The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

88 INTRODUCTION
Something of textual value can be found in poetical references to the Book
of Enoch. ^
The Ethiopic version was made from a Greek text of the Christian Enochic
Pentateuch (with the Book of Parables as the second member); the text of
the Book of Watchers derives from a Greek manuscript which was very close
to texts C and C; the Epistle of Enoch, on the other hand, was translated from
a poor Greek manuscript, far inferior to the text of the CM papyrus.^
The date of the Ethiopic translation is not known; the fifth or the sixth
century has been suggested, but without any really valid proof. In any case
it is later than the formation of the Christian Enochic Pentateuch, which
would hardly seem to go back earlier than the sixth century (see above,
pp. 76-7).
Let us hope that a future edition of the Ethiopic Enoch will broaden our
knowledge of manuscripts and of quotations; will improve the present often
very corrupt state of this book; and will throw light on textual problems (was
there only a Greek archetype or a Coptic one also ? What is the respective
value of the manuscripts and the groups of manuscripts ?) and on chronological
problems (the date of the first translation; the recensional work of
Abyssinian scholars; the origin of manuscripts scattered in European and
American libraries). Here let it suffice to point out that the study of the
Aramaic fragments of 4QEnoch and the collation of them with existing witnesses
of Enochic Books reveal the very secondary, periphrastic, and often
confusing nature of the Ethiopic text. One should never trust any given
detail of this version. Its only merit, and that a considerable one, however,
consists in the fact that it is relatively the most complete and will no doubt
always remain so.
' See V, gr, M. Van den Ouderijn, Helenae Ullendorff, that the work of translation was
Aethiopum reginae quae feruntur preces et car- carried out directly from the original Aramaic
mina, CSCO 20S/Aeth. 39 (text) and 211/40 text, cannot, in my opinion, be sustained (*An
(version); cf, index, Aeth, 40, p. 131. En. 18: 8 Aramaic "Vorlage" of the Ethiopic Text of
is paraphrased in Turaiev, Acta Sancti Aaronis, Enoch ?' in Atti del convegno intern, di studi
CSCO, Aeth, ser. II, t. xx(i9o8), 113 (text) and etiopici, Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Prob-
101 (version). lemi attuali di scienza et di cultura, 48 (i960),
* The hypothesis, put forward by Ed. 259-68).