The Narrative of Zosimus (History of the Rechabites)

Also called the History of the Rechabites; author unknown, date uncertain. The core story may be Jewish, but the text as it survives is Christian (it speaks of the Son of God, the passover of the resurrection and the eucharist); the poet Commodian (c. AD 250) may already have known it, and the present Greek form is probably later. The hermit Zosimus, who has eaten no bread and seen no man for forty years, prays to see the way of life of the Blessed Ones; a camel, a storm of wind and two bending trees carry him across the river Eumeles and its wall of cloud to their land. They are the descendants of Rechab, who in the days of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 35) gave up wine, bread and clothing and prayed for Jerusalem, and were led there by an angel out of a later king's prison. On tables of stone they write him their life: no sin, no counting of time, manna in place of the fruit of the trees, and death as the angels' joyful welcome of the soul. On his return Satan and 1,360 demons torment him until Satan swears never to come upon that place again; the last chapter is told by a fellow hermit. This is W. A. Craigie's English in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 9 (1896), as modernized by New Advent (you for thou); the chapter numbers are ANF's, and the two unnumbered paragraphs ANF prints after chapters 15 and 21 are verse 2 of those chapters. Not part of any church's canon.