NOTE ON THE ALLEGED ARABIC MANUSCRIPT OF THE LIFE OF ADAM

Transcription

1 The Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol. 00, Pt 0, 2018 NOTE ON THE ALLEGED ARABIC MANUSCRIPT OF THE LIFE OF ADAM Göttingen Academy of Sciences Abstract This article focuses on two Arabic paper folios kept in the manuscript collection of Hamburg State and University Library. The folios were tentatively identified by Oswald H. E. Khs-Burmester as the only Arabic manuscript witness to the Life of Adam and Eve, a biblical pseudepigraphon extant in several other ancient languages. As the Hamburg folios had been reported as missing, the accuracy of Burmester s identification could no longer be checked. However, the recent reappearance of the folios offered the author an opportunity to examine the text. This article shows that Burmester s identification is to be rejected, as the Hamburg leaves feature portions of another biblical pseudepigraphon about the life of the protoplasts, the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (CAVT 14). IN his catalogue of the Coptic and Copto-Arabic manuscripts in the Hamburg State and University Library, Oswald H. E. Khs-Burmester described two paper folios that he identified as a previously unknown Arabic version of the Life of Adam and Eve. 1 The leaves, which actually form a single bifolio, bear the inventory number Suppl. 26. They formerly belonged to the Monastery of Anba Bishoy in the Wadi el-natrun, and can be tentatively dated on palaeographical grounds to the fifteenth century CE. According to the information supplied in the catalogue, Burmester planned to publish the manuscript in the next issue of the Bulletin de la Société d Archéologie Copte. However, the edition never appeared, presumably because the author died just a couple of years later. As the manuscript could no longer be examined, apparently because it had been reported as missing by the Hamburg library, Burmester s catalogue has remained to date the only source 1 O. H. E. Khs-Burmester, Koptische Handschriften 1: Die Handschriftenfragmente der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, vol. 1 (VOHD, 21.1; Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1975), p The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please journals.permissions@oup.com doi: /jts/fly018

2 2 of reference regarding its content. 2 Consequently, his report concerning the existence of an Arabic version of the Life of Adam has been taken as granted in subsequent research dedicated to this text. For example, Suppl. 26 is mentioned under the lemma Vita Adae et Euae (Apocalypsis Moysi) in Jean-Claude Haelewyck s clavis of the Old Testament pseudepigrapha, and is routinely invoked in relevant publications pertaining to the apocryphal life of Adam. 3 In April 2017, I made a request to the Hamburg State and University Library Carl von Ossietzky to provide access to Suppl Thus, I was able to make an autoptic investigation of it and to prepare a transcription. Upon examination, it appeared that the manuscript offers an apocryphal narrative concerning Adam and Eve after they were expelled from paradise. The first folio includes a story about the wheat cultivated by the first human couple, which is burned after harvest by Satan and his acolytes. The second leaf narrates the circumstances in which Adam made a covenant with Satan, who appeared to him as an angel of God. Notably, the content of the Arabic text does not relate to any known version of the Life of Adam, and has thus been wrongly ascribed to it. 5 The manuscript catalogued by Burmester contains in fact portions of another apocryphal treatise from the cycle of the 2 See M. de Jonge and J. Tromp, The Life of Adam and Eve and Related Literature (Guides to Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), p. 12: J. van der Vliet informs us that the Hamburg University Library now reports that the leaves are missing. However, J. Dochhorn, Die Apokalypse des Mose (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 106; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), p. 75 writes that he managed to obtain photographs of the fragments. 3 J.-C. Haelewyck, Clavis Apocryphorum Veteris Testamenti (Corpus Christianorum; Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), p. 2. See, e.g., M. E. Stone, A History of the Literature of Adam and Eve (SBL Early Judaism and its Literature, 3; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992), p. 41; de Jonge and Tromp, Life of Adam and Eve, p. 17; A.-M. Denis, Introduction à la littérature religieuse judéo-hellénistique, vol. 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), p. 17; Dochhorn, Apokalypse des Mose, pp.26, 75; S. J. Gathercole, The Life of Adam and Eve (Coptic Fragments), in R. Bauckham, J. R. Davila, and A. Panayotov (eds.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 22 7, at24. 4 See figure 1. I am grateful to the Library for providing the photograph and for permission to reproduce it. 5 For the various versions of the Life of Adam, see G. A. Anderson and M. E. Stone, A Synopsis of the Books of Adam and Eve: Second Revised Edition (SBL Early Judaism and its Literature, 17; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1999), which features in parallel columns the Greek, Latin, Armenian, Georgian, and Slavonic texts together with their English translations.

