Book 1.) may be derived from it, but not probably; there is little that is distinctive in them.
Epiphanius (Heresy, 26) has a good deal to say about a Book of Noria, the wife of Noah, which was used by the Borborite Gnostics. He abuses them for calling her Noria instead of Bath Enos (which in Jubilees, iV. 28 is the name of Noah's mother), and relates (presumably on the authority of the Book) that, as they say, "she [13] often tried to be with Noe in the ark" (when it was being built, I understand), "and was not permitted, for the Archon who created the world wished to destroy her with all the rest in the flood; and she, they say, seated herself on the ark and set fire to it, not once or twice, but often, even a first, second, and third time. Hence the making of Noe's ark dragged on for many years, because it was so often burnt by her. For, say they, Noe was obedient to the Archon, but Noria revealed (proclaimed) the Upper Powers and Barbelo, who is of the Powers, and opposed to the Archon, like the other Powers, and taught that the elements that had been stolen from the Mother above by the Archon who made this world and the other gods, angels, and demons who were with him, should be collected from the Power that resides in bodies."
The matter about Barbelo and the Archon is, of course, Gnostic from the beginning; but it is curious to notice that in later legend Noah's wife is often referred to as trying to thwart him. A story is current in two widely separate tongues, Slavonic and English, which shows this.
Noah was enjoined to tell no man that he was making the ark; and, miraculously, his tools made no noise when he worked at it. The devil, anxious to prevent the building, went in human form to Noah's wife and asked her where her husband spent his time so secretly. She could not tell. He effectually roused her jealousy and suspicion,and gave her certain grains. "These," he said, "if put in Noah's drink, will force him to tell you all about it." This happened: Noah gave away the secret, and next day, when he went out to work, the first blow of his axe resounded through all the countryside. An angel came to him and rebuked him for his want of caution. The ark had to be finished with wattlework.
Such is the tale as told and pictured in a beautiful fourteenth-century English MS., Queen Mary's Prayerbook (Brit. Mus. Royal 2. B. vii.). It is to be found also in a Newcastle mystery play, and in Slavonic [14] countries, whose legends are collected in Da%hnhardt's Natursagen.
The form given there (i. 258) is worth setting down, to demonstrate the idedtitv of the two stories. It occurs "in a late Russian re/daction of the Revelations of (Pseudo-) Methodius, with which (on this point) the popular traditions of Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Wotjaks, and Irtysch-Ostjaks, agree in essence."
Before the Lord sent the deluge, He commanded Noah to build an ark secretlv, and not to tell even his wife what he was making. While Noah was at work in a wood on a mountain, the devil came to him and asked what he was doing, but Noah would not tell him. Then the devil went to Noah's wife, and advised her to give her husband an intoxicating drink, and draw the secret from him. When Noah had taken it, his wife began to question him, and he told her all. Next day, when he went back to work, he found the ark all broken into little pieces. The devil had destroyed it. Noah wept night and day and lamented his sin. After that an angel brought him a message of forgiveness and told him to make the ark over again.
The trait of the noiselessness of the axe before Noah betrayed the secret also occurs in the Hungarian story, (l.c. 269).
In some mystery-plays comic relief is obtained by making Noah's wife a shrew and a scold, who will not be induced to enter the ark until the last possible moment.
This incident, in a more complete form, occurs in the Russian legend just quoted. The devil asked Noah's wife how he could get into the ark which was now ready. She could not think of a plan. But he told her that she must refuse to enter the ark until the water had come up, and must wait until Noah uttered the devil's name. She obeyed, and however much Noah called, she would not come, until at last he said, "Come in, you devil." The devil immediately darted into the ark. The sequel to this is portrayed in Queen Mary’s Prayer-book. Noah, on seeing the dove return, says, Benedicite. The devil, [15] unable to bear the sacred word, bursts out through the hull of the ark, but the hole he makes is stopped by the snake, who thrusts his tail into it. Many forms of this story are collected by Dia%hnhardt.
All this is far enough removed from the Book of Noria, yet the legend I have told has this much in common therewith, that it represents Noah's wife as opposed to the making of the ark under the influence of a spiritual being. Epiphanius is, as usual, confusing in his account of the transaction, but we see at least that Noria is kept away from the ark, we know not on what excuse, and we guess that she succeeds in hiding herself in it and burning it.
I conjecture that the Gnostic writer may have taken a simple folk-tale and made it a peg whereon to hang his own very uninviting bag of doctrines.
A Prophecy of Ham is mentioned in an obscure and unlhappily defective passage of Clement of Alexandria (Stromateiss, VI.vi. fin.). He is quoting the heretic Isidore, son of Basilides, and Isidore is speaking of the borrowings of Greek philosophers from Jewish Scriptures. He says: "For indeed I think that those who claim to philosophize, if they could find what is the meaning of the winged oak-tree and the embroidered mantle upon it, and all that sacred allegory that Pherecydes devised, drawing his material from the prophecy of Ham (the sentence is imperfect).
This is quite cryptic as it stands, and no great amount of light is forthcoming. In the same book (ii. 9) Clement quotes Pherecydes as saying, "Zeus makes a mantle great and fair, and on it broiders Earth and Ocean and the house of Ocean," where the words for mantle and broider are those used by Isidore. And a papyrus (Grenfell and Hunt, Greek Papyri, Series II, No. 11) has given us a little more of the same passage of Pherecydes; but it does not explain the winged oak tree. [16]
The best opinion that is current so far about the prophecy of Ham is that of Eisler (Weltenmantel, etc., 1910), who connects it with the literature that went under the name of Hermes Trismegistus. The writers of that school and the alchemists who came after them (we have a good many Greek alchemical writings) professed to see a connexion between the name of Ham (Cham) and their science of Chemeia: and Chem figured as an interlocutor in some of the written dialogues, and is mentioned under the name of "the prophet Chymes," or "Chemes." The symbolism employed in such circles is likely to have been strange and obscure: it probably conveyed in esoteric fashion their views on cosmogony.
The best opinion that is current so far about the prophecy of Ham is that of Eisler (Weltenmantel, etc., 1910), who connects it with the literature that went under the name of Hermes Trismegistus. The writers of that school and the alchemists who came after them (we have a good many Greek alchemical writings) professed to see a connexion between the name of Ham (Cham) and their science of Chemeia: and Chum figured as an interlocutor in some of the written dialogues, and is mentioned under the name of "the prophet Chymes," or "Chemes." The symbolism employed in such circles is likely to have been strange and obscure it probably conveyed in esoteric fashion their views on cosmogony.
Of Abraham a word must be said. The lists give us the name of Abraham simply, and Nicephorus attaches to it the number of 300 lines; the MSS. also read 1300 and 3300, but 300 is best supported. The Apostolic Constitutions mention apocryphal writings under the names of the three patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob); Epiphanius says that the Sethians used an Apocalypse of Abraham which was "full of all manner of wickedness," and Origen gives something like a quotation from an Abrahamic book, in these terms (on Luke, Hom. 35). "We read-at least if any one likes to accept a writing of the kind-of the angels of righteousness and of iniquity disputing over the salvation or perdition of Abraham, each band wishing to claim him for its own company." He then refers to a passage in the Shepherd of Hermas. We have these Homilies on Luke only in a Latin version, and I have little doubt that the original of this passage was fuller-apocryphal quotations being apt to be slurred over, if not wholly expunged, by orthodox fourth-century translators; I also suspect that the point of the quotation has been [17] spoilt, and that it was not Abraham's soul, but another, about whom the angels disputed.
Passing from these three references to extant literature, we find two Abraham books, one called an Apocalypse, the other a Testament, of Abraham. The Apocalypse exists only in Slavonic: it is accessible in a translation recently issued by the S.P.C.K., and is of considerable antiquity and great interest. The Testament exists in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic, Slavonic Roumanian and was edited by me in 1892.\3/ All the texts of it have been more or less tampered with. The plurality of versions and revisions is in favour of the book's antiquity, and it does contain an episode which might be identified with that of Origen s quotation. The Apocalypse does not. We have seen, moreoever, that books of the Three Patriarchs are mentioned in the fourth century: and the Testaments of Isaac and Jacob, especially that of Isaac, have undoubtedly quite ancient elements. With them this, of Abraham, is found in Coptic, Arabic and Ethiopic.
\3/ A translation of the Coptic of the Testaments of the Three Patriarchs is promised by Mr. Gaselee for the present series.
