Page:LostApocryphaOfTheOldTestamentMRJames.djvu/22

 "I, Seth, wrote this testament: Adam died and was buried on the east of Paradise, over against the first city that was built, named Henoch. He was buried by the angels, and the sun and moon were darkened seven days. Seth sealed the Testament and laid it up in the Cave of Treasures with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh which Adam brought out of Paradise, and which the Magi are to offer to the Son of God in Bethlehem of Judah."

This, of course, is throughout Christian, and the mention of the Cave of Treasures links it up with a whole series of Eastern books, such as the Book of Adam and Eve (tr. S. C. Malan), the Cave of Treasures (ed. Bezold), the Book of the Rolls (Gibson, Studia Sinaitica, viii.).

The last fragment has really no claim to be connected with Adam at all. It is an account of the nine orders of angels in which there is mention of David, Zechariah, and Judas Maccabæus.

If the horary and the prophecy were parts of the same book, it was a Christian, or at least a fully Christianized text, and not a very early one. Yet I find it difficult not to suspect the existence of an early book behind it. The last words of Tertullian's book On Penitence seem to imply that he knew of some writing in which Adam's praises of God after his repentance were recorded. He says: "For, since I am a sinner of the deepest dye, and not born for any end except repentance, I cannot easily keep silence about it (i. e. repentance), and no more does Adam—the beginner both of the race of men and of sin against the Lord—when by confession he has been restored unto his Paradise." No more may be meant than that Adam, now that he is redeemed and restored, sings praise to God; but the other view has usually been taken, and if it is correct it means that there was in the second century a book that contained hymns uttered by Adam after his fall and repentance. The phrase quoted from the Epistle of Barnabas might well be a fragment of such a writing.

Certain it is that legend was busy with accounts of