3 ARABIC MANUSCRIPT OF THE LIFE OF ADAM 3 Figure 1: Hamburg Suppl. 26, folio 1 protoplasts, that is, the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (CAVT 14). This writing is largely based on the story of Adam and Eve from the Cave of Treasures (CAVT 11). The text is known to exist in Arabic and Ethiopic. The Arabic text was edited by Antonio Battista after Vat. Arab. 129 (siglum A). 6 While this codex 6 Arabic text in A. Battista and B. Bagatti, Il Combattimento di Adamo: Testo arabo inedito con traduzione italiana e commento (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio Minor, 29; Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1982).

4 4 was transcribed in 1679 CE, the copyist mentioned in the colophon that he used a much older exemplar. Battista collated nine other Arabic manuscripts of the Conflict of Adam and Eve (sigla D, R, C, M, B, T, G, H) and gave at the end of his edition a few of their variant readings. In 1853 August Dillmann published a German translation of the Ethiopic version, which he found in a manuscript preserved in the collection of Tübingen University. 7 The editio princeps of the Ethiopic was published later by Ernst Trumpp. 8 Folio 1 of Hamburg Suppl. 26 offers a large portion of 44 of the Conflict according to the edition of Battista, whereas Folio 2 contains the final part of 48 and the beginning of 49. This amount of missing text suggests that there is a gap of one bifolio between the leaves. Fol. 1 Incipit (cf. Battista and Bagatti, p. 114): وانهما اشتدا ليمشيا في الحقل حتى فرغت and they strengthened themselves to walk on the field until it 9 was finished Desinit (cf. Battista and Bagatti, p. 116): وان الله نظر اليهما and God looked at them Fol. 2 Incipit (cf. Battista and Bagatti, p. 122): وخلقني من الاربعة العناصر انى لا انجس عهدي and he created me from the four elements, I will not defile my promise Desinit (cf. Battista and Bagatti, p. 124): يا ادم كيف حلفت بسماي وعاهدت الشيطان دفعة اخرى O Adam, how did you swear on my name and you made a covenant with Satan another time? 7 A. Dillmann, Das christliche Adambuch des Morgenlandes, aus dem Äthiopischen mit Bemerkungen übersetzt (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1853). Dillmann s German translation was rendered into French by G. Brunet in Dictionnaire des apocryphes, vol. 1 (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1856), cols E. Trumpp, Der Kampf Adams (gegen die Versuchungen des Satans), oder das christliche Adambuch des Morgenlandes: Äthiopischer Text verglichen mit dem arabischen Originaltext (Abhandlungen der königlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-philologische Classe, 15.3; Munich: Verlag der Königlichen Akademie, 1881). Trumpp knew also the Arabic text and gave some variant readings in the apparatus to his edition. An English translation of the Ethiopic text edited by Trumpp was made by S. C. Malan, The Book of Adam and Eve, also called the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (London: Williams and Norgate, 1882). 9 I.e. the reaping of the wheat.

5 ARABIC MANUSCRIPT OF THE LIFE OF ADAM While the Hamburg leaves correspond relatively well to the edited Arabic text, they also contain notable variant readings which indicate that they belong to a different textual family than the Vatican manuscript used by Battista. One should expect that our fragments, which came from a codex belonging to the Monastery of Anba Bishoy in Wadi el-natrun, would be closer to the three manuscripts of Egyptian provenance collated by Battista (sigla T, G, H). However, a proper philological comparison is hindered by the fact that Battista s edition of the Conflict does not offer a sufficient number of variant readings contained in these manuscripts. Be that as it may, the attribution of the Hamburg Arabic manuscript to a previously unknown Arabic version of the Life of Adam can now be dismissed as inaccurate. 5