So I think the Testament represents an early book, and am sure that the Apocalypse is early. Which of them is the text meant in the lists I will not undertake to say. They do not differ in length so much that we can decide from the stichometry.
Connected with Abraham is Melchizedek. This mysterious figure interested many early thinkers, as it did the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and a sect who identified him with the Holy Spirit was either christened or christened itself Melchizedekian. Legend, both Jewish and Christian, was busy with him, identifying him sometimes with Shem, sometimes with a son of Shem, and sometimes finding other pedigrees for him. Though we do not hear from other writers of books specially concerned with him, we have two [18] stories of Melchizedek which almost rank, as independent apocrypha. One is in Greek, printed with the works of St. Athanasius, and setting forth that Melchizedek was the son of King Melchi and Queen Salem, and how he was converted to a belief in the true God, and at his prayer his whole kindred was swallowed up in the earth at the moment when his heathen father was about to sacrifice his other son Melchi to idols; how Melchizedek then lived as a solitary on Mount Tabor until Abraham, divinely guided, found him.
The other is a long episode attached in some MSS. to the Slavonic Secrets of Enoch. It will be found, in English, in Dr. Charles's edition, pp. 85-93. It is of great interest. It tells first of the succession of Mathuselam to the priesthood vacated by Enoch, then of his death and the accession of Nir, son of Larnech, and next of the miraculous birth of Melchizedek from Sopanima wife of Nir. Melchizedek, like the mysterious Child of Rev. xii., is caught away to Paradise forty days after his birth, and thus saved from the Flood. Nir dies, and the priesthood 'remains vacant. A short account of Noah and the Flood ends the whole. Little attention has hitherto been paid to this story. Both it and the Greek one described above are, in their present form, Christian.
A Testament of Jacob, as has been said, exists in Coptic and other Eastern languages. Besides this (which seems to be an abridged form of a longer original), something called a Testament of Jacob is found in a Greek MS. at Paris (Coislin, 296); but it is merely an extract from the 49th chapter of Genesis. Further, a sixteenth-century writer, Sixths Senensis, in his Bibliotheca Sancta, has an entry (p. 70) worth transcribing. "There is current in print a Testament of the patriarch Jacob which Gelasius in the 29th Distinction (of the Decretum of Gratian) reckons among the books of apocryphal character." He here refers to the Gelasian [19] Decree, where many copies read wrongly Testamentum Jacobi for Test. Jobi. What this printed Testament of Jacob, current in Italy in the sixteenth century, may have been, I have not been able to determine with certainty. There is just the chance that, as the Vision of Isaiah was printed in Latin more than once and wholly forgotten, so some really apocryphal work may have had a brief life; but it is far more likely that some réchauffé of the Blessings of Jacob, circulated with the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, is meant. Such a thing is, in fact, prefixed to some of the old translations of these Testaments, e. g. the English one printed by Richard Day.
There is, besides, a proper apocryph of Jacob in the shape of the Ladder of Jacob, extant only in Slavonic, and translated by Bonwetsch in the Gottingen Nachrichten for 1900, in two recensions. I shall reproduce this in English in the Appendix to this volume.
The Twelve Patriarchs have their well-known Testaments, of which Dr. Charles has given us an indispensable edition. It seems as if behind the present Testaments there lay, in some cases, earlier documents of which we have glimpses. For instance, the story of the wars of Jacob is found in Jubilees and in Jashar, as Dr. Charles sets forth. Then, again, we have a double narrative in the Testament of Joseph. In that of Levi a different phenomenon occurs. A tenth-century MS. at Mount Athos (e. of Dr. Charles) makes two long insertions in the text: (a third, in the Testament of Asher, is said to be wholly Christian, and is not printed by Dr. Charles). These two passages, the first of which is not as yet translated, merit notice here.
(i) Test. Levi II.-"And as I kept sheep in Abelmaoul, a spirit of understanding from the Lord came upon me, and I beheld how all men had corrupted their ways and how sin was builded upon a wall (so far the ordinary text: now the Athos MS. continues) [20] "Then did I wash my garments and cleansed there in pure water, and I washed myself wholly in living water. And I made all my ways straight. Then lifted I up mine eyes and my face to heaven and opened my mouth and spake, and spread out the fingers of my hands and my hands unto truth before the holy (plural). And I prayed and said: Lord, thou knowest all hearts, and all the thoughts of men's minds thou alone perceivest [and now my children with me],\4/ and give me all ways of truth. Put far from me, O Lord, the unjust spirit and the spirit of evil thoughts, and fornication and pride turn thou away from me. Let there be shown me, O Alaster, the holy spirit, and give me counsel and wisdom and knowledge and strength to do such things as please thee arid to find grace in thy sight and to praise thy words. Be with me O Lord, and let not any Satan prevail against me to make me err from thy way. And have mercy on me and bring me to thee to be thy servant and worship thee rightly: let a wall of thy peace he round about me, and a shelter of thy might cover rue from all evil . . . (a corrupt word παραδωσ): wherefore also blot out lawlessness from under heaven, put an end to lawlessness from off the face of the earth. Purify my heart, O Master, from all (un)cleanness and I will lift up (my hands) to thee; and turn not away thy face from the son of thy servant Jacob. Thou, Lord, didst bless Abraham my father and Sarah my mother, and saidst that thou wouldest give them a righteous seed, blessed for ever. Hearken also to the voice of thy servant Levi, that I may be near thee, and make me a partaker in thy words, to do true judgment for ever, even me and my sons, unto everlasting generations, and remove not the son of thy servant from before thee (from thy face) all the days of eternity. And I kept silence, though I yet prayed."
\4/ Intrusive, or corrupt: query "And now, O Lord, bless me and my children with me," etc.
This is a corrupt and incoherent text, a cento of rather ordinary supplications without a leading thought. The vocabulary of it agrees well enough with that of [21] the Testaments, so that it need not, and I think should not, be regarded as a late compilation; indeed, such a supposition is pretty well put out of court by the fact that the second long insertion is undoubtedly antique. The idea readily occurs to one that there may have been Testaments of Levi, and perhaps of one or two other leading patriarchs, a good deal longer than the present ones, composed before the rest of the Testaments, and that the notion of completing the set of twelve entailed, among other things, the compression of existing texts.
The second insertion, part of which is also found in Aramaic, is translated in Appendix II of Dr. Charles's Testaments (1908, p. 228). The greater portion is put in-quite incoherently-after Levi xviii. 2. The Aramaic pieces begin at an earlier point than the Greek and carry the story on some way beyond it. A large part of the text has to do with ritual observances, and has much in common with Jubilees xxi. It has injunctions. given by Isaac on the authority of Abraham and the Book of Noah (probably a mythical one) to Jacob and Levi, on the ordination of the latter to be priest. After that we have details of the birth of Levi's children, and the text (Aramaic) ends in a paraenetic poem addressed by Levi to his sons. Throughout he speaks in the first person. Dr. Charles regards this fragment as an original source both of the Testaments and of Jubilees, in which case it would have to be as old as the third century B.C.
And now we come to the consideration of a very interesting lost book, the Prayer of Joseph. The lists have told us that it contained 1100 lines-as many as are assigned to Wisdom; and we have certain fragments of it preserved by Origen, which must be transcribed and expounded in detail.
The first and longest is in Origen's Commentary upon John, ii. 31.
