The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE BOOK OF PARABLES 91
of the just (60: 23). In 69: 2 the archangel Michael repeats the angelological
list of 6: 7.
The author of the Book of Parables thus had at his disposal Greek copies
of the Jewish Enochic writings, in particular the Book of Watchers. His
copy of the latter work was very good, superior to those of C, S, and
E.^ He was familiar with, and used cautiously, certain passages of the
Astronomical Book and also eschatological parts of the Book of Dreams
and the Epistle of Enoch. Less certain is his knowledge of the Book of
Giants, which should not cause any surprise, given the highly fragmentary
state of the text of this work both in the manuscripts of Qumran and in the
Manichaean manuscripts of Turfan and Chotsko. It is known, however,
that a giant had fought with and conquered the dragon Leviathan (below,
p. 299); so the description in En. 60: 7-10, 24 of two monsters. Leviathan
and Behemoth, might come from the work on the Giants.^
We suggested above that En. 68: 2-69: 29 should be entitled the Words of
Michael. This calls to mind the title of an Aramaic text of 4Q, as yet unpublished:
X^DX'pa'? '?XD''a n XanD ^bJi.^ Among the manuscripts
of 4Q to be published by Starcky I have identified a fragment which belongs
to a second copy of the same Aramaic text; a third copy is represented, in
my opinion, by some tiny fragments of papyrus, 6Q23.4 I assume that these
'Words of the Book of Michael' were translated into Greek and that the
author of the Book of Parables had heard of the title but was not familiar
with the contents, for the Aramaic work, after a brief introduction in which
we find some details of mythical geography and Biblical ethnology (the sons
of Noah), goes on to the prophecy about Jerusalem.
An answer, inevitably hypothetical, to the crucial problem of the dating
of the Book of Parables must be preceded by some considerations of a negative
kind, and by some observations on the literary genre of this work. It seems
to me quite certain that it did not exist during the pre-Christian era, in an
Aramaic or Hebrew text, since not one fragment of it, Semitic or even Greek,
has been located in the very rich assortment of manuscripts from the caves
of Qumran. Hence it is probably a Christian Greek composition (its use of
the text of LXX has already been pointed out) which draws its inspiration
^ For the names of the angels in 6: 7 and archaic place-name Dendain, which is foimd
69: 2 see below, notes to 4QEn* i iii 5-12; in 60: 8; cf. also 4 Esd. 6: 49-52 and Syriac
the names of the metals in 65: 6-7 can be Baruch 29: 4.
compared in part to those enumerated in 8: i ^ Cf. J. Starcky, RB Ixiii (1956), 66.
according to the text of 4QEn^ i ii 26-7.
* DJfD iii, p. 138 and pi. XXVIII.
* See above, p. 30, our note on the very