From: The Journal of the American Oriental Society | Date: July 1, 1996| Author: | COPYRIGHT 1996 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Jannes and Jambres, the legendary Egyptian magicians who opposed Moses and Aaron (Exod. 7:11-22) and attracted considerable attention in late antiquity, have until recently been all but forgotten. Their names occur only once in the Bible (2 Tim. 3:8), but Christian (e.g., Origen, Cyprian), Jewish (e.g., the Damascus Document, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan), and other (e.g., Pliny, Numenius) sources make it abundantly clear that stories about these men circulated widely and that a book recounting their exploits was well known by at least the third century C.E. Not much of this has remained, ...