The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

96 INTRODUCTION
known for her Jewish and Christian sjnnpathies. Thus it is to these events
of the years A.D. 260 to 270 that, in my opinion, the author of the Book of
Parables is referring; he sees in them signs of the end of the world. He was
already greatly disturbed by the sight of the blood of the just which the kings
and the powerful ones who possess the earth were causing to flow (En. 47:
1-4 and 62: 11), a clear allusion to the first great persecutions of Christians
decreed by the emperors Decius, in A.D. 249 to 251, and Valerian, in 257
and 258, and carried out in the provinces by Roman governors.
In conclusion, it is around the year A.D. 270 or shortly afterwards that I
would place the composition of the Book of Parables. Its author conceived
it on the model of the Sibylline Oracles which circulated in this period,
read avidly by Christians and frequently quoted by ecclesiastical writers:
Hermas, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, and
soon afterwards Lactanctius, Eusebius of Caesarea, and others. We should
note further that the association of the Jewish Sibyl with the persons of
Noah and Enoch appeared perfectly natural to the Jewish and Christian
readers of the Graeco-Roman period.
According to the third book of the Oracles, which dates perhaps from the
first century B.C., the Sibyl, driven out from Babylon, comes to Greece; she
appears as a young woman (VUJLI^TJ) belonging to the genos of Noah (Sib. iii.
810-11 and 827). She has the name Sabbi or Sambithiy i.e. 'Sabbath'
(n3tt? and Sn2tt?, absolute and emphatic states of this term in Aramaic);
this relates her directly with Enoch, the inventor of the sacred calendar,
including sabbaths. The Christians of Byzantine Egypt looked upon Sibyl
as the sister of Enoch. In a Coptic text on the discovery of the tomb of
Christ, an old man addresses the sister of Constantine: 'Blessed be the
elected race about which Sibyl the sister of the scribe Enoch prophesied
(cifcyXXiw Tciotie iienox ner^piJuxi^.TeYc npot^HTeye): "See then {yap) a
just (SZ/cato?) king will arise in the kingdom of the Romans, with the name
Constantinos" .'^ The (approximate) quotation comes from the Tiburtine
Sibyl in its Greek form which dates from the reign of Anastasius I (491-518).^
The virgin [Sibyl], the sister of Enoch, appears as a protagonist in a
' F. Rossi, Memorie della R. Accademia The Tiburtine Sibyl in Greek Dress (Dumbarton
delle Scienze di Torino, Scienze morali, 1886, Oaks Studies X), 1967, pp. 14 (lines 85-6) and
pp. 106 and 159; cf. O. von Lemm, *Kleine 25 (he does not know this Coptic quotation);
Koptische Texte', Izvistija Imp. Akademiji the Latin text edited by E. Sackur, Sibyllinische
Nauk, S, Petersburg, 25 (1906), pp. 0158-61, Texte und Forschungen: Pseudo-Methodius, Adso
no. XLVII. I. und die Tiburtinische Sibylle, 1898, p. 185.
* P. J. Alexander, The Oracle of Baalbek,