He is speaking of John the Baptist, and, says he: "It will not be out of place to add a notion of our own about him. When we read the prophecy of him, ' Behold, I send my angel before thy face,' etc., we reflected if by chance one of the holy angels being upon service were not sent down as a forerunner of our Saviour. It would not, indeed, be surprising if, when the firstborn of all creation became incarnate, for love of man, some should have become emulators and imitators of Christ, and embraced the opportunity of ministering to His kindness to men by means of a like body . . . . Now if any one accepts among the apocrypha current among the Hebrews, what is entitled the Prayer of Joseph, he will derive from it exactly this teaching, expressed in plain terms: that those who from the beginning possessed some special excellence beyond men, and were greatly superior to all other souls, have descended from the estate of angels into human nature. Jacob, at any rate, says: `For I Jacob that speak unto you, I am also Israel, an angel of God and a ruling spirit, and Abraham and Isaac were pre-created (προεκτίσθησαν, a word only found here) before any work. And I Jacob, that am called by men Jacob, yet my name is Israel, that am called by God Israel, a man seeing God, for I am the first begotten of every living; thing that is quickened by God." And lie continues: "And I, when I was corning from Mesopotamia of Syria, Uriel the angel of God came forth and said that I had come down (came) to earth and tabernacled among men, and that I was called by name Jacob. He envied me and fought with me, and wrestled with me, saying that his name should have precedence of my name and of the angel that is before all (or that his name and the name of the angel that is before all should have precedence of my name). (All is singular, and should perhaps be rendered 'before every (angel).') And I told him his name, and in what order\5/ he is among the sons of God, saying: `Art not thou Uriel, the eighth from me, and I am Israel, an [23] archangel of the power of the Lord, and a captain of captains of thousands among the sons of God? Am I not Israel, the first minister before the face of God? ' And I called upon my God by the inextinguishable name." "It is likely" (Origen goes on) "that if these words were really spoken by Jacob, and therefore recorded, that the incident ` He supplanted his brother in the womb' (Hos. xii. 3) happened intelligently (consciously, συνετῶσ)." He then speaks a little about Jacob and Esau, hinting at their possible pre-existence, and concludes: "But we have made a considerable digression in taking up the matter of Jacob and calling in as evidence a writing not lightly to be despised, to make something more credible of the theory about John, which maintains that he, according to Isaiah's word, being an angel, took a body in order to bear witness to the Light." This passage is summarized by Jerome on Haggai.
\5/Edd. πόσος, but πόστος (quotus) is certainly to be read.
The second fragment is in the Philocalia, cap. xxiii. 15, taken from the Commentary on Genesis iii. It is partly to be found in Eusebius' Praep. Evang., VI. ii, and Procopius on Genesis quotes from it too. The topic is astrology.
" For, as we showed before that the fact that God knows what every man will do is no obstacle to freewill, so neither do the signs which God has appointed for the giving of information impede freewill: but, like a book containing future events in prophecy, the whole heaven-the book of God, as it is-may contain the future. Wherefore in the Prayer of Joseph this word of Jacob may be thus understood: ` For I have read in the tablets of heaven all that shall befall you and your sons.'
(19) "But if Jacob says he has read in the tablets of heaven what is to befall his sons, and upon this point some one objects to us that the opposite of what we have said is shown by the Scripture (for we were saying that man has no apprehension of the signs, whereas Jacob says he has read in the tablets of heaven), we shall say in defence that our wise men, aided by a spirit [24] excelling human nature, are taught secret things not humanly but divinely, as Paul, who says, ` I heard unspeakable words,' etc . . . . And, besides, Jacob was greater than man, he who supplanted his brother, and who declares in that same book from which we quoted, ` I read in the tablets of heaven:' that he was a captain of captains of thousands of the power (host) of the Lord, and had of old the name of Israel: which fact he recognizes while doing service in a body, being reminded of it by the archangel Uriel."
The next allusion is in the Annals of Michael Glycas, a Byzantine chronicler of the twelfth century. He has given a résumé of the story of Tobit, and when he comes to the name of the archangel Raphael, he says, "And this name Raphael thou hast already learnt out of Tobit, but that of Uriel, as the great Psellus (Michael Psellus, 1081) says, neither the Old nor the New Testament makes known to us. But there is a Hebraic book, unknown to most men, entitled the Prayer of Joseph, where his father Jacob is introduced as talking with this angel [Raphael]; though now the book, like the other apocryphal writings, is rejected and set at nought by the Hebrews." The bracketed name of Raphael must be wrong. The reference to Psellus, much of whose writing remains inedited, has never been followed up. Very likely he depended upon Origen for his knowledge of the Prayer.
In the Ascension of Isaiah, iv. 22, a number of prophetic writings are mentioned: the twelve minor prophets are enumerated, and then "the words of Joseph the just, and the words of Daniel." Here it is generally assumed that the Prayer of Joseph is meant. The passage has been thought to be an addition to the Ascension: at latest it would be of the third century, at earliest late in the first.
In the Revue Bénédictin Dom Morin has an article on the library of the Abbey of Gorze in the eleventh century. To it he appends a note upon a collection of Latin homilies attributed to a certain John, which he had seen in MSS, then extant at Reims and at Arras. [25] (Are they still in being?) "I noticed," he says, "a mention of the angel Uriel; on p. 62 are the words, Et pugnavit cum angelo Oriel (and he fought with the angel Uriel)." I do not see that this can refer to anyone but Jacob, and it is not independent of the Prayer of Joseph. It is quite likely, of course, to have been derived from Origen, who, when all is said, remains our sole source of knowledge of the contents of the book.
A very lengthy comment might be written upon these fragments. I will try to compress mine.
First, the title, Prayer of Joseph, is peculiar. No other separate book is so named, though a good many prayers occurring in Scriptural books are dignified with special titles, and some were current separately. Such are the Prayers of Moses (Ps. xc.), of Habakkuk, of Solomon in Kings, and in Wisdom, of Jesus son of Sirach (Ecclus. li.), of Azarias in the furnace (Dan. iii. (LXX)), of Esdras (4 Esdr. viii), of Baruch (Apoc. Baruch), of Manasseh. But these are not whole books. The nearest parallel is the case of the Book or History of Asenath, which the Armenian list places in the stead of the Joseph book, and calls the Prayer (prayers) of Asenath. A Greek MS. of it has a similar title, Confession and Prayer of Asenath. The fact that Asenath replaces Joseph suggests the possibility of an integral connexion between the books (so Mgr. Batiffol). I leave tried to establish one, but with little success. The most one can say is that in Asenath. a sort of divinity hangs about both Jacob and Joseph: that Levi "saw writings written in the heavens," that the angel who visits Asenath is "captain of the host of the Lord God, leader of all the army of the Most High." He has a name "written in heaven in the book of the Most High by the finger of God, before all. And the things written in that book are ineffable, such as men may not speak or hear." Joseph is described as the son of the Most High. The description of Jacob says that his arms were as those of an angel, his thighs and legs and feet like a giant's, and he like a man that fought (or might fight) with God, I think it quite probable that the [26] writer of this was acquainted with the Prayer of Joseph but I do not see (as I should like to see) evidence that the one book has drawn much from the other or is modelled upon it.
All that we can fairly gather from the title is that the book must have contained a prayer or prayers of considerable bulk uttered by Joseph (as Asenath contains a long prayer of Asenath). On what occasion it was offered, whether in the pit, or in prison, or on his deathbed, there is no certainty.
From the fragments we call gather one point of importance. Jacob says, "I that speak unto you, I have read what shall befall you and your sons." He is therefore addressing some or all of his descendants, and he (toes so in the terms used by the Patriarchs in the Testaments when they are on their deathbeds. Also, I think, the revelation of his angelic nature is one which would naturally be reserved until the end of his life. Further, in Gen. xlviii., where the blessing of Joseph's sons is related, there are coincidences of expression: "My God," and "When I was coming from Mesopotamia of Syria." Thus the book contained a dying speech of Jacob, of which we leave a portion. I am tempted to think that it was addressed to Joseph and his sons Ephraim and Manasseh The grounds are naturally slight: (a) We already have, in Genesis xlix., the full address of Jacob to the twelve; (b) there are coincidences of language with the episode of Joseph's sons in Gen. xlviii.
The matter and doctrine of the fragments occupy us next. The pre-existence of Jacob as an angel, and of Abraham and Isaac is here taught in the crudest way. The terms, however, are confusing. If Jacob is first begotten of every living thing, is he senior to Abraham and Isaac? One must doubt whether the writer had thought this out. He is bent on emphasizing the dignity of Jacob, and finds himself forced to mention the two other Patriarchs.
On pre-existence of souls in general a good deal has been written: an essay by F. C. Porter in O. T. and [27] Semitic Studies in Memory of President Harper, is a notable contribution to the subject. His thesis is that the Jewish doctrine of the pre-existence of ordinary human souls does not imply a belief in a full personal existence of them. We, however, are concerned with the personal pre-existence of certain individuals. Rabbinic literature has a little light to throw on this. The Midrash Rabba, I. § 4, gives (as do other books) a list of things that were created before the world. The Torah and the Throne of Glory (Prov.. Viii, 22, Ps. xciii. 2): these were created already; four more came into God's mind to be created: the Patriarchs (Hos. ix. 10: I saw your fathers as the first-ripe in the fig-tree at her first time), Israel (Ps lxxiv. 2), the Sanctuary (Jer. xvii. 12), the name of Messiah (Ps. lxxii. r7). Sometimes Repentance is added. We find the list also in Midrash Tanchuma and the Pirke R. Eliezer (where the phrase is "the spirits of the fathers"). It does not quite come up to our text in precision of statement. Older books can be cited. Enoch xlviii. 3, says of the Son of Man, "Before the sun and moon and the signs were created, before the stars of heaven were made, his name was named before the Lord of Spirits." Moses (Assumption, i. 14) says of himself, "God foresaw (not created) me before the foundation of the world that I should be the mediator of his covenant."
