Cave of Treasures

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The Cave of Treasures (

Ephrem of Edessa (d. 373), but modern scholarly analyses have shown that the true author was some other person, who also lived in Upper Mesopotamia, but much later (c. 600).[2][3][4][5][6]

Origin

This text is attributed to

Nisibis
soon after AD 306 and died in 373, but it is now generally believed that its current form is 6th century or newer.

The assertion that the Cave of Treasures was written in the 4th century was supported by the general contents of the work. These reproduce Ephrem's peculiar methods of exegesis and supply many examples of his methods in religious argument, with which we are familiar from his other writings. His pride in the antiquity of the Syriac language also appears in this work. The text was most likely written by a Syrian Jacobite living in Mesopotamia. Although it was likely not written by Ephrem the Syrian, it was likely written by an author trained in his school, or one of his disciples.[7]

The oldest Christian work on the history of God's dealing with man from Adam to Christ is probably the anonymous Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, which, in its original form, is from the 5th or 6th century AD. The writer of the Cave of Treasures borrowed largely from the Conflict of Adam and Eve, or shared a common source with it.

History

The Cave of Treasures was introduced to the world by

Ewald's Jahrbüchern (Bd. V. 1853) that the contents of whole sections of the Book of the Cave of Treasures in Syriac and the Conflict of Adam and Eve in Ethiopic were identical. And soon after this, Dillmann and others noticed that an Arabic manuscript in the Vatican (No. XXXIX; see Assemânî, Bibl. Orient. i. page 281) contained a version of the Cave of Treasures, which had clearly been made from the Syriac. In 1883, Carl Bezold
published a translation of the Syriac text of the "Cave of Treasures" made from three manuscripts (Die Schatzhöhle, Leipzig, 1883), and five years later published the Syriac text of it, accompanied by the text of the Arabic version.

Some passages from the Cave of Treasures are also found in the Coptic Enconium of Mary Magdalene of Pseudo-Cyril.[8]

Of the subsequent history of the Syriac Cave of Treasures, little is known. The knowledge of parts of it made its way into Armenia soon after the book was written, and more than one translation of it was made into Arabic, probably in the 7th and 8th centuries. In connection with the Arabic translations, they all end with the account of the cruelties perpetrated by

twelve Apostles who went about with Jesus, and refers to his baptism by John the Baptist, and says that he lived on the earth thirty-three years, and then ascended into heaven. Thus, for the last twenty-six pages of the Syriac text, there is no equivalent in the Arabic version. The same is substantially true for the Ethiopic Conflict of Adam and Eve. The section of the Syriac for which there is no rendering in Arabic or Ethiopic contains a series of statements addressed to the author's "brother Nemesius." It is possible, but unlikely, that these were added to the work by a later writer. As they do not deal with matters of genealogy, and deal almost exclusively with Jesus Christ's life and crucifixion, they probably failed to interest the Arab translator, and he left them untranslated, unless parts of the original Arabic translation have perished. A version of the Cave of Treasures also made its way into the Arabic Apocalypse of Peter
or Book of the Rolls.

That the Syriac Cave of Treasures was known and used by Solomon, Bishop of Perāth Mayshān (now Basra) in 1222 is proved by the earlier chapters of his work the Book of the Bee. He excerpted from it many of the legends of the early Patriarchs, although his object was not to write a table of genealogical succession, but a full history of the Christian Dispensation according to the views of the Church of the East. The best manuscript of the Cave of Treasures which we have, in the British Library, Add MS 25875, was written by an Eastern Christian scribe in the Alqosh, and was bound up by him in a volume which included a copy of the Book of the Bee.

Contents

The author of the Cave of Treasures called his work "The Book of the order of the succession of Generations (or Families)," the Families being those of the Patriarchs and

Nebuchadnezzar's army immediately after the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. The Jews promptly constructed new tables of genealogies, which both Christians and Arabs regarded as fictitious. The Arabs were as deeply interested in the matter as the Christians, for they were descended from Abraham, and the genealogy of the descendants of Hagar and Ishmael was of the greatest importance in their sight, and it is due to their earnest desire to possess correct genealogical tables of their ancestors that we owe the Arabic translations of the Cave of Treasures. The Nubians and Egyptians were also interested in such matters, for the former were the legendary descendants of Kûsh, and the latter the descendants of Mizraim, and Ham was the great ancestor of both these nations. It is clear that medieval Syrians, Arabs, Egyptians and Ethiopians regarded the Cave of Treasures as an authoritative work on their respective pedigrees.[9]

In the title Cave of Treasures which was given to the "Book of the order of the succession of Generations" there is probably a double allusion, namely, to the Book as the storehouse of literary treasures, and to the legendarily famous cave in which Adam and Eve were made to dwell by God after their expulsion from Paradise,[10] which was said to contain gold, and frankincense, and myrrh and was thus commonly called "The Cave of Treasures".

The Syriac Cave of Treasures tells us very little about the supposed physical attributes of the cave, said to be situated in the side of a mountain below Paradise, and nothing about Adam and Eve's way of life there. But in the "Book of Adam and Eve", the whole of the first main section is devoted to details of the physical cave.[11]

References

  1. ^ Toepel 2013, p. 531-584.
  2. ^ Ri 1987, p. 183-190.
  3. ^ Leonhard 2001, p. 255-293.
  4. ^ Minov 2013, p. 155-194.
  5. ^ Minov 2017, p. 129-229.
  6. ISBN 978-1-315-51304-1
    .
  7. ^ Budge, E. A. Wallis (1927). The Book of the Cave of Treasures. London: The Religious Tract Society. pp. 1–38.
  8. ISBN 978-0-8028-7289-0
    .
  9. ^ Budge, E. A. Wallis (1927). The Book of the Cave of Treasures. London: The Religious Tract Society. pp. 1–38.
  10. ISBN 978-1-315-51304-1
    .
  11. ^ Budge, E. A. Wallis (1927). The Book of the Cave of Treasures. London: The Religious Tract Society. pp. 1–38.

Sources

External links
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