יחסים בין תרבויות ופרשנות המקרא: לגלגולי המסורת על מבול של אש

The idea of two periodical cosmic calamities, by water and by fire, was current in Hellenistic literature, often based on a passage of Plato’s Timaeus. The identifications of the destruction by water with the biblical flood and the destruction by fire with the devastation of Sodom are attested in a variety of forms in divergent corpora such as Philo, Celsus, Christian and Gnostic texts, and rabbinic literature; alternatively, the destruction by fire was identified with the eschatological conflagration. While these traditions interpret the Bible, explicitly or implicitly, the initial motivation for their emergence was to accommodate the biblical narrative to the Hellenistic conception. This is true not only for authors well acquainted with Hellenistic culture, like Philo, but also for those more remote from it, like the rabbis. A tradition concerning a prophecy of two future destructions of the world, by water and by fire, occurs in Josephus’s Antiquities and The Life of Adam and Eve. Seth and his descendants, being aware of this prophecy, preserved records from oblivion by writing them on bricks and stones. This is a “mythologized” version of the account given by the Egyptian priest Chaeremon; according to this pagan author astronomical records were preserved on baked bricks, because this material withstands water and fire in general. Another variation of the tradition found in Josephus and The Life of Adam and Eve is reflected in the Babylonian Talmud. The article demonstrates the remarkable impact of Hellenistic ideas on divergent Jewish milieus; the continuity of traditions; and their metamorphoses from the period of Second Temple to rabbinic and Christian literature.