Traces of the Acrostic of the Name of Adam in Greek Literature of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods

Abstract

The acrostic of the name Adam (Greek: ΑΔΑΜ, Ἀδάμ) is formed from the first letters of the Greek names of the four sides of the world: Ἀ/νατολή (East), Δ/ύσις (West), Ἄ/ρκτος (North) and Μ/εσημβρία (South). It is commonly believed that the first traces of this acrostic in ancient sources meet in ‘Oracula Sibyllina’ (III 24–26), which most probably originated in the environment of the Egyptian Jewish Diaspora in the middle of the second century BC. The purpose of this article is to attempt to prove the hypothesis that the acrostic of the name Adam was known and used much earlier, because, based on the preserved sources, it can be shown that literary traces of this acrostic can be already found in earlier Greek texts dating back to the turn of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Philological analysis indicates that traces of this acrostic can be found already in Megasthenes (c. 350 – c. 290 BC). This source seem to prove a certain knowledge of Jewish culture in the circle of researchers associated with Aristotle (384–322 BC) and in the intellectual surroundings of Alexander of Macedon (356–323 BC). Traces of this acrostic can also be found in later authors, such as Agatharchides of Cnidus (c. 205 – c. 130 BC), Polybius (c. 200 – c. 118 BC), Apollodorus of Athens (c. 180 – c. 110 BC), Posidonius of Apamea (c. 135 – c. 50 BC), Diodorus of Sicily (c. 90 – 20 BC), Strabo (64/63 BC – c. 24 AD), Arrian of Nicomedia (c. 80 – c. 160 AD), Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100 – c. 170 AD), Dionysius Periegetes (fl. c. II century AD) and Marcian of Heraclea (fl. c. II century AD). However, in so far as I know, these sources have not been used in the analysis of the genesis of this acrostic. In the light of the above analyses, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that the origins of the acrostic of the name Adam should be sought not in the Egyptian Jewish Diaspora, but in the circle of Greek philosophical investigations in the field of cosmo- and anthropogenesis and the broadly understood ‘ethnography’ of barbarian peoples. In this context, it should be assumed that the acrostic is rather a ‘product’ of Greeks living in the second half of the 14th and at the beginning of the 3rd century BC, not the hellenized Jews from the middle of the second century BC. This, in turn, seems to suggest that his knowledge goes back to an earlier era, or more precisely to Greek-Jewish contacts in the territory of the Achaemenid Empire, where the official language, equal to the Persian language, was so-called.