The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

438 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
other languages. Forster considers the ninth-century Latin text to be a
translation of the Slavonic. 23 This text is in some ways paradigmatic
of the difficulties besetting the task of tracing the transmission of
apocryphal traditions from East to West, and occasionally de retour.
However, the assertion, made often, that 2 Enoch was known in
Ireland seems to me to be as yet unproven. This is the more so when
the paucity of witness to 2 Enoch in Greek is recalled, as well as its
generally little-known character, factors of which the scholar of the
Pseudepigrapha is very conscious.
The Life of Adam and Eve
The connection of these two units of material with the Life of Adam
and Eve texts brings to mind the problems connected with that
work. 24 Students of the Pseudepigrapha generally agree that the oldest
form of the apocryphal stories about Adam and Eve is represented by
a group of six writings, often known collectively as 'The Books of
Adam and Eve' or the Life of Adam and Eve. None of them derives
from any of the others, although they share a greater or lesser amount
of common material. 25
In the second volume of Charles's Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
of the Old Testament, L.S.A. Wells presented translations of the
Greek (The Apocalypse of Moses), Latin (Vita Adam et Evae)
and Old Church Slavonic versions of the Life of Adam and Eve
Francisco Suarez, 1950), no. 75.20, p. 34.
23. McNamara (Apocrypha in the Irish Church, p. 22) discusses this document
in some detail, including the traditions about Adam's creation from the four cardinal
points. Forster gives preceding bibliography on the octipartite creation of Adam
('Adam's Erschaffung' pp. 477-529, particularly on p. 483 and notes there).
24. The history of this complex literature is discussed in some detail in
M.E. Stone, The Literature of Adam and Eve: The History of A Tradition (Early
Judaism and its Literature, 3; Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1992).
25. In a paper presented at the annual meeting of the SNTS in the summer of
1991, M. de Jonge attempted to establish certain basic relationships between the
versions on the basis of literary and structural criteria. In a forthcoming article,
G.A. Anderson, basing himself on the history of exegesis of certain pericopae,
would claim that certain of the versions preserve more primitive forms than others.
This matter is only now coming to the forefront of scholarly discussion and
indubitably the issues will be further clarified as discussion proceeds.