LOST BOOK FOUND: Regular readers will recall the thread on lost books we wish we could recover, started by Michael Pahl and taken up at PaleoJudaica here, here, and here. This is not a new discovery, but we've recently worked out that one of the books I listed in my first post probably does survive intact after all. The List of the Sixty Books mentions an apocryphal Book of Lamech. In fact, as M. R. James noted already in 1920, a Narrative of Lamech is extant in Old Church Slavonic. Alex Panayotov checked some manuscripts of it during a recent trip to Bulgaria and he summarized the story in an e-mail as follows:

The Slavonic story tells that Lamech shot Cain by accident – he was blind and his arrow was guided by the young slave. Then, after hearing that he actually killed Cain, Lamech beat the boy to death. Consequently, he confessed the double murder and repented. The story concludes with the advice that if a man commits sin because of ignorance or lack of knowledge, he must repent like Lamech.

Versions of this story are alluded to and summarized in late antiquity (e.g., in the Cave of Treasures) and thereafter and there are no other contenders, so it seems likely that the Slavonic version is the lost Book of Lamech, or at least a medieval recension thereof. We are including it in our More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha corpus (which needs updating again), with Alex as its editor.

One lost book accounted for.

Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

UPDATE (7 September 2011): Alas, we have verified that this work is not the independent Lamech book after all, but rather it was lifted from the Slavonic version of the Palaea Historica. Oh well, keep looking.