{"id":122,"date":"2013-04-10T20:58:57","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T20:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/?page_id=122"},"modified":"2013-09-07T17:41:03","modified_gmt":"2013-09-07T21:41:03","slug":"cave-of-treasures-a-new-translation-and-commentary","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/research-projects\/cave-of-treasures-a-new-translation-and-commentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Cave of Treasures: A New Translation and Commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/em>.\u00a0The phrase \u2018Cave of Treasures<\/i>\u00a0cycle\u2019 signifies a textual network of interlaced hiero-historical compositions extant in various editions in Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic; or in other words, most of the important linguistic spheres of the Christian East during late antiquity and the Middle Ages.\u00a0It furnished what quickly became the dominant narrative for structuring and recounting the pre-Christian past among oriental Christian and Muslim historians from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries of the Common Era.\u00a0The following works comprise important components of the cycle: (1) the several Syriac versions of the so-called\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>; (2) the Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and eventually Greek forms of the\u00a0Testament of Adam<\/i>; (3) the Arabic work christened by Gibson as the\u00a0Kit\u0101b al-maj\u0101ll<\/i>\u00a0(\u2018Book of Rolls\u2019); (4) the Ethiopic\u00a0Gadla \u2019Ad\u0101m<\/i>\u00a0(\u2018Strivings of Adam\u2019); and (5) the Arabic and Ethiopic\u00a0Apocalypse of Peter<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Qal\u0113ment\u014ds <\/i>(i.e., Pseudo-Clementine) literature, an enormous mass of exegetical and traditional lore which possesses little if any overlap with the more familiar Homilies<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Recognitions<\/em> long associated with minority Syro-Palestinian forms of Christianity.\u00a0A number of historical and eschatological writings exhibit their reliance upon certain strands of tradition found exclusively in this cycle of texts, such as the\u00a0Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius<\/i>, the so-called\u00a0Chronicle of Z\u016bqn\u012bn<\/i>, the\u00a0Ta\u2019r\u012bkh<\/i>\u00a0of al-Ya\u2018q\u016bb\u012b, portions of the\u00a0Ta\u2019r\u012bkh al-rusul wa\u2019l-mul\u016bk<\/i>\u00a0of al-Tabar\u012b, the\u00a0Mur\u016bj al-dhahab<\/i>\u00a0of al-Mas\u2018\u016bdi, the\u00a0Annales<\/i>\u00a0of Eutychius, the\u00a0Chronicon<\/i>\u00a0of Michael Syrus, the so-called\u00a0Book of the Bee<\/i>\u00a0attributed to Solomon of Basra, the Syriac\u00a0Chronicle ad annum 1234<\/i>, and the Chronicon syriacum<\/i>\u00a0authored by Bar Hebraeus.\u00a0A few scholars have suggested (although with little sustained argument) the cycle\u2019s likely connection with \u2018gnostic\u2019\u2014particularly Sethian\u2014strands of Jewish and Christian thought, and some have proposed (again with largely underdeveloped arguments) that Jewish extra-canonical materials like the Enochic works and the Hebrew\u00a0Book of Jubilees <\/i>were utilized by these sources.<\/p>\n

The name \u2018Cave of Treasures\u2019 refers in the first instance to the place where the biblical primal couple Adam and Eve stored certain relics they took with them from Paradise after their expulsion.\u00a0It also becomes Adam\u2019s sepulcher prior to his corpse\u2019s removal and re-interment after the Flood at \u2018the middle of the earth\u2019 (i.e., Golgotha in Jerusalem), and it functions as a shrine and crypt for his immediate antediluvian descendants.\u00a0The gold and the spices later offered by the Magi to the newly born Christ reputedly come from this same Cave, which is supposedly found on or near a mountain or territory known as Seir(is) that is located in the remote East.\u00a0The Cave also achieved fame as a repository for certain writings associated with biblical forefathers such as Adam and Seth.Certain adepts renowned for their mastery of esoteric wisdom by later generations, such as the prophet Daniel or the alchemist Kh\u0101lid b. Yaz\u012bd b. Mu\u2018\u0101wiya, reportedly obtained their knowledge of arcana through their consultation of ancient writings which had been archived there.\u00a0It is also worthy of notice that some of the transmitted fragments of the \u2018books about Adam and Eve\u2019 that are attributed to the enigmatic Muslim figure of Ka\u2018b al-Ahb\u0101r, infamous as one of the primary conduits for the transmission of Jewish biblical lore into nascent Islam, are closely allied in their structure and language with passages from the\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>.<\/p>\n

History of scholarship<\/i>.\u00a0While traditionally ascribed to the fourth-century father Ephrem Syrus, Western scholarship for the most part has operated on the assumption that the\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>\u00a0as an integral narrative composition achieved a relatively fixed form in Syriac during the sixth century CE and was subsequently translated into Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic.\u00a0The first scholarly edition using this assumption was published by Carl Bezold in the late nineteenth century,\u00a0who aligned an eclectic Syriac text of his own making based on four manuscripts of varying quality and provenance with a parallel Arabic text from a Paris manuscript (which Bezold mistakenly described as a translation) of an affiliated work belonging to the derivative\u00a0Kit\u0101b al-maj\u0101ll<\/i>, Apocalypse of Peter<\/i>, and\u00a0Qal\u0113ment\u014ds<\/i>\u00a0traditions.\u00a0On the basis of the manuscript evidence available to him at that time, he posited the existence of at least two distinct recensions of the Syriac version of the Cave (BSV over against A) and two of \u2018der arabischen Version\u2019 (Paris and Oxford exemplars over against that held in the Vatican).\u00a0In addition to preparing and publishing his transcriptions of these texts, Bezold supplied a German translation for his Syriac base text (although not the Arabic!) and prepared a relatively brief commentary which concentrated almost exclusively on text-critical concerns.<\/p>\n

