Book of Eldad and Modad

James1920 fragment dossier, printedpage 39

THE OLD TESTAMENT 39 I)r(ii)li(ti(- utterances of lildad and Mcdad. Legend lias not been \ery busy with their names, but the Miihasliini {'I'diuiiiiiiui) and Targnms say something of them and of what they j^rophesied. They are made half-brothers of Moses, in two ways, (i) According to the author of the Hcbrac Questions on Chronicles (iv. 17), attributed to Jerome, they had other names, Epher and Jalon. After the gi\ing of the Law, he goes on, Moses commanded his father Amrani to put away his wife Jochebed, because she, being Levi's daughter, was aunt to her husband. Amram did so, married again, and Eldad and Medad were his offspring. (2) A Midrash says that after Amram' s death Jochebed married Elizaphan and bore Eldad and Medad to him. The gift of ])rophecy was bestowed on them [Sanhcdrin, i) because when chosen among the seventy Elders they said they w'ere unworthy of the honour. Tanchmna says they prophesied of things that were to happen as long as forty years after, whereas the other Elders only predicted things near at hand. Alone among the Elders their names arc recorded ; they kept their gift of prophecy and entered the Promised lland. They prophesied of the death of Moses and succession of Joshua (so also Pseudo-Philo) ; or, say others, of the quails ; or of Gog and Magog. We have seen that Hernias at Rome cjuotes Eldad and Medad. In Clement of Rome's letter, and in the Homily that is called his second Epistle, a prophetical passage is quoted without a name, which Bishop Lightfoot guessed to be taken from this same book. The guess is an interesting one, and the passage shall be given here. There are considerable differences between the two quotations. 1. C lem., 23 ; II. 1 1 : " Ear be from you that scripture where it saith (for the prophetic word also saith, II.) : Miserable are the double-minded which doubt in their soul (heart, II.), which say : (all, II.) these things we heard in our fathers' days also, and lo ! we have grown old and nothing of these things hath befallen us (but we expecting from day to day have seen none of these