Apocryphon of Jannes and Jambres
It is a pseudepigraphic account of the legendary ancient Egyptian magicians Jannes and Jambres, purportedly written by one of Pharaoh's officials.
[1] When the brothers' mother has a dream that a cypress is cut down in her paradise, Jannes tells her to keep quiet about it, although he has understood its meaning.
When an extraterrestrial being cuts down the cypress, a human unidentified in the fragmentary text, but possibly Moses, warns Jannes that in three years he will afflict Egypt, which is what the strange event foreshadows.
Jannes invites the wise men of Egypt to visit his walled paradise and sit under an apple tree.
The God of Heaven will act according to [his] word on behalf of the children of the Hebrews, whom the Egyptians caused to perish in the river.
[2] Greek And he (Jannes) said [to him,] "Jambres, [I hand over to you] a document [and] keep it in secret and [take care not to come out] on the day on which [the king] and the chiefs of [Egypt] come out [to pursue] the people [of the Hebrews nor to go along] with them, [but plan to be unwell and save your own] soul [from death] and from [the destruction of the Egyptians which the god] of the heavens [will carry out according to his word on behalf of the children of the Hebrews whom the Egyptians caused to die in the river.
[1] In a passage found only in the Ethiopic fragment, Jannes also lists by name several giants, asking repeatedly the rhetorical question "where are .." they.
However, Bapares, their father, lifting a stone of a thousand talents, threw it by his own strength into the heights of heaven.
[10] CBL BP XVI in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin is the most important witness to the Greek text.
[12] Chester Beatty XVI is written in semi-cursive and makes extensive use of abbreviated nomina sacra, a sign that it was copied in a Christian milieu.
[13] It was probably produced in the Egyptian hinterland, possibly the Nitrian Desert in the community of Macarius the Great, where the story of Jannes and Jambres was certainly known.
[14] There are sufficient differences between the Vienna and Chester Beatty texts to suggest that two distinct recensions of Jannes and Jambres were in circulation.
[18] Eighteen lines of Jannes and Jambres in Latin and Old English translation are found on folio 87r of London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B V/1.
[20] The illustration shows Jambres with an open book standing on a rock trying to summon the "shade" of his brother from Hell while a giant figure rises up from the underworld.
[23] The Ethiopic translation of Jannes and Jambres is known from a single fragmentary manuscript, now in Addis Ababa, Walda Masqal Centre of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Schneider ms. frag.
[26] Origen, in a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew that survives only in a Latin translation, writes that 2 Timothy 3:8 is based on "an apocryphal [book] entitled Jannes and Jambres".
[27] Since he was writing after AD 244, Origen provides a terminus ante quem (latest possible date) for the composition of Jannes and Jambres.
Since he believed 2 Timothy to have been written by Paul the Apostle, Origen himself placed the composition of the apocryphon no later than the middle of the 1st century AD.
In the mid-4th century, Ambrosiaster refers to Jannes and Jambres in commenting on 2 Timothy, noting that the passage in question "is an example from the apocrypha".
[30] In the 12th century, Michael Rabo, a historian writing in Syriac, records that sometime between 776 and 781 the Byzantine emperor Leo IV sent a book entitled Jannes and Jambres to the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdī, who collected works of magic.
[31] It is somewhat corroborated by a remark in the writings of the East Syriac patriarch Timothy I, who recounts that, in his conversations with al-Mahdī, he countered the latter's claim that unbelievers could work miracles by pointing to the demonic and deceptive nature of the signs of Jannes and Jambres.
[33] The 7th-century chronicle of John of Nikiu, known only from an Ethiopic translation, refers to "the book of the magicians Jannes and Jambres", implying that it existed in the time of Moses.
One recension of the Greek Acts of Catherine of Alexandria, in a garbled passage, also seem to show knowledge of Jannes and Jambres.
[34] Both the Middle English Seinte Marherete and the Latin life of Margaret of Antioch on which it is based refer to a genealogy of demons "in the books of Jannes and Jambres."
[37] While Pietersma and R. T. Lutz see slight evidence for origin in a Jewish milieu,[36] Ted Erho and Benjamin Henry point out that "there are no clearly Christian references or allusions" in the work.
[38] Although arguments have been made that Jannes and Jambres was composed in Palestine, the earliest manuscripts and the content of the story itself point to an Egyptian origin.
