of the Gift

Këbra Nagast

Saviour would come (Chap. 69), and the Angel replied, “After three and thirty generations.” When the Angel told him that the Israelites would crucify the Saviour, and be scattered over the face of the earth, Solomon wept, and the words of his lamentations fill the rest of Chap. 69.

Solomon died, and Zadok anointed Rehoboam king, and when he had laid a wooden tablet,27 with Solomon’s name inserted upon it, upon the Tabernacle, the people set him on the royal mule and cried, “Hail! Long live the royal father” (Chap. 70). Owing to Rehoboam’s arrogant behaviour the people revolted, and they armed themselves and went to Bêth Efrâtâ, and made Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, king over them. From Rehoboam to Joachim, the grandfather of Christ, were forty one generations. The Virgin Mary and Joseph the carpenter were akin, each being descended from David, King of Israel (Chap. 71).

According to traditions which Isaac has grouped in Chap. 72, Rôm, Rômê, or Rûm, i.e. Byzantium, was originally the inheritance of Japhet, the son of Noah. He attributes the building of Antioch, Tyre, Parthia (?) and Constantinople (?) to Darius, and says that from Darius to Solomon there were eighteen generations. One of his descendants, an astrologer and clockmaker called Zanbarês, prophesied that Byzantium would pass into the possession of the sons of Shem. His daughter married Solomon, who begot by her a son called Adrâmî, and this son married ≤Adlônyâ, the daughter of Bal†asôr, the King of Byzantium. When ≤Adrâmî was living in Byzantium with his wife, his father-in-law, wishing to test his ability as a judge, set him to try a difficult case of trespass on the part of a flock of sheep on the one side and unlawful detention of property on the other (Chap. 72). He decided the case in such a way as to

27 Several examples of such wooden tablets are exhibited among the Christian Antiquities in the White Wing of the British Museum.

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