The Cave of Treasures (Classical Syriac: ܡܥܪܬ ܓܙܐ, romanized: Maʿarraṯ ġazzē, Arabic: مغارة الكنوز, romanized: Maghārat al-Kunūz, Ge'ez: Baʿāta Mazāgebet, Tigrinya: መዝገብ ገዛ), sometimes referred to simply as The Treasure, is an apocryphal and pseudoepigraphical work, that contains various narratives related to the Christian Bible.
Its authorship was traditionally attributed to Ephrem of Edessa (d. 373), but modern scholarly analyses have shown that the true author was some other person, who also lived in Upper Mesopotamia, but much later (c. 600).
[2][3][4][5][6] This text is attributed to Ephrem the Syrian, who was born at Nisibis soon after AD 306 and died in 373, but is now generally believed that its current form is 6th century or newer.
The Cave of Treasures was introduced to the world by Giuseppe Simone Assemani, the author of the Catalogues of Oriental Manuscripts in the Vatican Library, which he printed in Bibliotheca Orientalis in four thick volumes folio.
He mentions that the Patriarch Eutychius describes a cave of treasures in which gold, frankincense, and myrrh were laid up, and refers to the portentosa feminarum nomina, women of Jesus' ancestry.
No attempt was made to publish the Syriac text; in fact, little attention was paid to it until August Dillmann began to study the Conflict of Adam and Eve in connection with it, and then he showed in Ewald's Jahrbüchern (Bd.
The last paragraph of the Arabic text mentions the twelve Apostles who went about with Jesus, and refers to his baptism by John the Baptist, and says that he lived on the earth thirty-three years, and then ascended into heaven.
That the Syriac Cave of Treasures was known and used by Solomon, Bishop of Perāth Mayshān (now Basra) in 1222 is proved by the earlier chapters of his work the Book of the Bee.
He excerpted from it many of the legends of the early Patriarchs, although his object was not to write a table of genealogical succession, but a full history of the Christian Dispensation according to the views of the Church of the East.
The best manuscript of the Cave of Treasures which we have, in the British Library, Add MS 25875, was written by an Eastern Christian scribe in the Alqosh, and was bound up by him in a volume which included a copy of the Book of the Bee.