05_Biblica_1_H_Collins_Layout 1 05/11/12 12:19 Pagina 412 412 C. JOHN COLLINS in his mention of a dove returning to Noah “smeared with mud” , echoing, not the Bible, but Berossus’ very wording: the birds returned “having their feet smeared with mud” Josephus has a number of interesting connections with Plato’s account in the Laws and Timaeus as well, some of which Feldman has already pointed out. For example, Josephus tells us that Adam “predicted that there would be an extermination of the universe, at one time by a violent fire and at another time by a force with an abundance of water” (Antiq. 1,70), which Feldman finds evocative of Plato’s Timaeus, 22c, regarding the “many and divers destruc- tions of mankind, of which the greatest are by fire and water”. Of course, Josephus connects these destructions to human sin, which makes him closer to Ovid (not to mention the Mesopotamians) than to Plato. Further, Josephus (Antiq. 1,109) has people descending from the mountain regions to the plains ( ) after the flood and persuading others who are fearful to leave the highlands , a detail that the Bible lacks but that ap- pears in Plato’s flood story (Laws, 678b), which speaks of those who feared going down “from the highlands to the plains” ( Another point of terminology comes from Josephus’ use of the term for the “saving” of Noah and his family (e.g., Antiq. 1,78.89; Against Apion, 1,130), a word ab- sent from Genesis LXX and present in Plato (677b) 21. We may add to Feldman’s list another term, namely for God’s activ- ity of “destroying” people, again a term absent from Genesis (which ) but present in Plato (e.g., Laws, uses the cognate 677c) as well as in Pseudo-Apollodorus (see above). Feldman’s ex- planation for these parallels, both with the Mesopotamian stories and with the Greek ones, seems promising: Josephus wrote with apologetic intent, especially to assure his audience that the biblical story was about real events. The Sibylline Oracles, Book 1, recounts the early chapters of Genesis. It is a Jewish production (with probable Christian redac- tion) in the garb of Graeco-Roman prophecies. The Jewish substrate It is at least conceivable that Josephus has used this word under the in- 21 fluence of Wisdom 14:5, but in view of the other factors here, it seems most likely that Josephus derived his wording from Plato himself.