The Testament of Adam — True Church Edition
The Testament of Adam 8
1Know, O my son, that there must come a Flood to wash all the earth on account of the children of Cain, the wicked man who slew thy brother for his envy about his sister Lusia. After the Flood through the wickedness of many congregations there shall be the end of the world, the conditions will be fulfilled, things will be perfected, the time will be cut short which I have fixed for the creatures, fire will consume whatever it reaches before the Lord, and the earth shall be consecrated.
2Seth wrote this Testament, and sealed it with the seal of his father Adam, which he had from Paradise, and the seal of Eve, and his own seal. And Adam died, and the hosts of the Angels assembled to put him on his bier, for his honour with God, and Seth embalmed him, and swathed him, and he and his sons bare rule. And he put him eastwards of Paradise where he slept at his exit from it, near the town that was built before all building, called Enoch in the inhabited World. When Adam died, the sun was darkened, and the moon for seven days and seven nights, with a gross darkness.
3Seth took the scroll in which he wrote the Testament of his father Adam into the Cave of Treasures along with the offerings which Adam had carried with him from the land of Paradise, that is to say, gold, myrrh, and incense, [about] which Adam taught Seth and his children that they should belong to three Magian kings, and that they should travel with these things to the Saviour of the world, to be born in a city called Bethlehem, a territory of Judah.
4There was not one of the children born to Adam before his death who did not gather to him; they bade him adieu, he prayed over them and wished them health. Then he died, in the nine hundred and thirtieth year by the reckoning of Abu- Seth. That is the beginning. The exit of our father Adam from this world was at three o’clock in the day, on Friday the sixth of Nisan, fourteen nights after the new moon. On a similar day our Lord the Christ gave up His spirit to His Father’s hand. Adam’s children and children’s children grieved for him a hundred and forty days, for he was the first mortal who died on the earth, and the tribes were divided among the people of Cain the murderer after the death of Adam.
5Seth took his children and his children’s children and their wives, and made them go up to the glorious and holy hill, the place in which Adam was buried. Cain and his people and his children stayed below the hill, in the place where he killed Abel. Seth became governor of the people of his time in godliness and purity and holiness. My initiation, O my son Clement, into the story of Adam and this his testament was from the Magi who travelled to the Lady Saint Mary with offerings at the time of the birth of Jesus Christ our God the Saviour.
6Verily we found that they had a scroll with all this in it, and it was put by for safe keeping. I and the other Jews believed in this, and there were many things in it besides what I have shewn to thee, which it is not proper to make known at this time, and I must tell thee about them afterwards. I will disclose to thee all the secrets with which I have been entrusted. The reason of God’s calling the children of Seth Ben-Adam, “the sons of God,” was as the book says what He had revealed to Seth about godliness and purity.
7The Lord appropriated them to Himself by this name; it is the most famous of names on account of their favour with Him. He appointed them to replace the choir of Angels which had rebelled and fallen from Heaven. He put Seth and his race in the lower parts of Paradise, and around it on the holy hill, they praising the Lord and sanctifying His name in all peace, no thought intruding on them about the affairs of the world, their greatest work being praise and hallelujah with the Angels, for they heard their voices in praise and hallelujah in Paradise, for it was raised thirteen spans above them, by the span of the Holy Ghost.
8They did not undergo the least labour. The food with which they sustained their bodies was the fruit of trees growing at the summits of the Mount of Paradise. The zephyr of Paradise, which reached these trees, ripened their fruits. This tribe was godly and holy; there was no anger in any one of them nor envy nor quarrelling nor pride nor hatred, and they held no shameless conversations nor falsehood nor slander nor calumny, and they do not swear untruthfully nor in vain. Their oaths were among themselves by the purity of the blood of pure Abel. Their custom was to rise early, all of them, the old and the young, the male and the female; to go up to the top of the hill and to worship there before God and be blessed by the body of their father Adam. Then they would lift up their eyes to Paradise and praising and sanctifying God they would return to their place.