The Book of the Cave of Treasures
9781465576996
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In the centuries immediately preceding the Christian Era certain professional Jewish scribes composed a number of works which may well be described as "historical romances," and which were based on the histories of the patriarchs and others as found in the four main divisions of the text of the Hebrew Bible. There is little doubt that most of these works were written either in Hebrew or in the Palestinian vernacular of the period. One of the oldest of such works appears to be the "Book of Jubilees", (also called the "Lesser Genesis" and the "Apocalypse of Moses"), which derives its name from the fact that the periods of time described in it are Jubilees,i.e. each period contains forty-nine years. It is more or less a Commentary on the Book of Genesis. That a version of this book existed in Greek is proved by the quotations given by Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus (born about A.D. 320, and died in 403 or 404), in his work on "Heresies" (chapter xxxix). The author claimed boldly that his work contains the revelations which were made to Moses by the command of God by the Archangel Michael, who is frequently described as the "Angel of the Face," The book is not wholly original, for it contains narratives and traditions derived from the works of earlier writers; and some of the legends appear to have been taken from early Babylonian sources. The Hebrew, or Aramean, original is lost, and the complete work is only found in Ethiopic, in which language it is known as "Kûfâlê," or "Sections." The Ethiopic translation was made from Greek. Another pre-Christian work, also written by a Jew, is the "Book of Enoch," which exists now in a more or less complete form, only in an Ethiopic translation, which was made from the Greek. This work is quoted by St. Jude, and there is little doubt that for some three or four centuries its authority, both among the Jews and the Christians of the first and second centuries of our Era, was very great. Whether the "Book of Enoch," as made known to us by the Ethiopic version, truly represents the original Hebrew work is fairly open to doubt; in fact, it seems certain that it does not. It contains a series of fragments or parts of works, of somewhat similar character, which has been strung together, and then added to by writers of different schools of religious thought at different periods. In some parts of it traces have been found of beliefs which are neither Jewish nor Christian. The present volume contains a complete translation of the Syriac text of the compendious history of the world from the Creation to the Crucifixion of our Lord, which is commonly known as "Me`ârath Gazzê," or the "Cave of Treasures." In the Syriac title the composition of the work is attributed to Ap[h]rêm Suryâyâ, i.e. Ephrem Syrus, or Ephraim the Syrian, who was born at Nisibis soon after A.D. 306 and died in 373, but it is now generally believed that the form in which we now have it is not older than the VIth century. An edition of the Syriac text, and an Arabic version of it, together with a German translation, were published by Bezold (Die Schatzhöhle, Munich, 1883-86), but this work is scarce and is little known in England. The German translation was made from an eclectic text constructed from at least three manuscripts, which varied in age and accuracy and general literary value. The translation given in the following pages has been made from the best, in my opinion, of all the known manuscripts, namely British Museum MS. Add. 25875.
