The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE SLAVONIC ENOCH in
and give a calamus to Enoch, and dictate the books to him.'' And Vreveil
made haste, and he brought me books mottled with smyrnium, and he put
a calamus in my hand. And he was occupied in teUing me of all the works
of heaven and of the earth and of the sea, and the workings and the lives of
all the elements, and the changing of the years and the courses and the
alternation of the days . . . Vreveil explained this to me during thirty days
and thirty nights, and his mouth did not cease from speaking. And I, I did
not rest during thirty days and thirty nights, writing down all the signs.
And when I had finished, Vreveil said to me: "Sit down, write all that I
have explained to you." And I sat down twice the length of thirty days and
thirty nights, and I wrote everything exactly, and I composed 360 books.'
The name of the angel Vreveil (variants: Vretil, Vreteil, Vereveil) is equivalent
without any doubt to Ouriel, who initiated Enoch in astronomy and
cosmography according to the Astronomical Book.^ (I assume the Greek
form ^Ovp€lri\ the iota of which with diaeresis might have been confused
with the tau by the Slavonic translator.) Ouriel thus brings books to be
copied (not paper to write on, as Vaillant explains it), hands a calamus to
Enoch, and begins to dictate; the patriarch takes down the archangel's
account rapidly in shorthand and then makes a fair copy of everything. The
phrase in p. 13, 7-8, knigi ispescreny^ zmoureniem\ to be translated word for
word 'books painted in various colours of smyrnium', is a literal version of
the Greek phrase j8tj8Ata aup/xatoypa^a, which has, however, been misunderstood
by the Slavonic interpreter. The translator has simply transcribed the
first part, avp/xato- (corrupted by the copyists to zmoureriy izmurnOy et sim.y
under the influence of zmournay tsmirnOy et sim.y 'myrrh', which occurs just
before, in 13, 2) and has translated the other component, -ypa^a, by 'painted
in colours', on the analogy of t,a)ypd(f>osy 'painter from life'. Now the adjective
avppLaioypa^os is a derivative of the verb avppLacoypacfyeiVy which means 'to
write in minuscule', hence 'quickly'. The expression jSijSAta avppLaL6ypaay
'books to be recopied in minuscule', has a close parallel in a letter of Theodore
of Studios to his disciple Naukratos, written in the year A.D. 816: ipyoxetpov
eXeti/jiv pLOL TOV ypa(f>elv . . . hio p6vTit,€ pioi aTrdpTC ipyox^tpa ola deXeis
ovp/xatoypa^a, '. . . procure for me even now manuscripts which you wish to
have recopied in minuscule'.^ The verb avppiaioypa€iv occurs only twice in
this period: first in the epitaph of Plato (died 814 in Studios) composed by
' As already suggested by L. Ginzberg, The * The reading of MS. B^; other manuscripts
Legend of the Jews, v, p. 159 (otherwise Vaillant, read izo^6reny et sim.y 'sharpened*,
p. xii). 3 Cf. J. Leroy, Scriptorium, 15 (1961), 59-