“... It is in the Midrash on Genesis (Bereshit Rabbah, XIX, 5) that the ḥôl of Job 29:18 was identified with the classical phoenix for the first time. From Gen 3:6 (‘she also gave her husband’) it is derived that Eve had offered the forbidden fruit to all the animals too. Only the bird ḥôl refused to eat it, “as it is written: “Then I said: I shall die with my nest and I shall multiply my days as the ḥôl’”. The text continues by saying that there was a difference concerning its death between the School of R. Jannai and that of R. Judan ben R. Simeon. R. Jannai (ca. 225 CE) holds that the bird was burned with its nest after a 1000 years, R. Judan (ca. 320 CE) that its body decomposed and its wings dropped off. In both cases only an egg was left, from which the ḥôl came to new life again. These two traditions reflect so clearly the two main versions of the classical myth of the phoenix (which, again, are unknown from Semitic or Egyptian sources) that there cannot be any doubt that the rabbis, like many modern commentators, concluded from the difficult word ‘nest’ in Job 29:18 and the longevity mentioned there that the phoenix was meant by the word ḥôl ...”