Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.10.1968, Page 30
XXVIII
been borrowed from the Adam legend18. This Adam
legend survives in Greek and Latin versions as
well as in others. The Latin version, Vita Adae et
Evae, became very popular in Europe in the Late
Middle Ages. It has been edited and described by
Wilhelm Meyer in AdBA XIV: 3, 1878, pp. 187-25019.
Before motifs from Vita Adae were adopted in
Leg., there were two opposing traditions of the origin
of the cross-tree: In Historia the cross-tree was a
tree with three types of foliage, and in connection
with this Godfrey of Viterbo made Noah’s son
Jonitus fetch three rods from Paradise which later
grew together (see p. xxvi). In the Leg. version
in De Imagine Mundi, however, the cross-tree grew
from a pip that an angel had laid in the mouth of
the dead Adam (see p. xxv). The Vita Adae’s account
of Seth’s journey to Paradise (§§ 30-43) has been
combined with both of these traditions and two new
Leg. versions have arisen, both of which later be-
came very widespread. They both agree that Adam
sends Seth to Paradise for the oil of mercy but in
the one Leg. version Seth comes back with a rod
(thus Johannes Beleth and from him Jacobus de
Voragine in Legenda Aurea, see p. xxix), while in
the other version he returns with three pips (thus
in the Latin Leg., see p. xxxff.).
18. The relationship between the Adam legends and the Gospel
of Nicodemus is treated in Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement I,
1928, col. 101 ff.
19. Other Latin texts have been edited by J. H. Mozley in The
Journal of Theological Studies XXX pp. 121-49. An English
translation of the Greek version (the Apocalypse of Moses) and
of Vita Adae by R. H. Charles is found in The Apoerypha and
Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament II, 1913, pp. 123-64.
German translations of the Greek and the Latin version by
E. Kautzsch are found in Die Apokryphen und Pseudephigraphen
des alten Testaments II, 1900, pp. 512-28, and by P. Riessler in
Altjiidisches Schrifttum ausserhalb der Bibel, 1928, pp. 138-55
and pp. 668-81 respectively.