Page:LostApocryphaOfTheOldTestamentMRJames.djvu/71

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THE OLD TESTAMENT
53

Irish book called the Evernew Tongue, where a Latin original has been overlaid, thickly, by Celtic imagery. (See J. T. S., 1918.)

Very different in character is the prose Anglo-Saxon Salomon and Saturn, which asks such questions as, which is the blessedest bird, where the sun sets, who first planted the vine, etc., etc. Of this pedestrian class of catechisms there are many specimens in East and West, running down to the very end of the mediæval period, and beyond it. The whole class deserves collection and examination, from the pagan and philosophical dialogue of Hadrian and Secundus to the "Master of Oxenford's" Catechism.


Elijah. Apocalypse

Elias. The list of the Sixty Books speaks of the Apocalypse of Elias. The other two have simply "Of Elias the Prophet." The Latin version of the stichometry, by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, renders "Prophecy of Elias." The Armenian has "The Mysteries of Elias." The stichometry gives it 316 lines.

To this book, two passages in St. Paul's Epistles are referred. The first is i Cor. ii. 9: "Eye hath not seen," etc. Origen (on Matt. xxvii. 9) says: "This is found in no canonical book, but in the apocrypha (in secretis) of Elias." Jerome (Ep. 101 to Pammachius), with his eye on Origen, no doubt, writes: "In this place some will follow after the drivellings of apocryphal writings and say that the quotation is taken from the Apocalypse of Elias, whereas we read thus in Isaiah according to the Hebrew, 'From everlasting they have not heard,' etc. (Isa. lxiv. 4)." And again, in his great commentary on Isaiah (lib. xvii.) he fulminates against this view, contorting Ps. x. 3, and making it say "the devil lies in wait in the Apocrypha," after which he adds, "for the Ascension of Isaiah and the Apocalypse of Elias have this quotation."

The truth about the quotation seems to be (as Mr. H. St. J. Thackeray has shown in St. Paul and Contemporary Jewish Thought, p. 240) that it was a blend