And in the days of Nimrod, the mighty man (or giant), a fire appeared which ascended from the earth, and Nimrod went down, and looked at it, and worshipped it, and he established priests to minister there, and to cast incense from it. From that day the Persians began to worship fire...-from "The Fourth Thousand Years"One of the most prolific and respected Egyptologists of the Victorian era, Budge here offers his translation of the 4th-century A.D. Syrian text commonly known as "the Cave of Treasures," a history of the world from the Creation to the crucifixion of Christ and considered by some to be an apocryphal book of the Bible. Budge's extensive notes, linking the work to other ancient writings, as well as the numerous illustrations, make this unusual work, first published in 1927, an excellent resource for students of ancient civilizations and comparative mythology.SIR E. A. WALLIS BUDGE (1857-1934) was curator of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum from 1894 to 1924. Among his many works of translation and studies of ancient Egyptian religion and ritual is his best-known project, The Egyptian Book of the Dead.

This text is attributed to Ephrem Syrus, who was born at Nisibis soon after AD 306 and died in 373, but it is now generally believed that its current form is 6th century or newer. The assertion that the Cave of Treasures was written in the 4th century is supported by the general contents of the work. These reproduce Ephrem's peculiar methods of exegesis and supply many examples of his methods in religious argument, with which we are familiar from his other writings. His pride in the antiquity of the Syriac language also appears in this work. That it was written in Mesopotamia by a Syrian, there is no doubt, and if Ephrem was not the original author, or perhaps later editor, belonged to the school of Ephrem. The oldest Christian work on the history of God's dealing with man from Adam to Christ is probably the anonymous Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, which, in its original form, is from the 5th or 6th century AD. The writer of the Cave of Treasures borrowed largely from the Conflict of Adam and Eve, or shared a common source with it.

This is a new release of the original 1927 edition.

The Book of the Cave of Treasures is a sixth century Christian sacred history written by a Jacobite. The text is attributed to Ephrem Syrus, who was born at Nisibis soon after AD 306 and died in 373, but it is now generally believed that its current form is 6th century or newer. The assertion that the Cave of Treasures was written in the 4th century is supported by the general contents of the work. This book and The Book of the Bee are both interesting because they present the 'history' of the world from the creation to the death of Christ, thus reproducing a good bit of the story contained in the Bible, but they also contain many stories not included in the canonical account, some of the material being Jewish, some of it Greek, and some of it Mesopotamian.

The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition: A Comparative Perspective comprises a collection of essays on apocalyptic literature in the Armenian tradition. This collection is unprecedented in its subject and scope and employs a comparative approach that situates the Armenian apocalyptic tradition within a broader context. The topics in this volume include the role of apocalyptic literature and apocalypticism in the conversion of the Armenians to Christianity, apocalyptic ideology and holy war, the significance of the Book of Daniel in Armenian thought, the reception of the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius in Armenian, the role of apocalyptic literature in political ideologies, and the expression of apocalypticism in the visual arts.