Ideas about pre-existence were in the air, and it is even possible that the words of Christ in John viii. 58, "Before Abraham was, I am," are to be regarded as showing a consciousness, and containing a contradiction, of such beliefs.
As to the phrase "first-begotten of every living thing," one O.T. text may be cited as a parallel, Exod. iv. 22, "Israel is my firstborn son"; but far nearer is St. Paul's phrase in Col, i. 15, "the firstborn of every creature."
In the Shepherd of Hermas, Vision III. 2, 5, we read of the (seven) holy angels who were first created. Clement of Alexandria mentions them rather frequently, e. g. in Str. VI. 143: "Seven are they that [28] have the greatest power, the first begotten rulers of the angels." We also find them in the Pirke R. Eliezer, 4: "The seven angels that were first created."
" That his name should have precedence over my name and over that of the angel before every . . ." Schurer would read, "and before every angel" (πρὸ τοῦ παντὸσ ἀγγέλου for τοῦ πρὸ παντὸσ ἀγγέλου) but I do not think the text can be mended so easily. It depends on one sole MS., and I fear it is defective. More important is it to notice another Pauline parallel: "He hath given him a name which is above every name," etc. No Jewish Scripture supplies a better.
Uriel is the wrestling angel. This, again, is peculiar. The uniform Rabbinic tradition says that it was Michael, Pseudo-philo (Bibl. Antiq., XVIII. G) that it was the angel who is over the praises, the Ladder of Jacob that it was the archangel Sarekl: in Pirke R. Eliezer the wrestling angel gives his own name Israel to Jacob. I do not trace the reason for choosing Uriel. He figures a good deal in Enoch: in xx. 2 he is the angel over the world and over Tartarus, he guides Enoch to remote regions and shows him the movements of the heavenly bodies. He is one of the four great angels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael being his compeers. To Adam he comes as the angel over repentance and tells him of the hours of day and night. To Esdras he shows visions. In the Apocalypse of Peter (and Sib. Orac. II ) he brings souls out of Hades to judgment. In the Testament of Solomon we read of a demon who was an offspring of Uriel, and Uriel is summoned to control him.
He appears in our fragment in a somewhat unfavourable light, seeming to take advantage of Jacob's (Israel's) confinement in a human body to gain a superiority over him, which he (no doubt) hopes to maintain when Jacob's earthly life is over.
Of the phrases "come down to earth" and "tabernacled among men," the second is paralleled by Baruch iii. 38, Rev. xxi. 3, and especially Ecclus. xxiv. 8-10 - the first has its closest illustration in Eph. iv, 9-10. [29]
"Uriel the eighth from me." Another contradiction of tradition. Israel appears here as the first of a band of seven, all of whom were before Uriel. Uriel is elsewhere always one of the first seven, and usually of the first four. The place here claimed by Jacob-Israel is that assigned by almost universal consent to Michael.
" And I called on my God by the inextinguishable name." Does this begin a fresh sentence and mean that after thus addressing Uriel, Jacob called upon God? or is it to be connected with the last clause, meaning that, in the discharge of his functions in heaven, Israel invoked Him? In this latter case the greatness of the Name would be the important point, and the intention would be to show how exalted was Jacob's ministry. In spite of the fact that the verb is in the aorist and not in the imperfect, I incline to the latter interpretation. The expression "inextinguishable name" I have not as yet found elsewhere, though I believe it to exist.
These are the chief points in the first fragment. The second is: "I read in the tablets of heaven all that shall befall you and your sons."
The tablets of heaven figure in three books, Enoch (four times) jubilees (over twenty times), the Testaments of tire Twelve Patriarchs (thrice).
The Enoch passages are lxxxi. 1, 2 (the book of the deeds of all men, to the remotest generations), xciii. 2 (they contain the destinies of the righteous), ciii. 2 (the reward of the righteous), cvi. 19, cvii, I (generation after generation will transgress).
In Jubilees, iii. 10, the laws of the purification of women are written in the heavenly tablets, and in sixteen other passages decrees or legal enactments are registered in them. In three cases events are recorded as they happen, and in two others, future matters. But to us the really important passage is xxxii. 21 ff. Jacob at Bethel (not on his flight in Gen. xxviii., but later in his life) "saw in a vision of the night, and behold an angel descended from heaven with seven tablets in his hands, and he gave them to Jacob, and he read them [30] and knew all that was written therein which would befall him and his sons throughout all the ages."
In the Testaments, Levi (v.) speaks of the slaughter of Shechem as written on the tablets (as Jubilees xxx. 19, 20), Asher (ii.) says that the distinction between clean and unclean is declared there (also in the manner of Jubilees); and in vii. 5, "I have read (or known) in the tablets of the heavens that ye will surely be disobedient," etc. In each of these cases Dr. Charles eliminates the phrase "tablets of the heavens" for reasons which seem to me unsound. In each case there is a distinct resemblance to the use of the phrase in Jubilees.
We cannot be wrong, I think, in connecting the phrase in the Prayer of Joseph with the passage in Jubilees xxxi., and in supposing that in the Prayer the same vision of Jacob at Bethel is referred to.
The leading idea of the principal fragment is that angels can become incarnate in human bodies, live on earth in the likeness of men, and be unconscious of their original state. Israel does so apparently in order that he may become the father of the chosen people. It is, I believe, a doctrine which is unique in Jewish teaching.
It has been held -- e.g. by J. T. Marshall (Hastings' Dict. Bible, 11. 778) -- that the Prayer was definitely anti-Christian: it claimed for the Patriarchs the sane sublime and supernatural characteristics as Christians claimed for Our Lord. Also, whereas in early Christian exegesis the wrestling angel is identified with the Logos, the pre-existent Christ (as by Justin and Origen), the status of that angel is here lowered in favour of Israel. These are substantial arguments. I would add that the fragments appear to show knowledge of Christian ideas and terminology. These are the points: (a) preexistence of the Patriarchs as opposed to "Before Abraham was, I am"; (b) incarnation; (c) firstborn of every living thing; (d) "his name should have precedence of mine."
Upon the whole I incline to think that the author of [31] the Prayer of Joseph knew something of Christian theology and indulged in some side-hits at it. Whether that was the main object of the book we cannot tell; but Origen treats it with such respect that I think its attack on Christianity cannot have been very overt.
In the Journal of Theological Studies, xx. (1918) p. 20, Mr. Vacher Burch advocates the view that the Prayer was pro-Christian, and based on the primitive Testimonia against the Jews. "The chief theme of the fragments . . . is the surpassing of one angel-appearance of the Christ by another -- of Uriel by Israel." It is now known that Uriel was a Testimony hypostasis of this nature, for the Ethiopic Narrative of St. Clement (Budge, Contendings of the Apostles, ii 479) contains this helpful passage: "And I (Peter) gave them commandments concerning circumcision according to the Law of Moses, and God (i. e. Christ) appeared unto me in the form of the Angel Uriel, and commanded me to do away the Old Law and to bring in the New." He refers also to the fact that Justin Martyr makes Jacob and Israel names of Christ. I cannot reproduce the whole of the passage here: the thesis is to me unconvincing at present. It is obscurely put by Mr. Burch, and needs restatement in an expanded form to make it plausible, or indeed intelligible. See further under Hezekiah.
Jannes and Jambres (or Mambres). The Penitence of Jannes and Mambres is mentioned in the Gelasian Decree. Origen (on Matthew xxv.) says: "Paul's statement, ` As Jannes and Mambres withstood Moses' (2 Tim. iii. 8) is not found in the ` public' scriptures, but in a secret (apocryphal) book entitled the Book of Jannes and Mambres." The writer called Ambrosiaster, on 2 Timothy, says: "This example is from the Apocrypha. For Jannes and Mambres were brothers, magicians or poisoners, of the Egyptians, who thought they could resist by the art of their magic the mighty works of God which were being accomplished through [32] them. But when the might of Moses in his works proved greater, they were humbled, and confessed, with the pain of their wounds (cf. Philostorgius, below), that it was God that wrought in Moses."
