Text
Malalas, Chronicle 1.1, 1.5:
At God’s command Adam gave names to all four-footed beasts, winged creatures, amphibians, creeping things, fish, and to his offspring. An angel of the Lord told them Adam’s own name and that of his wife. His son Seth had wisdom from God and at God’s command gave names to all the stars and the five planets, so that they could be recognized by men. He called the first planet Kronos, the second Hera, the third Ares, the fourth Aphrodite and the fifth Hermes. He also wrote down the seven vowels corresponding to the five stars and the two great lights. He was the first to invent Hebrew script and to write with it. God himself named the two great lights - the sun to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night. The most learned Fortunus, the Roman chronicler, wrote this in the account he delivered in Constantinople. Seth lived 912 years and took his wife Asouam, one of his own sisters. He became the father of children and many generations of men and women descended from them.
... In the middle of that time after the flood Shem, the son of Noah, became the father of Arphaxad Cainan, who after the flood wrote about astronomy when he discovered, engraved on a stone slab, the names which Seth, the son of Adam, and his children had given the stars, as the most learned Josephos has written in the second book of his Archaeology. He says that Seth’s descendants were god-fearing men and, having foreknowledge of the destruction, or change, that was then to affect mankind, made two tablets, the one of stone and the other of clay. On these they inscribed everything that Seth, their grandfather, had stated concerning the heavens, considering that, if the earthly world of men were to be changed through water, the stone tablet and its inscription would remain; if through fire, the clay tablet would remain and its inscription become known to those who were saved from the disaster and survived. The stone tablet remained on Mount Siris after the flood and lies there to the present, as Flavius Josephus has stated. So the generation of Arphaxad was 135 years.
Sources (list of abbreviations)
Malalas, Chronicle 1.1
Malalas, Chronicle 1.5
Bibliography
| Jeffreys, Jeffreys and Scott 1986, 2, 4-5 | Jeffreys, E., M. Jeffreys and R. Scott. The Chronicle of John Malalas. A Translation. Byzantina Australiensia 4. Melbourne: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies 1986. |
Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Cf. Eve’s address to her children (1)
Cf. The sons of Seth (1)
Cf. The Suteans and sons of Seth (1)
Amar Annus
URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000813.php
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