Page:LostApocryphaOfTheOldTestamentMRJames.djvu/21

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THE OLD TESTAMENT
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 Abræ) is a corruption of Dispositio (i. e. Testament) Adæ.

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: