Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.10.1968, Page 29
XXVII
Sibylla, comes to Solomon. When she sees the tree,
she prophesies that it will save the world but destroy
the Jews. The tree is thrown into a pond, piscina
Siloe. An angel gives the water healing powers and
the pond is called piscina Probatica. At the time of
Christ the pond dries up etc.
Johannes Beleth has recorded a version of Leg.
in Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (written before
1165) in the section De Exaltatione Sanctae Crucis16:
Adam, who is ill, gets his son to fetch a rod from
Paradise. By the time of Solomon the rod has
grown into a mighty tree. Solomon wants to use the
tree for the Temple but it proves useless and is laid
as a bridge over a ditch. When the Queen of Sheba
comes, she refuses to walk over it but worships it
instead. The tree is thrown into a pond, piscina
Probatica; this pond dries up etc.
There are some essential new features in this
version: The tree is used as a bridge for which the
Queen of Sheba shows reverence. Most significant,
however, is the account of Adam’s sending his son
to Paradise. This story of Seth’s journey to Paradise
later became a regular feature in Leg. The main
source for the motif is an old Jewish apocryphal
legend of Adam17, which relates that Adam, old
and sick, sends Eve and Seth to Paradise to fetch
the oil of mercy. The same story, but without Eve,
is told in the Gospel of Nicodemus, where it has also
16. This Leg. version has been printed in AdBA XVI:2, p. 115,
and by A. Wilmart, pp. 226-27.
17. Cf. A. Wiinsche in Ex Oriente Lux I, 1905-6, p. 23 ff., and
Walter Blank in Beitráge zirr Gesehichte der deutschen Sprache
und Literatur LXXXVII, 1965, p. 186 f. For editions of and
literature about the Adam legends in the Orient and Europe,
see E. Schiirer: Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter
Jesu Christi III, 1898, pp. 287-89.