Antiochus IV on Seleucid Coin

The word of the Lord came to me: O mortal, propound a riddle and relate an allegory to the House of Israel. Say: Thus said the Lord God: The great eagle with the great wings and the long pinions,

I reign in a[ll (Judah (or: the land)] Muster strength and [ . . . ] the king of Egypt to [ . . . ] Translated by Anson F. Rainey from Shmuel Aḥituv’s Hebrew edition.

Why does the name of Orpheus, “the first of the world’s singers,” as Lefranc de Pompignan called him, appear on the title-page of this volume? Because he was not merely “the first singer,”…