The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE SLAVONIC ENOCH 109
Christian, to the fifth century. ^ It is awkward, however, that no trace of the
work has been found in early Christian literature. Vaillant, who also accepts
the Judaeo-Christian hypothesis, finds an allusion to it in Origen, De
principiisy I. iii. 2; 'Sed et in Enoch his simiHa describuntur' (apropos the
creative work of God). He writes 'Comme ce sujet n'est pas traits dans
THEnoch juif, mais est largement d^veloppE dans notre apocryphe, c'est de lui
n^cessairement qu'il s'agit, mais on voit qu'Origene ne fait pas de distinction
entre le^ deux HEnoch.'^ This is a very surprising conclusion. If the Aramaic
books of Enoch translated into Greek scarcely speak of the creative activity
of God, they do speak, on the other hand, in great detail, in the Book of
Watchers and in the Astronomical Book, of terrestrial and celestial worlds,
that is of the results of creation, and it is these descriptions which Origen
had in mind.
In 1918 A. S. Maunder,3 starting from the astronomical and calendrical
data, suggested that one could see in the Slavonic Enoch 'a specimen of
Bogomil propaganda composed . . . between the twelfth and fifteenth
centuries'. Against the defenders of the traditional dating^ J. K. Fotheringhams
proved conclusively that the terminus post quem of the work was the middle of
the seventh century. The arguments of Maunder and Fotheringham were
based on the long form; Maunder, with the exception of the Bogomil
hypothesis,^ was thus quite right. Vaillant, taking textual, literary, and
linguistic arguments as his starting-point, suggests a similar dating for the
long form.
The date and origin of the long form of the Slavonic Enoch are therefore
definitively fixed. The analogous problems concerning the short form, which
preserves the original Greek text fairly faithfully, must be approached quite
independently, taking account only of the Slavonic text on pp. 1-85 of
Vaillant's edition (pp. 86-119 represent the additions made by revisers).
The Greek author of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, no doubt a monk,
used the Enochic Pentateuch in the form with which we are familiar through
the Ethiopic version. In his description of the secrets of heaven and earth
he drew freely on the Book of Watchers (e.g. the theme of the 200 Watchers),
the Book of Parables (e.g. the name of the Ophanim angels), and the
» Art. cit. * R. H. Charles, JTS xxii (1921), 161-3;
2 Op. cit., p. X (with reference to Charles, K. Lake, HTR xvi (1923), 397^8.
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha^ ii, p. 427). ^ *The Easter Calendar and the Slavonic
3 *The Date and Place of Writing of the Enoch', ^T>S xxiii (1922), 49-56.
Slavonic Book of Enoch', The Observatory, ^ Rejected very convincingly by E. Turxli,
pp. 309-16. deanu, RHR 138 (1950), 181-7.