These are the old allusions that imply the existence of a book of Jannes and Mambres. There is a good deal of scattered legend about them, chiefly Jewish. They are the two sons of Balaam (Num. xxi. 22): they educated Moses (Abulpharaj): they were drowned in the Red Sea, or slain with their father by Phinehas. St. Macarius visited their tomb, which was full of demons, from whom he obtained leave to enter and look round. He found a brazen vessel hanging by an iron chain in a well and much consumed by time, and also a number of dried-up pomegranates (Palladius, Hist. Lausiaca).
Another set of allusions is in heathen writers. Numenius, quoted by Eusebius, names them, and so does Artapanus. Pliny speaks confusedly (N. H., xxx. ii) of the magicians Moses, Jannes, Jotapa; and Apuleius (Apology, 90), enumerating famous wizards, names Jesus perhaps, and certainly Moses, and Jannes, Apollonius, Dardanus, Zoroaster, Hostanes.
The allusions to the two wizards which occur in Oriental chronicles have been collected by Iselin in Zeitschrift f. Wissenschafll Theol., 1894, 321.
We now come to consider possible fragments of the book. Photius's excerpts from Philostorgius's Ecclesiastical History has one (ix. 2, p. 166, ed. Bidez): "Moses chastised Jannes and Jambres with sores and sent the mother of one of them to death." This must have been introduced by Philostorgius as an illustration the ninth book of the History is concerned with the reign of Valens.
In the eleventh-century MS. Cotton Tiberius B. V., appended to a tract On the Marvels of the East, is the following fragment in Latin and Anglo-Saxon, illustrated by a beautiful picture of Mambres doing an incantation, and hell open with souls in it.
" Mambres opened the magical books of his brother Jannes, and did necromancy and brought up from hell [33] the shade of his brother. The soul of Jannes answered him saying: I thy brother died not unjustly, but of a truth justly, and judgment will go against me, for I was wiser than all wise magicians, and I withstood the two brethren, Moses and Aaron, who did great signs and wonders: therefore died I and was brought down from among men into hell, where there is great burning, and the pit (lake) of perdition, whence there is no coming up. And now, my brother Mambres, take heed to thyself in thy lifetime to do good to thy sons and thy friends: for in hell there is nothing of good, but sadness and darkness: and when thou shalt have died and shalt be in hell among the dead, thy dwelling-place and thy abode (seat) will be twenty (probably two) cubits broad and four cubits long."
With the Penitence of Jannes and Mambres in the Gelasian Decree is classed the Penitence of Cyprian (the magician and martyr of Antioch, the parent of the Faust-legend). This we have, and it gives an account of his initiation into the devil's service. There are two mentions of our wizards in it: § 6. The prince of the devils praises Cyprian, and calls him a youth of good gifts, a new Jambres, apt for the ministry. § 17. Cyprian says of himself: "I do not believe there was ever a worse man than I was: I outdid the Jannes and Jambres of history. They in the midst of their lying wonders acknowledged the finger of God, but I was wholly set upon it that there was no God. If God did not pardon them who even partly recognized Him, how should He pardon me who ignored Him altogether? "In this view the Egyptian magicians, it seems, did not find forgiveness.
The Greek Acts of St. Katherine are printed in three texts by J. Viteau (Paris, 1897). The first says that Katherine had studied all the art of Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle, Homer, Plato, Philistion, Eusebius, and the necromancies of Jannes and Jambres and the Sibyl. The second repeats, this, more than once, and also gives two quotations from Jannes and Mambres, the first of which defies translation, but adds: "They show, to [34] them that seek to behold, the faces (or persons) that have slept in the earth from the ages." The other is better: "But concerning the mountains (sic-? mules) Jannes and Jambres spake, signifying the sign of the manger of the Lord; and concerning the stone whereby the stone of the tomb (a verb is wanted), as also it was said by the prophet: The stone which the builders rejected," etc.
If this is a genuine quotation at all (and one from the Sibyl which precedes it is correct) it implies Messianic, even Christian, predictions in the book.
Philostorgius by speaking of the mother "of one of them" (θατέρου) contradicts the tradition that the two men were brothers, if he is to be taken literally.
The Latin fragment remains the best. It would form a possible opening for the book, or it might come near the end of it: it would hardly be the closing note. Mambres must have made some reply, and even perhaps repented as a finale. But we must confess ourselves quite ignorant of the general character of the Penitence. It was older, we see, than Origen, anti it may have been Christian. Cyprian's Penitence is possibly modelled upon it to some extent.
By way of appendix a curious fragment may find a place here. In the Roman edition of the works of Ephraem Syrus (ii. p. 405), iii in the midst of the Syriac Testament of Ephraem is suddenly interpolated the following piece of Syriac verse, which has no link of connexion with its context, and which I here translate from the Latin rendering
" In the time of Moses the magicians rose up against the son of Amram but the finger of God overcame them, as they themselves also confessed.
" The righteousness of God smote the wicked men with an evil sore, that even against their will they might proclaim the truth: for the Truth is wont to bear patiently until deceivers repent: but when they re puffed up and think themselves safe, then are they cast down into the pit.
" For when Moses was sent to bring the people out of [35] Egypt, at the bidding of Pharaoh's Lord he came to Pharaoh and told him the command of God. When Pharaoh heard it he was driven to rage and fury and turned to blasphemy; and when the matter was published throughout the city and was come to the ears of the nobles of those parts, some said: It is the command of God and must be obeyed at all costs.
" But the King, when he saw Moses, feared, and began to feel the punishment that hung over him.
" Is there any that does not fear at the sight of the Lord? or who would not tremble at beholding God? So Pharaoh feared Moses, because lie was the god of Pharaoh.
" The whole multitude of the magicians of Egypt hasted together to see a new marvel, for in the face of Moses was the angel of fire and wind, surpassing the brightness of the sun and of lightning, so that whoever fixed his eyes on him took him for a god; but they who heard his voice -- for he was stammering and stuttered -- despised and contemned him as a man. And one affirmed that he was come down from heaven: another set him wholly at naught: for, said he, if there were any great thing in him, surely he would have healed himself.
" Now Moses, as you have heard, knew the tongue of that country well; bred up in the house of Pharaoh, he had drunk in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, as the Apostle witnesses to us of him. And though he were not aware of it himself, yet he had the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, from whom he had learned all that had happened from Adam even to his own days, and was not ignorant of what the magicians were plotting against him.
" So Pharaoh called together all the magicians and their disciples and spoke to them of Moses thus: It is now time that whatever power you have you should put forth for the common good. When war is upon us there is need of mighty men, and the skill of physicians appears then when diseases are rife. Throughout all the world the people will laugh at us with great disgrace [36] of our name if we are overcome by this stammering stutterer. Be therefore strong in conflict till we bear off victory: contend valiantly till we triumph. There is no man who knows not our name or extols you not as workers of wonders: we (ye?) have been wont to be Helpers even of Kings when war came upon them. If then they see us made a laughing-stock to a stammerer, much more shall we be despised by all other men. Up then, put on a manly spirit, and go forth to battle like heroes of renown, that we may gain an eternal name; and so all who hear of it may be smitten with fear and not dare to resist our people. And though I excel in royal dignity, yet I uphold the common cause with you. To all of us there will be like honour or like shame.
"The magicians, stirred by these words, as if made drunk with wine, promised seas and mountains to Pharaoh King of Egypt. The sun, said they, shall not again rise to lighten Egypt before the son of Amram has ceased to live. What time thou, O King, takest quiet slumber in thy bed, then shalt thou hear that Moses has been punished by a shameful death. And this, indeed, we account as nothing: it is child's play. Come then, enter thy chamber and climb up upon thy bed and sleep: for the death of Moses is at the doors, and he shall not, believe us, see another day.
" Thus the magicians left Pharaoh. And he, believing their words, could not sleep for his impatience, looking for the dawn of clay: nor, had he slept, could he rest without the coming of the same images to him in his slumber.
" But they, practising their arts, called up devils and sent them against Moses. The evil spirits rushed in hosts upon the holy man: but the power of God and the prayer of the righteous one drove them back as the storm scatters the fire and the wind the smoke. So did the demons fly from the face of Moses as the conquered flee in battle before the victors, and thieves turn their backs when they hear the voices of the watchmen approaching.
