Page:LostApocryphaOfTheOldTestamentMRJames.djvu/20

 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 vSophia 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 6ooth 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. Abbé F. Nau (in Patrologia Syriaca, i. 2, Appendix, 1907), is of 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