The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

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INTRODUCTION
Astronomical Book (e.g. the year of 364 days); some features were taken from
the Book of Dreams and the Epistle of Enoch. Now, the formation of this
collection of five works does not go back further than the sixth century
(see above, p. 77). Some rare copies of this bulky opus must have been
accessible in the monastic libraries of Constantinople, since the patriarch
Nicephorus, at the beginning of the ninth century, was familiar with their
stichometry.
In the Slavonic Enoch God says to the patriarch (Vaillant, p. 17, 6-12):
'For I will give to you, Enoch, an intercessor, my archistrategus Michael;
because the writing of your hand and the writing of the hand of your fathers,
Adam and Seth, will not be destroyed up to the last century, for I have
ordered my angels Arioch and Marioch, whom I have established on earth
in order to keep watch over it and to control temporal affairs, to preserve
the writing of the hand of your fathers, so that it may not perish in the
imminent flood which I shall send upon your race.' Compare p. 18, 4-7:
'Then, during this race (after the flood) will appear the books written by your
hand and by that of your fathers, seeing that the guardians of the earth
will show them to men of faith, and they will explain them to this race,
and they will be glorified consequently more than in early times.' Arioch and
Marioch, the guardians of the earth and of the Enochic writings, are doubtless
identical with the anonymous 'two princes' of the 200 Watchers, Egrigoriy
(p. 9, 7). It has already been suggested that they are equivalent to the Harut
and Marut of Muslim legends, attested since the Koran (Sura 2: 96). ^
In the fourteenth century the summary of the legend of Apd)T and AfapaJr,
sent to the earth by God, cSarc KOK&S dpx^iVy Kal ScKaLOJs KpiveiVy is found in an
anti-Muslim treatise of the ex-emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, who became
the monk Joasaph (PG 154, 628). In the Greek original of the Secrets of
Enoch the names were written *Apwd and ^Mapa>d. The oscillation off < th
(e.g. Sif Seth, in the passage quoted) and of ch (here Arof > Aroch > Arioch)
is peculiar to the phonetics of Greek borrowings into the eastern Slavonic
languages (e.g. Fiodor and Chodor coming from TheodSros).
A lexical argument irrefutably confirms, in my opinion, the dating of the
Slavonic Enoch to the ninth to tenth centuries. Let us look first of all at the
context of the term which interests us (pp. 13, 4-14, 2): 'And the Lord called
upon Vreveil, one of his archangels, who was skilful at inscribing all the works
of the Lord. And the Lord said to Vreveil: "Take books from the stores,
' W. Bousset, Religion des Judentums, p. 560, and J. Horvitz, HUCA
Koran-Untersuchungen, pp. 147-8.
ii (1925), 164-5, and id.,