The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

STONE Jewish Tradition and the Christian West 435
context and attributed them to Jewish antiquity, where a careful contextual
study has shown that this is not true. 9 Yet, it remains possible
that the origins of this document do lie in ancient Jewish sources,
although such a hypothesis cannot be demonstrated.
The Book of the Secrets of Enoch and Adam Octipartite
A major point of interest for the study of the Apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha is the alleged survival in Mediaeval European, but
particularly in Irish sources, of material deriving from The Book of
the Secrets of Enoch, also called Slavonic Enoch or 2 Enoch. This
work is, itself, more than an enigma: of its original language, a recent
English translator, F.I. Andersen, concludes:
An original Semitic composition can still be suspected; but after two
stages of translation through Greek to Slavonic, it is not now possible to
tell how much written material in a Semitic language might be behind
those portions of the text which still have Semitisms, let alone to determine
which Semitic language it might have been. 10
Andersen's conclusions on date are no more decisive: 'it is not
surprising', he writes, 'that dates ranging all the way from pre-
Christian times to the late Middle Ages have been proposed.' 11 About
9. Among exemplary studies of these issues, from various perspectives, the
following may be mentioned: D. Satran, Biblical Prophets in Byzantine Palestine:
Reassessment of the Lives of the Prophets (SVTP; forthcoming); R.A. Kraft,
'"Ezra" Materials in Judaism and Christianity', ANRWll.19.1, pp. 119-36; idem,
'The Multiform Jewish Heritage of Early Christianity', in Christianity, Judaism and
other Greco-Roman Cults: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty (ed. J. Neusner;
Leiden: Brill, 1975), III, pp. 174-99; idem, 'Christian Transmission of Greek
Jewish Scriptures: A Methodological Probe', Paganisme, Judal'sme, Christianisme.
Influences et affrontetnents dans le monde antique (Melanges offerts a Marcel Simon)
(Paris: de Boccard, 1978), pp. 207-26; M. de Jonge, 'Hippolytus' "Benedictions of
Isaac, Jacob and Moses" and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs', Bijdragen 46
(1985), pp. 245-60; idem, "The Pre-Mosaic Servants of God in the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs and in the Writings of Justin and Irenaeus', Vigiliae Christianae 39
(1985), pp. 157-70; idem, 'The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: Christian and
Jewish', NTT 39 (1985), pp. 265-75.
10. F.I. Andersen, '2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch', in J.H. Charlesworth
(ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), I,
p. 94.
11. Anderson, '2 Enoch', p. 95. The preceding sentences are based on the
formulation in M.E. Stone, The Fall of Satan and Adam's Penance: Three Notes on