The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

STONE Jewish Tradition and the Christian West 443
unpublished works such as The Cheirograph of Adam and Adam and
Eve and the Incarnation. 42
Another variant of the contract narrative occurs in the Conflict of
Adam and Eve with Satan. This Christian writing deals with a series
of conflicts between the protoplasts and Satan, with the life of Adam
and Eve, and briefly with the history of Israel down to the birth of
Christ. It was translated from Arabic into Ethiopic later than the
seventh century. 43 The Ethiopic text has been published and translated
into English, French and German, while the Arabic remained unedited
until recently. 44
Furthermore, the legend penetrated religious iconography, as is
witnessed by the description of a scene in the seventeenth-century
Painter's Manual by Dionysius of Fourna which draws on much older
Byzantine tradition. 45 In this scene Christ is shown standing, tearing a
42. These texts will be published in my forthcoming Armenian Apocrypha:
Relating to Adam and Eve (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities).
Turdeanu deals at some length with the connections between the Slavonic Vita Adam
et Evae and the Legend of the Holy Cross, which is associated with it in the
manuscripts (Apocryphes slaves, pp. 110-14).
43. This date is proposed by J.B. Frey, 'Adam (Livres apocryphes sous son
nom)', Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplements (ed. L. Pirot et al.\ Paris, 1928-), I,
col. 111. Others would set it as late as the eleventh century. An fine survey of all
Ethiopian literature dealing with the creation is to be found in R.W. Cowley,
Ethiopian Biblical Commentary: A Study in Exegetical Tradition and Hermeneutics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 113-42. J. Simon also
provides substantial information about development of Adam materials in the
Ethiopic tradition ('Notes bibliographiques sur les textes de la 'Chrestomathia
Aethiopica' de A. Dillmann', Orientalia 10 [1941], pp. 290-91).
44. The other versions are set forth in Stone, Literature of Adam and Eve,
pp. 98-100 (with bibliography). The Arabic text was published by A. Battista and
B. Bagatti, // Combattimento diAdamo. Testo arabo inedito con traduzione italiana e
commento (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum. Collectio Minor, 29; Jerusalem:
Franciscan Printing Press, 1982); on the manuscripts, see pp. 14-16. For further
details, see A.-M. Denis, Introduction aux pseudepigraphes de I'Ancien Testament
(SVTP, 1; Leiden: Brill, 1970), p. 9. The texts and affinities of these works in
Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic are complicated and a most helpful chart has been
prepared by Cowley, Ethiopian Biblical Commentary, p. 140.
45. Dionysius of Fourna, 5.12.22 (cited in Megas, 'xeipoypOKpov Adams',
p. 314). See also P. Hetherington, The 'Painter's Manual' of Dionysius of Fourna
(London: Saggitarius, 1974). The passage referred to occurs on p. 52 of
Hetherington's translation. Turdeanu (Apocryphes slaves, pp. 115-22) discussed the
iconography of the contract.