" As light dispels darkness, so did Moses drive away [37] the wicked ones. Headlong they returned to the magicians by whom they had been hired; and, said they: We lose our labour against this man, for he is stronger than we, and we cannot get near to the border of the place where he dwells.
" Meanwhile the day dawned, and Pharaoh anxiously expected that what the magicians had promised him, of the death of Moses, should have been fulfilled. But when the appointed time was past, and there came none to tell the tidings he desired, the King called the magicians and spake thus to them: Why, said he, hath the matter fallen out otherwise than as you promised? for you said, Moses shall not see another day after this.
" The magicians said to him: Have patience a little the man's death is indeed near, but we can do nothing in haste, O King, and this day allows it not, for to-day it is new moon: whey the moon begins to wane, then shall the life of Moses fail.
" This was the cause they pretended to him, until the appointed hour should come to Moses: but the King received their words gladly, being subject to the same errors as they.
" The magicians therefore set to work: they took somewhat of the hairs and garments of Moses, and made an image of him, and laid it up in a tomb, and set evil demons against it. Immediately the demons came, and the princes of them: Satan was ready with his hosts, all of them in divers forms, to destroy Moses.
" They ran against him in a troop. But when they lifted up their eyes to the holy prophet and saw him encompassed by a host of angels, like as it was once with Elisha, they could not bear the look of him, much less attack him, and all together they fled away in confusion with cries and howlings.
" This thing brought the magicians to perplexity. They turned therefore to other means to save their name and not be found guilty of deceit and lying before the King. Accordingly they tools a cup full of wine and by their enchantments compelled vipers and dragons to spue their venom into it; and when it was ready they [38] gave the cup to Moses, that he might drink it and burst asunder. Take, said they, this wine which the King of Egypt sends thee, and drink it, for to this pinnacle of honour he will have thee raised, as he hath long ago desired; and this wine itself is like the desire of the King, for it is old, and by reason of length of time is become muddy and dark.
" At this Moses smiled, and took the cup and signed it in the name of God and drank the wine without any hurt. But that they might know that their deceit was not hidden from him, he turned to them and said: Come, tell the King, who hath sent me to drink wine mingled with the poison of serpents, that none of these things do any hurt to the servants of God.
" Thus far concerning Moses and the Magicians."
The elegancies of the poetic form are not so excessive as to disguise the story, and it is one which I do not find elsewhere. The drinking of the poison is like, or has been made like, the famous miracle of St. John the Evangelist: the "signing "of the cup may well be a touch of the poet's; it is the only one that is obviously Christian. I should not be at all surprised to find that we had here a paraphrase of part of the story of Jannes and Mambres. Note that the unsuccessful attacks of the demons are just such as occur in the Penitence of Cyprian which is linked with that of the Egyptian wizards. The (Latin) Acts of St. James the Great contain something similar, in the tale of Hermogenes and Philetus.
EIdad and Medad (Modat) was a short book of 400 lines, longer than Ephesians (312), shorter than 2 Corinthians (590). Of it we have one certain fragment. Hermas, who in the Shepherd makes many unacknowledged borrowings, quotes a scripture by name once and once only. In Vision ii. 5 he says: "The Lord is near unto them that turn to Him, as it is written in Eldad and Medad who prophesied to the people in the wilderness."
We cannot doubt that the matter of the book was the [39] prophetic utterances of Eldad and Medad. Legend has not been very busy with their names, but the Midrashim (Tanchuma) and Targums say something of them and of what they prophesied. They are made half-brothers of Moses, in two ways. (i) According to the author of the Hebrew Questions on Chronicles (iv. 17), attributed to Jerome, they had other names, Epher and Jalon. After the giving of the Law, he goes on, Moses commanded his father Amram to put away his wife Jochebed, because she, being Levi's daughter, was aunt to her husband. Amram did so, married again, and Eldad and Medad were his offspring. (2) A Midrash says that after Amram's death Jochebed married Elizaphan and bore Eldad and Medad to him. The gift of prophecy was bestowed on them (Sanhedrin, i) because when chosen among the seventy Elders they said they were unworthy of the honour, Tanchuma says they prophesied of things that were to happen as long as forty years after, whereas the other Elders only predicted things near at hand. Alone among the Elders their names are recorded; they kept their gift of prophecy and entered the Promised Land. They prophesied of the death of Moses and succession of Joshua (so also Pseudo-Philo); or, say others, of the quails; or of Gog and Magog.
We have seen that Hermas at Rome quotes Eldad and Medad In Clement of Rome's letter, and in the Homily that is called his second Epistle, a prophetical passage is quoted without a name, which Bishop Lightfoot guessed to be taken from this same book. The guess is an interesting one, and the passage shall be given here. There are considerable differences between the two quotations.
1. Clem., 23; II. 11: "Far be from you that scripture where it saith (for the prophetic word also saith, II.): Miserable are the double-minded which doubt in their soul (heart, II.), which say: (all, II.) these things we heard in our fathers' days also, and lo! we have grown old and nothing of these things hath befallen us (but we expecting from day to day have seen none of these [40] things, II). O foolish ones, compare yourselves to a tree; take the vine; first it sheddeth the leaf, then a shoot cometh (then a leaf, then a flower: II. omits), and after that a sour berry, then a cluster fully ripe. (Here I. ends; II. continues): So also my people hath had unquietnesses and afflictions: afterward it shall receive good things."
The resemblance to 2 Peter iii. 4, etc. (where is the promise of his coming?) is pointed out by Lightfoot.
The difficulty I find in acquiescing in Lightfoot's conjecture is that I do not quite see whom Eldad and Medad would be addressing. In the story as we have it in Numbers xi., their prophecy is uttered not very long after the giving of the Law, and just before the gift of the quails. The people have not been long in the wilderness -- not long enough, it seems to me, to make it appropriate that they should say "we have grown old in looking for the fulfilment of the promises." Such language would be more fitting in the mouth of Israel when in exile and hoping for the Return. And so I think that those are perhaps more likely to be right who suggest that the apocryphal Ezekiel is the source of this passage.
The book of Og the Giant who is said by the heretics to have fought with a dragon after the Flood. This is the most sensational entry in the Gelasian Decree. How we should like to have the book in which such stirring incidents were related !
What can we elicit from records, or reasonably conjecture, about it? It was circulated by heretics. What heretics? I guess the Manichaeans, for in a list of Manichaean books given by Timotheus, Presbyter of Constantinople (Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N.T., i, 139) is one called "The matter (or treatise) of the Giants" (ἡ τῶν γιγάντων πραγματεία), which may fairly be identified with the Book of Og. Other Manichaean writings -- the Foundation and the Treasure of Life -- [41] are condemned, be it noted in passing, in the Gelasian Decree.
But how should Og, who was conquered and slain by Moses, have fought with a dragon after the Flood? It is the constant Rabbinic story that he was one of the antediluvian giants, and that he escaped the Flood by riding on the roof of Noah's ark, being fed by Noah
and, further, that he was identical with Eliezer the servant of Abraham. Once one of his teeth fell out, and Abraham made an armchair out of it. This and many other stories demonstrating his great size, may be found collected in Eisenmenger's Entdecktes Judenthum or Baring Gould's Legends of Old Testament Characters. But there is nothing in them about a dragon.
An unexpected source gives what may be a reminiscence of that incident. In the metrical Anglo-Saxon Dialogue of Salomon and Saturn are the following question and answer:
" Salomon: Tell me of the land where no man may step with feet.
" Saturnus quoth: The sailor over the sea, the noble one, was named Wandering Wolf (weallende Wulf), well known unto the tribes of the Philistines, the friend of Nebrond (= Nimrod), He slew upon the plain five-and-twenty dragons at daybreak, and himself fell down there dead: therefore that land may not any man -- that boundary place any one visit, nor bird fly over it, or any more the cattle of the field. Thence the poisonous race first of all widely arose, which now bubbling through breath of poison force their way. Yet shines his sword mightily sheathed, and over his burial-place glimmer the hilts."
Only a reminiscence, clearly, if that: for Og, we see, survived the combat for many centuries. But quite possibly a reminiscence, for the hero is of the right sort of date, the friend of Nimrod, and early enough to be connected with the rise of the whole tribe of venomous beasts.
Dragons and floods are not unconnected in mythology. Sometimes the dragon, it is thought, is a torrent or flood [42] personified; sometimes (as in Rev. xii. 15) he is the source of it. We may remember that it was after the Deucalion flood that the Python took up his abode at Delphi, where Apollo slew him. Some such myth as that lies, perhaps, at the bottom of the lost story of Og.
