Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.10.1968, Page 35

XXXIII
with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David
respectively (L 94-95)31.
L 97-126. The section about Moses is for the most
part taken from the Bible (cf. Exodus 14 and 17,
Numbers 20, Deuteronomy 1). In addition to the
biblical material, however, Leg. relates that Moses
on one occasion finds three rods in the wilderness.
When he pulls them up from the earth, they emit
a heavenly fragrance. Some men are bitten by snakes
but are cured by kissing the rods. Cf. with this the
biblical account of Moses’ serpent of brass, which
healed men who had been bitten by snakes when
they iooked upon it (Numbers 21). Shortly before
his death Moses plants the rods at the foot of
Mount Tabor, and after having dug himself a sepul-
chre near them, he goes into it and dies.
L 126-64. The account of David’s finding of the
three rods is, with some variations, a repetition of
Moses’s finding of them (L 100-12): They emit a
heavenly fragrance when they are pulled up from
the earth and they have the power of healing sick
people. This story of Moses and David has no
parallel in any of the above mentioned Leg. ver-
sions.
When David returns to Jerusalem, he lays the
rods in a pond and in the course of one night they
grow together to form a tree. Every year David
places a ring round the tree to see how much it has
grown, 30 rings in all (L 144-64). It is not known
from where these motifs derive. A parallel account
is found in the Rood-tree-group. The Leg. versions
in this group also relate that the 30 rings which
David had placed around the tree were kept in the
Cf„ for example, Legenda Aurea, ed. Th. Græsse, pp. 84-85,
transl. R. Benz I, col. 129, and Isidori Hispalensis episcopi liber V
38-39, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 1957.
B 26. — III