Further significant steps forward took place during the third decade of the twentieth century.\u00a0E. A. Wallis Budge published in 1927 what is still surprisingly the only English language translation of the Syriac\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>.\u00a0Instead of rendering Bezold\u2019s eclectic text, Budge chose to translate the version found in British Library Add. Ms. 25875, a form of the work which he deemed to be superior to the others used by Bezold (\u2018in as perfect [a] form as ever we are likely to get it\u2019).\u00a0It however differs in a number of its details from almost all of the remaining textual evidence.\u00a0He also appended to his work a number of what he termed \u2018Supplementary Translations\u2019 which featured English versions of passages from the thirteenth-century\u00a0Book of the Bee<\/i>\u00a0and a few other related sources.\u00a0Like that of Bezold, Budge\u2019s commentary was relatively spare: it concentrated on suggesting some interpretative parallels from a few extra-canonical Jewish sources, and it made a number of far-fetched comparisons to the material evidence surviving from the cuneiform script-using civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia.<\/p>\n

A few years before Budge\u2019s English language edition, an extremely important series of studies treating the textual history and sources of the Syriac\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>\u00a0and its exploitation by later Christian and Muslim writers and chroniclers was published by Albrecht G\u00f6tze.\u00a0These contributions remain valuable up to the present day.<\/p>\n

The most recent advance in\u00a0Cave<\/i>\u00a0scholarship was Su-Min Ri\u2019s publication in 1987 of a quasi-critical two volume edition and French translation of the Syriac text(s).\u00a0Nineteen different Syriac manuscripts were used by Ri for the preparation of two base texts on facing pages, one deemed representative of the eastern (orientaux<\/i>) and the other of the western (occidentaux<\/i>) textual traditions, labels dependent largely on the type of script used and the theological biases alleged to be present in certain copies.\u00a0Ri adopted as his base texts two manuscripts which were unknown to Bezold and G\u00f6tze, and the numerous textual variants found among both geographical traditions are cited at length in his valuable critical apparatus.\u00a0A second volume provides his translation (again on facing pages) of these texts, but with little annotation beyond what are purely textual concerns.<\/p>\n

Purpose of the proposed volume<\/em>.\u00a0 My own research project on these materials proposes to fill the following lacunae in\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>\u00a0scholarship:<\/p>\n

(1) it will provide vernacular English translations of both the \u2018occidental\u2019 and the \u2018oriental\u2019 base texts which were prepared and published by Su-Min Ri in 1987.\u00a0It therefore will be the first \u2018complete\u2019 English translation of the Syriac\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>\u00a0since Budge\u2019s rendition of BL Add. Ms. 25875 published in 1927.<\/p>\n

(2) it will provide a vernacular English translation of the Arabic text which was published\u00a0en face<\/i>\u00a0by Bezold in his nineteenth-century edition of the\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>, a text which has to my knowledge never been translated into a western language, and whose utility for scholarship remains restricted in its present relatively inaccessible state.\u00a0The text is not, as Bezold assumed, a translation of the Syriac\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>, nor is it identical, as Gibson recognized, to the Arabic work which she published as the\u00a0Kit\u0101b al-maj\u0101ll<\/i>..<\/p>\n

(3) it will provide a vernacular English translation of the \u2018biblical\u2019 section of Ya\u2018q\u016bb\u012b\u2019s\u00a0Ta\u2019r\u012bkh<\/i>, an early Muslim universal history known from a unique manuscript which conspicuously employs the Cave of Treasures<\/i>\u00a0traditions as one of its principal organizing rubrics.\u00a0Up to now this section has been available in a western language in its entirety only in Dutch and French.<\/p>\n

(4) it will provide an extensive set of annotations which will situate the\u00a0Cave of Treasures<\/i>\u00a0materials among earlier and contemporary Jewish, Christian, \u2018gnostic,\u2019 and Muslim literary traditions and conventions which pertain to biblical characters, events, and themes.\u00a0An excellent start to this last project has recently been made by Ri (see\u00a0Andreas Su-Min Ri,\u00a0Commentaire de la Caverne des Tr\u00e9sors: \u00c9tude sur l\u2019histoire du texte et de ses sources<\/i>\u00a0[CSCO 581, subsidia t. 103; Lovanii: Peeters, 2000]), but it is unfortunately riddled with untenable assumptions and proposals with regard to the historical and literary relationships thought to be operative among many of these writings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction.\u00a0The phrase \u2018Cave of Treasures\u00a0cycle\u2019 signifies a textual network of interlaced hiero-historical compositions extant in various editions in Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic; or in other words, most of the important linguistic spheres of the Christian East during late antiquity and the Middle Ages.\u00a0It furnished what quickly became the dominant narrative for structuring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":454,"featured_media":0,"parent":120,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-122","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P3kl1F-1Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/122\/revisions\/1221"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}