TWO BLEGS: Both regular and recent readers will be aware that I'm translating a Hebrew text for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project which contains legends about the hiding of the treasures of Solomon's Temple before it was destroyed by the Babylonians. It's called Massekhet Kelim, the Treatise of the Vessels. I'm currently writing the introduction, and two questions have come up which I think are worth asking PaleoJudaica readers. One is easy and one is a long shot.

1. The easy one is this. Josephus gives a date for the completion of Solomon's Temple in Antiquities 8.61: three thousand one hundred and two years after the creation of Adam. The Treatise of the Vessels gives a similar, but not identical date from the creation. Can any readers tell me if any rabbinic texts also give a date for the building of Solomon's Temple in relation to the creation? How about Josippon?

2. This is the hard one. One of the two textual sources for the Treatise of the Vessels is inscribed on two marble plaques that seem to have been made in Beirut. (The other source is Jellinek's Bet ha-Midrasch, II, xxvi-xxvii and 88-91.) J. T. Milik in his article "Notes d'épigraphie et de topographie palestiniennes," RB 66 (1959): 550-75 writes the following:

Un doublet de ce "Traité des vases sacrés" se lit sur les plaques de Beyrouth. C'est M. l'abbé Jean Starkey qui m'en a raconté l'histoire. Il y a un bon nombre d'années, on lui montra dans une maison de Beyrouth plusieurs plaques de marbre gravées de lettres en relief. Il semble qu'elles étaient destinées à une synagogue de Syrie ou du Liban. Elles contenaient le texte entier d'Ézéchiel mais sur les deux dernièrs plaques se trouvaient inscrites l'histoire d'un trésor du mont Carmel et les descriptions d'autres cachettes sacrées. M. Starkey photographia l'avant-dernière plaque (pl. XIV) et copia quelques lignes de la dernière. Il m'a passé aimablement ces matériaux et j'ai réussi à identifier une grande partie du texte des deux plaques avec le Traité des vases susmentionné.

That translates more or less into:

A doublet of this "Treatise of the Holy Vessels" is read on the "plaques of Beirut." It was his Reverence Jean Starkey who recounted to me the story. A good number of years ago someone showed him in a house in Beirut several plaques of marble engraved with letters in relief. It seems that they were intended for a synagogue of Syria or Lebanon. They contained the entire text of Ezekiel, but on the last two plaques were found inscribed the story of a treasure of Mount Carmel and the descriptions of other sacred caches. Mr. Starkey photographed the next-to-last plaque (pl. XIV) and copied some lines from the last. He has kindly passed these materials to me and I have succeeded in identifying a large part of the text of these two plaques with the above-mentioned Treatise of the Vessels.

Milik then published Starkey's photograph and transcription of the plaques.

My question is, have any PaleoJudaica readers ever encountered these plaques or any word of them? I would be grateful for any information anyone can supply about their whereabouts after 1959 and especially now.

As I said, this is a long shot, but it seems worth a try. Incidentally, I have already checked the catalogue of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem and the only manuscript of this text they have on record is copied from a printed edition I already knew about. So any possibility of getting new textual information for this document seems to depend on locating those marble plaques.

If anyone has an answer to either of these blegs, please drop me a note at the address in the masthead.

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE (9 February): Thanks to reader Menachem Brody for pointing me to Seder Olam Rabba 15 for the first bleg. As for the second, another reader has given me a promising lead, which I shall follow up. I'll let you know if something comes of it.