BEROSSUS. - Priest of Bel (Marduk) at the Babylonian temple É-sag-ila, b. ca. 340, d. at Cos, it seems, where in old age he repaired (according to Vitruvius, De architectura, IX, 7-8; cf. Pliny, Hist. nat., VII, 37; Plutarch, De plac. phil., II, 29) to teach astrology (ca. 260 B.C.). The Greek form Βηρωσός (better than Βηρωσός) seems to correspond to the Akkadian name Bel-uṣur-šu "Bel, protect him." He wrote in Greek an extensive history of Babylon (Βαβυλωνιστά) in 3 books, which he dedicated in 275 to King Antiochus I (v.) Soter (280-261), munificent restorer of the É-sag-ila.
Book I set forth the cosmogony, with allegorical explanations and references to natural science, especially astronomy. Books II and III treated of the 10 kings "prior to the great flood," over a period of 120 sari or 432,000 years, of the flood, and of the kings (ca. 200) who succeeded one another down to Alexander the Great during 10 sari or 36,000 years. B. used cuneiform sources, in part different in content from that of the texts known today, to which he adds other mythical elements. The work, in bad Greek, did not arouse much interest among the scholars and men of letters of the time; but it was much used by the Hellenistic Jews, who drew from it testimonies to demonstrate to the pagans the historicity of the biblical narratives concerning the creation, the patriarchs, and the flood. Fragments of it remain in the works of Flavius Josephus, Eusebius, George Syncellus, who cite at second or third hand from Posidonius, Alexander Polyhistor, Apollodorus, Abydenus, Juba king of Mauretania. Imitating the concordism of the Jewish-Alexandrians, Flavius Josephus cites B. to confirm the authority of the Bible on the flood in C. Apion., I, 19 and in Antig. Jud., I, 3, 6, on Abraham (Ant. Jud., I, 3, 9 and 7, 2), on the last kings of Babylon (ibid., X, 1, 4; 2, 2; 11, 1; C. Apion., I, 20). The interesting account of B. concerning the flood, whose hero is Xisuthros (Σιουθρος = Zi-ud-šud-du) son of Ὀπόρτης (or better Ὀπόρτης = Ubara-tutu), was preserved by Eusebius, Chronic., I (ed. A. Schöne, Berlin 1875, coll. 11-24; cf. ed. by J. Karst, Leipzig 1911, pp. 10-12), who took it from Alex. Polyhistor. B. was called the father of the Babylonian Sibyl (Pausanias, X, 22, 5; Cohort. ad Graecos, 30; Suda, Lexicon, s. v.), perhaps because of certain analogies with the oracles of the latter. Tertullian, Apol., 19; St. Jerome, In Dan. 5, 1; Cassiodorus also speak of B.
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Antonino Romeo