Cleodemus Malchus (
fl.
''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...
200 BCE) was a Jewish writer of whom only a few lines survive. He connects the inhabitants of
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
and
North Africa with
Abraham by identifying them as descendants of three sons whom Abraham had by
Keturah: Apheran (the town of Aphra), Asoureim (the
Assyrians), and Iaphran (Africa). His work appears cited in a quote from
Alexander Polyhistor
Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Πολυΐστωρ; flourished in the first half of the 1st century BC; also called Alexander of Miletus) was a Greek scholar who was enslaved by the Romans during the Mithrida ...
referenced by
Josephus in ''
Antiquities of the Jews
''Antiquities of the Jews'' ( la, Antiquitates Iudaicae; el, Ἰουδαϊκὴ ἀρχαιολογία, ''Ioudaikē archaiologia'') is a 20-volume historiographical work, written in Greek, by historian Flavius Josephus in the 13th year of the re ...
''
1.239-41.
Josephus was cited by Eusebius in his ''
Praeparatio Evangelica'' 9.20-2.4.
According to
J. H. Charlesworth, "the two texts show minor variations."
[ R. Doran, ''Cleodemus Malchus (prior to First Century B.C.). A New Translation and Introduction'', in ]James H. Charlesworth
James Hamilton Charlesworth (born May 30, 1940) is an American academic who served as the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature until January 17, 2019, and Director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the Princeton The ...
(1985), ''The Old Testament Pseudoepigrapha'', Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc., Volume 2, (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2), p. 883
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Malchus, Cleodemus
Hellenistic Jewish writers