The Book of the Cave of Treasures

A compendious history of the world from the Creation to the Crucifixion of Christ, organized as five 'Thousand Years' covering Adam through the Babylonian Captivity, plus a closing section on the five hundred years from Cyrus to the Nativity. Threads the patriarchal genealogies through a recurring symbol — the cave on Mount Eden where Adam was buried with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh he carried from Paradise, from which the Magi later drew the gifts they brought to Bethlehem. Traditionally attributed in the Syriac manuscripts to St. Ephrem the Syrian; modern scholarship dates the present form to the 6th century, hence the conventional 'Pseudo-Ephrem' designation. Read for its window into Syriac biblical-historical typology rather than for strict historicity — Budge's preface warns the work contains 'idle stories' and 'vain fables' grafted onto its historical framework.