To Moses two entries are devoted in the lists. We have the Testament, 1100 lines long, and the Assumption, 1400. Besides that, an Apocalypse of Moses is named; George the Syncellus says that Gal, v. 6; vi. 15 (In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, etc.) is from the Apocalypse of Moses a marginal scholium in several MSS. of the Epistles agrees that it is "from an apocryphon of Moses." There must be some mistake. The only text in Galatians which could be plausibly assigned to such a source is iii. 19: "It was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator," which might be an allusion to the Assumption (God foresaw me . . . to be the mediator of His covenant): no conceivable Jewish book could have contained the statement of Gal. v. 6, and no Christian forger of early times ever did his work quite so badly. At some ancient date the marginal reference must have been attached to the wrong place, and our authorities have copied it in its dislocated state. (A passage which might more plausibly be referred to a book called the Apocalypse of Moses is 2 Cor. xi. 14 (Satan is transformed into an angel of light), for this does happen in the Life of Adam: and the Greek recension of that is called the Apocalypse of Moses.)
Two Apocalypses of Moses we have: the name is an alternative title of the Book of Jubilees, according to George Cedrenus; and there is a Greek Apocalypse of Moses (ed. Tischendorf, etc.) which is really nothing but a Life of Adam, identical in great part with the Latin Vita Adae, et Evae. Besides this there is a (late?) Hebrew Apocalypse, of Moses' progress through the seven heavens. [43]
What of the Testament? There is one express quotation from it in a Greek catena on the Octateuch, giving the dimensions of the Tower of Babel, and this proves to be a quotation of Jubilees. Some therefore think the Testament to be Jubilees under yet another name: the obstacle is that 1100 lines is far too small a total for Jubilees. Dr. Charles differs. He thinks the Testament is that last dying speech of Moses, part of which we have in Latin and usually call the Assumption. In his view the Assumption proper was amalgamated at an early date with the Testament and the two books circulated under the title of the Assumption. All the Latin fragment belongs to the Testament. Early the amalgamation must have been, for Jude quotes both parts in the first century (or at least early in the second). His 9th verse is, Origen tells us, from the Assumption, and his 16th we find in the Latin fragment.
The question is a difficult one. We will return to it, after collecting the fragments of the lost Assumption proper.
Let it be premised that in the spurious Acts of the Council of Nice by Gelasius Cyzicenus there is a dialogue between the Fathers and a Pagan philosopher. The Fathers twice quote the Assumption by name. First they give the text which stands in our Latin fragment as i. 14: "God foresaw me before the foundation of the world to be the mediator of His covenant." Then, after a few pages, they say: "And in the Book of the Assumption of Moses Michael the Archangel, speaking with the devil, says, "For from His holy Spirit all we were created." And again he says: "From the face of God His Spirit went forth, and the world was." The philosopher says: "As to this Assumption of Moses which you quote, and of which you have just spoken, I never heard of it until now, so I beg you to expound to me more clearly the connexion of what is said." But no more light is given.
Jude 9, as is well known, is stated by Clement of Alexandria and Origen and Didymus to be a citation from the Assumption. "But Michael the archangel, [44] when, contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, ` The Lord rebuke thee.' "
Origen (De Principiis, iii. 2): "The serpent in Genesis is represented as deceiving Eve, a propos of which, in the Ascension of Moses (a book mentioned by the Apostle Jude in his Epistle), Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, says that the serpent, inspired by the devil, was the cause of the transgression of Adam and Eve."
These are certain quotations. So are the next three, but the source is not named. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. vi., xv. (§132, p. 498, Stahelin)
" With good reason, then, did Jesus the son of Naue behold Moses being taken up in two forms, the one companying with angels, the other being honoured with burial in the glens of the mountains. But Jesus saw this sight below him, being lifted up by the spirit, with Chaleb also: but not in like manner do they both behold, but the one descended rather quickly, since he bore with him much that weighed him down, while the other, descending after him, related subsequently the glory which lie beheld, leaving been able to discern more than the other, inasmuch as lie was purer. The story indicates, I suppose, that gnosis is not for every man, since some look to the body of the Scriptures, tile words and names, corresponding to the body of Moses, and others discern the thought, arid what is signified by the names: such are concerned with the Moses who companied with angels.
'. . . The story about Moses teaches that contemplation is not given in full even to those in whom knowledge is at home, until, grown accustomed to looking directly at it, as the Hebrews on the glory of Moses and the holy men of Israel upon visions of angels, we become able to gaze upon the flashing light of truth."
Two other passages speak of the same episode: Origen (on Joshua ii. I): "In a certain book, though it be not in the canon, a figure of this mystery is described. It is related that two Moses' were seen, one alive in the [45] spirit, the other dead in the body; wherein of course this is indicated, that if thou look at the bare letter of the law, empty of all the things that we have mentioned, that is Moses dead in the body: but if thou canst take away the veil of the law, and understand that the law is spiritual, that is Moses who liveth in the spirit."
Evodius, Bishop of Uzala, writing to Augustine (Ep. 258): "In the apocryphal and the secret books of Moses himself -- a writing without authority -- when he went up into the mountain to die, such violence was done to his body (or the might of his body was such: vi corporis efficitur ut) that there was one body which was committed to the earth, and another which was joined with an angel as companion."
Next we come to a class of passages which relate to the contest of Michael with Satan.
Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (542), quoted in the Catena of Nicephorus on Deut. xxxiv., begins by saying that upon the parting of the soul from the body, good and evil angels meet it, each band claiming it for their own in virtue of its deeds done in the body; and continues: "God, willing to show this also to the children of Israel by means of a bodily image, ordained that at the burial of Moses there should appear before their eyes at the time of the dressing (περιστολή) of the body and its due depositing in the earth, the evil demon as it were resisting and opposing; and that Michael, a good angel, should encounter and repel him, and should not rebuke him oil his own authority, but retire from giving judgment against him in favour of the Lord of All, saying, ` The Lord rebuke thee,' in order that those who are being instructed in the word might learn that a measure of conflict awaits souls after their departure hence …further, when this heavenly image had come before their eyes, there came a cloud or light about the place which dazzled the eyes of the onlookers, and walled his grave off, that they might not see it. Therefore also it says in the Scripture, ` No man hath seen his end, or his grave, unto this day.' This, it is said, is set forth in an apocryphal book which contains the more detailed [46] account (λεπτοτέραν ἀφήγησιν) of the genesis or creation." These last words are an undoubted reference -- whether a correct one or not we shall have to consider -- to the Leptogenesis or Book of Jubilees.
Two other passages of Severus (who seems to have been attracted by the subject) are given in Catenae on Jude.
" Michael is said to have ministered about the burial of the body of Moses, when the devil withstood this, by the permission of God, who wished by this manifestation to show them, who then were short of sight and dull of understanding," that evil powers meet the soul after death.
" Contending with the devil-- a blasphemer and fighter against God from the beginning: from the time when he was infected with apostasy and after that deceived Adam (and) by craft fought against the commandment of God."
The anonymous extracts in Catenae and marginal scholia of MSS. are many: I will give one here from a good Greek MS. (Bodl. Arch. E 5, 9) which sums up almost all the matter of the others.
It is a scholium on Jude 9.
" Hereby lie shows that the Old Testament agrees with the New, both being given by one God. For the devil resisted, trying to deceive, saying, ` The body is mine, for I am the Lord of matter,' and was answered by ' The Lord rebuke thee' -- that is, the Lord who is blaster of all spirits. Others say that God, willing to show that after our departure hence demons oppose our souls on their upward course, permitted this to be beheld at the burial of Moses. For the devil also blasphemed against Moses, calling him a murderer because he smote the Egyptian. Michael the Archangel, not enduring his blasphemy, said to him, ` The Lord God rebuke thee, devil.' He also said this, that God had lied by bringing Moses into the land which He swore he should not enter."
The other notes add nothing to this, except it be one sentence with which some begin, viz.: "When Moses [47] had died in the mount, Michael was sent to remove the body." Several of them read: "God rebuke thee," instead of "the Lord," and this might be a quotation from the Assumption.
