directly or from memory, and in their use and interpretation shows the influence of patristic sources such as Gregory of Nyssa. Hubbard details the many sources that the compiler of the Kebra Nagast drew on in creating this work. They include not only both Testaments of the Bible (although heavier use is made of the Old Testament than the New), but he detects evidence of Rabbinical sources, and influence from deuterocanonical or apocryphal works (especially the Book of Enoch and Book of Jubilees, both canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and such Syriac works as the Book of the Cave of Treasures, and its derivatives the Book of Adam and Eve and the Book of the Bee). Marcus thus describes it as "a pastiche of legends ... [that] blended local and regional oral traditions and style and substance derived from the Old and New Testaments, various apocryphal texts, Jewish and Islamic commentaries, and Patristic writings". Early European translations One of the earliest collections of documents of Ethiopia came through the writings of Francisco Álvares, official envoy which king Manuel I of Portugal, sent to Dawit II of Ethiopia, under Ambassador Dom Rodrigo de Lima. In the papers concerning this mission, Álvares included an account of the Emperor of Ethiopia, and a description in Portuguese of the habits of the Ethiopians, titled The Prester John of the Indies, which was printed in 1533. The Jesuit missionary Pedro Páez included a detailed translation of the Kebra Nagast through Menelek's return to Aksum with the Ark of the Covenant in his História da Ethiópia. Completed in the early 1620s, the manuscript was not published in Páez's lifetime. However, it provided the foundation for many of the Jesuit accounts of Ethiopia that came after his, including those of Manuel de Almeida and Balthazar Telles. Additional information on the Kebra Nagast was included by the Jesuit priest Manuel de Almeida in his Historia de Etiopía. Almeida was sent out as a missionary to Ethiopia, and had abundant opportunity to learn about the Kebra Nagast at first hand, owing to his excellent command of the language. His manuscript is a valuable work. His brother, Apollinare, also went out to the country as a missionary and was, along with his two companions, stoned to death in Tigray. In the first quarter of the 16th century, P.N. Godinho published some traditions about King Solomon and his son Menelik,