The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE BOOK OF PARABLES 97
Coptic Enochic document, known through some fragments (see below,
pp. ioo~4). According to the 'History of Joseph' in Arabic, chapter 32, at the
end of time the Antichrist will kill Enoch, Elias, Sibyl, and Tabitha.^ In a
Coptic monastery two other main patron saints, besides the founder, were
venerated: Apa Enoch, the scribe of justice {b.n^ etia>x nei^p^juuti^TeYc
nT*i.iRi).iocynH) and Ama Sibylla, the prophetess {ZKXXIK c\SiyWi< Tenpo[. .]).^
A festival calendar from the same monastery commemorates Ama Sibla at the
beginning of the liturgical year and Apa Enoch towards the end (a dipinto
specifies the date of the assumption of Enoch as the 20th Epiphi).^ In another
monastery, 'Enoch, the scribe of justice' is also invoked, and on a fresco
'our mother Ama Sibyllas' is represented in the middle of the twelve Virtues
of the Holy Spirit.^ An Abyssinian Saint recounts one of his visions: '. . .
cum Maria Virgine Sibyllam conspexi, quam, valde pavisus, vocavi et dixi:
"Sibylla! Sibylla! filia mea, valesne?"'.5
One could easily multiply the Christian elements in the Book of Parables
and the indications of its late dating. According to En. 61: i the angels 'take
wing and fly away'. Now, with the exception of the Seraphim and Cherubim,
early Jewish literature is not familiar with any winged angels; they are certainly
not spoken of in i Chron. 21: 16, as is often asserted. The angel of
Apoc. 14: 6 is not necessarily winged either. The flrst undeniable piece of
evidence on the subject is that of TertuUian in Apologeticum xxii. 8 :^ 'Omnis
spiritus ales est: hoc et angeli et daemones.' In Christian iconography winged
angels do not appear until the end of the fourth century (on the sarcophagus
of Sarigiizel at Constantinople), and the classical type is established from the
period of the frescoes at S. Maria Maggiore in Rome, painted in A.D. 432-40.^
According to En. 60: i Noah receives his vision on the 14th day of the 7th
month in the 500th year of his life. I do not think it is a question here of the
Eve of Tabernacles, but of the seventh Christian month and accordingly the
Easter feast; Noah, saviour of the Flood, foreshadows the redeeming Christ.
The author of the Slavonic Enoch dates the vision of Enoch to the first day
' W. E. Crum, ZA/TTxii (1911), 352. * J. Cl^dat, Le monastkre et la nicropole de
* J. E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara Baoutt, 1904, pp. 23 and 119.
(vol. iii), The Monastery of Apajeremias, 1912, ^ B. Turaiev, Acta Sancti Zar^a-Abraham,
pp. 74, 90, 92, etc.; (vol. iv) pp. 49-51, etc. CSCO, Aeth, ser. H, vol. xxiii (1905), pp. 21
(cf. also H. R. Hall, Coptic and Greek Texts (text) and 18, 28-30 (version).
. . .in the British Museum, 1905, p. 145, App. * Ed. E. Dekkers, CC ser, lat, i (i954)> 129,
no. 17: *Apa Jeremias, Apa Enoch, Our Lady 34.
Ama Mariam, Tsibla, . . .').
^ Cf. K. A. Wirth in Reallexikon zur deutschen
3 Quibell, loc. cit., iv, pp. 69-71 and 127, Kunstgeschichte, v (1967), 341-55.
and iii, pp. 54-5.
8261616 H