Next I place two accounts of the death of Moses. The first is from the Greek Palaea, a popular Bible-history of Byzantine times, which is the Eastern equivalent of the Historia Scholastica (of Petrus Comestor, cent. xii.), which, with the French version, the Bible Historiale, was so common in the West. The text of the Palaea, printed by Vassiliev in Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina has this passage (p. 247)
" Of the death of Moses. And Moses said unto Jesus the son of Naue, ' Let us go up into the mountain.' And when they were gone up, Moses saw the land of promise and said to Jesus, ' Go down unto the people and tell them "Moses is dead."' And Jesus went down unto the people, but Moses came to the end of his life. And Samael tried to bring down his body (tabernacle) unto the people, that they might make him a god. But Michael, the Chief Captain, by the command of God came to take him and bury him, and Samael resisted him, and they contended. So the Chief Captain was wroth and rebuked him, saying, ' The Lord rebuke thee, devil.' And so the adversary was vanquished and took to flight but the Archangel Michael buried the body of Moses where lie was bidden by Christ our God (and no man saw the burial of Moses)."
The second is from the Slavonic Life of Moses translated by Bonwetsch in the Gottingen Nachrichten for 1900, pp. 581-607. This Life for the most part follows Jewish tradition very closely, and has the familiar additions to the story which we find in Josephus.
After mentioning the deaths of Miriam and Aaron, it says:
" But at the end of the same year in the 2nd (sic) month Nadet, on the 7th day (that is in March), Moses the servant of God died and was buried on the 4th of the month September on a certain mountain by the Chief Captain Michael. For the devil contended with [48] the angel, and would not permit his body to be buried, saying, ` Moses is a murderer. He slew a man in Egypt and hid him in the sand.' Then Michael prayed to God and there was thunder and lightning and suddenly the devil disappeared; but Michael buried him with his own hands."
The mention of the thunder and lightning does occur also in a Greek note which I have read in a recent German comment on Jude, but unfortunately cannot now trace.
Two more passages exhaust my material.
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. i. 23 (§153, p. 95, Stahelin): "Moses was called Joacim. He had also n third name in heaven after his assumption, as the initiated (μύσται) say, viz. Melchi." Within a few lines (§ 154, p. 96) he seems to quote the same authority again. "The initiated (μύσται) say that he slew the Egyptian merely with a word, as Peter slew Ananias and Sapphira." We know that the slaying of the Egyptian was part of the devil's claim against Moses in the Assumption.
Epiphanius, Haer. i: "The angels, as the tradition that has reached us tells, buried the body of the holy Moses, and did not purify (wash) themselves, but the angels were not made unclean (common) by the holy body,"
From these data a conjectural narrative may be put together.
Moses dies in the Mount. Michael and other angels are sent to bury him. They find Satan about to carry off the body, and meaning to induce the people to worship it. They contend with him, and he resists and says, "The body is mine, for all material things belong to me." "No," replies Michael. "By His Holy Spirit all we were created," and, "From the face of God His Spirit went forth and the world came into being." Possibly at this time, too, Michael reproached him for having brought sin into the world by inspiring the serpent to deceive Adam and Eve. Then Satan said, "Moses is a murderer, and must not be buried with honour: he slew the Egyptian"; and again, "God has lied [49] in bringing Moses into the land which He swore he should not enter." Michael, aghast at the blasphemy, said, "The Lord rebuke thee." The Lord, in answer, thundered and lightened out of heaven, and Satan fled.
There were some mortal spectators of the scene perhaps only Joshua and Caleb, perhaps the contest was visible to the people, as Severus seems to indicate, and after that a cloud of light shut off their view. At any rate, of what followed, Joshua and Caleb were the only spectators, and one of them (almost certainly Joshua) saw more than the other. Both were caught up into the air, and below them they saw a wonderful spectacle: there were two figures of Moses, one being laid in the earth by angels in a mountain valley, the other, accompanied by angels, passing upwards to the heavens. Caleb, who seems to have been ceremonially impure, sank to the earth before Joshua: Joshua descended after him and related what he had seen to the people. He was able to tell them that the angels who had buried Moses had contracted no ceremonial pollution by touching that dead body, and also that he had heard a new name of Moses proclaimed in heaven, namely, Melchi.
Some points in the story are so interesting and unusual that we must greatly regret the loss of the full text.
There is no doubt that the complexion of the Latin fragment which we have is quite unlike what we have of the Assumption. The one is wholly prophecy, and dialogue with Joshua, the other is mystical romance. So far Dr. Charles has a plausible case for his suggestion that two books, originally separate, have been amalgamated. We have a parallel in the Ascension of Isaiah, which consists of two distinct parts, the Martyrdom and the Vision. The fashion has been to regard these as originally distinct; or rather, perhaps, to say that the Vision is a later appendix to the Martyrdom. However, in this case Professor Burkitt (Christian and Jewish Apocalypses: Schweich Lectures) has brought forward strong grounds for believing that the book may really be a unity: and I am on the whole prepared to follow [50] him in thinking (as he does) that the Assumption of Moses also originally contained both elements, of prophecy and romance. The amalgamation of the two, if it took place, must have been effected within a very short space. The prophecy is dated by Dr. Charles in the first century, and the Assumption story was joined with it, as we have seen, before Jude wrote his Epistle.
Dr. Charles asks, reasonably enough: If the title Assumption includes the Latin fragment, what was the Testament? Not the Jubilees; for that is far more than 1100 lines long -- probably 4000 or 5000.
Well, we cannot go much behind our evidence. The Catena of Nicephorus quotes a piece which occurs in Jubilees and calls its source the Testament. We are reduced, I think, to supposing either that the number of lines in the MSS. of the Stichometry is grossly wrong, or that some excerpt or shortened text of Jubilees was current under the name of the Testament of Moses.
It seems clear that the Jubilees and the Assumption were circulated together. There are two pieces of evidence of this. The Milan palimpsest contains the Latin version of both: the versions of the two works were made, it appears, by different translators; but there they are together. Also Severus of Antioch, as we have seen, says that his source was the Leptogenesis (= Jubilees), but the story he has told relating to the death and burial of Moses and to the contention of Michael with Satan finds no place in Jubilees whereas it was treated of in the Assumption. My inference is that he or his authority (for his expressions suggest that he is writing at second hand) used a volume in which both Jubilees and the Assumption were contained.
The Latin fragment, it is calculated, contains 384 whole stichoi: the Assumption (entire) had 1400. We appear to possess the whole, or very nearly the whole, of the Prophecy of Moses: the writer has brought his sketch of events down to and beyond his own time. The story of the Assumption might well occupy the 1000 stichoi that remain. But Dr. Charles supposes that the Latin fragment is the Testament (of 1100 stichoi), [51] and that the Assumption of the lists is the second part, which was amalgamated with the Testament. I find it difficult to imagine how the 1100 stichoi of the Testament could have been filled up; and I think the lists are too late in date to be credited with preserving the tradition of the two books as separate. They were already joined in Jude's time; the lists, at a generous estimate, could hardly be older than the fourth century, and we are not sure that they are older than the sixth.
There is some reason for thinking that other Moses Apocrypha of a prophetic kind were current. The same passage of Gelasius Cyzicenus which gave us two sentences of the Assumption says (immediately after quoting the sentence about the mediator): "And in the Book of the Mystical Words of Moses, Moses himself predicted concerning David and Solomon, and of Solomon he predicted thus: `And God shall give by inheritance unto him (διαδοχεύσει εἰσ αὐτόν) wisdom and justice and full knowledge: he shall build the house of God,' and what follows." It is just possible that the writer here may be ignorantly quoting one book under two names, or employing two sources; compare the "mystic words "of the title with Clement's use of (μύσται) "initiated," where he is to all appearance quoting the Assumption. In any case, we never hear of The Book of Mystic Words again.
One of the most considerable Greek magical texts that the papyri have given us purports to be a secret Book of Moses, the Eighth. It is printed by Dieterich in Abraxas. A Hebrew magical text, the Sword of Moses, has been edited by Dr. M. Gaster, as well as an Apocalypse, a vision of the next world. A Colloquy of the Prophet Moses with God, of Christian complexion, was printed by Lord Zouche of Parham (Hon. R. Curzon) from a MS. in his possession, and again by Isaac Hall in the American periodical Hebraica, 1891.
The principal Apocrypha current under this name are the famous Book of Wisdom, the Psalms and Odes, the [52] less known Testament, a number of quite late magical books, and a dialogue with the Queen of Sheba (tr. Issaverdens).
There is a romance, too, in Slavonic, the story of Solomon and Kitovras, of which I know no version in a readable language, and this is connecte