05_Biblica_1_H_Collins_Layout 1 05/11/12 12:19 Pagina 417 417 NOAH, DEUCALION, AND THE NEW TESTAMENT . Later, in Book 3, Theophilus aims to show 30 that Christians have the true history. In §§18-19, he particularly corrects the Greek flood stories. For example, he takes issue with Plato’s ver- sion of the story, since Plato “said that [the flood] extended not over the whole earth, but only over the plains, and that those who fled to the highest hills preserved themselves , no doubt referring to the account in Plato’s Laws . 31 Theophilus then mentions Deucalion and Pyrrha, “preserved in a chest” , with the story of their casting stones behind them to repopulate the world with “people” . This sounds like the version of the story that Pseudo-Apollodorus tells, with its term for the “ark” and its explanation of how the name “people” comes from the word “stone” . However, Theophilus does not reproduce the Greek word play, nor does he use the same expressions for what Deucalion did with the stones: accord- ing to Theophilus, he “cast stones behind him” , while in Pseudo-Apollodorus he “took up stones and threw them over his head” Hence we cannot say that Theophilus must have known the exact wording we have in Pseudo-Apollodorus. (After all, Ovid’s version, Metamorphoses 1:390 and following, is similar, which indicates that this particular story was known before Pseudo-Apollodorus wrote.) Theophilus’ main goal is to insist that Moses’ tale of the great flood is more reliable than that of others, whether they be about Deu- calion, or about other floods with other heroes. Hence he repeats from Genesis that eight human lives were “preserved in the ark” , using Plato’s word for “preserve” and the LXX word for the “ark”. At the same time, he does (perhaps iron- ically) allow that “Deucalion” ( ) is a fiting second name While both Justin and Theophilus use “to call”, Philo uses 30 (De Praemiis et Poenis, 23); hence though the idea is similar, there is no evidence of direct literary dependence of the Christian Fathers on Philo here. Cf. Plato, Laws, 677b, “those who escaped ( ) would have 31 preserved been herdsmen of the hills some- where on the mountain-tops”. We can allow variation of the two compound verbs, (Plato) and (Theophilus), effectively synony- mous in these contexts.