The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE MIDDLE AGES 117
defeat of the Arabs in 718. Then follows the description of three emperors
of the Syrian Dynasty: Leo III (717-41), Constantine V Copronymus
(741-75; 'he shall rule thirty-three years'; during his reign came the abandonment
of Damascus, caused by the fall of Umayyads in 750), and Leo IV,
the Chazar, son of Constantine and of Irene daughter of the Khagan of the
Chazars (775-80; 'a king of low birth shall arise, whose name is Hertzik').
Shortly after the death of Leo IV, we are told, will begin the apocalyptical
dominion of the Rebel, which will last 1,265 years; he will be overthrown by
a pious king of Rome, and the Kingdom of God will set in for eternity.
The composition of The Vision of Enoch is thus to be assigned to the
eighties of the eighth century. It was written in Greek (rather than in Syriac
or in Arabic) by a Christian living probably in Syria under Muslim domination.
A similar writing, and nearly contemporary, was translated from
Greek into Arabic; it is the Apocalypse of Daniel (told to his disciple
Esdras!) preserved in Paris.^
There existed in Medieval Latin (and in a German translation from the
Latin) a hermetic treatise on astrological botany, dealing with the fifteen
plants, stones, and talismans, linked with the fifteen fixed stars. This work
appears under the name of M^sallah, an eighth-century Arab astrologer.
A summary of this short treatise attributed to Hermes {Dixit Hermes . . .)
bears the title of book of Enoch :2 'Enoch tamquam unus ex prophetis super
res quattuor librum edidit in quo voluit determinare ista quattuor, videlicet
de quindecim stellis, de quindecim herbis, de quindecim lapidibus pretiosis et
quindecim figuris ipsis lapidibus insculpendis, ideoque quia non moritur qui
vivificat scientiam. Dixit Enoch quod quindecim stellae . . . Quinta decima
Stella et ultima libri Enoch est Cauda Capricorni et est in secundo gradu
Aquarii. . .'
For many Muslims Hermes was an authentic antediluvian prophet, whom
they identified at one and the same time with Tdris (Koran xix. 57-8 (his
ascension) and xxi. 85-6) and with 'Uhnuh, the Enoch of Genesis, generally
called raff ^alldh, 'carried off by God'. A number of sapiential maxims,
astrological and alchemistic writings arfe attributed to Tdris, including treatises
on geomancy.3
' Bibl. Nat. MS. arabe 150, ff. 14-20. Edited ibid., pp. 241-75, long recension attributed to
by F. Macler, *L'apocalypse arabe de Daniel', Hermes. Cf. L. Thomdike, Md. A. Pelzer,
RHR 49 (25) (1904), 265-305. 1947, 221-3.
* Ed. L. Delatte, Textes latins et vieux fran- 3 Paris, Bibl. Nat. arabe 2630 and 2631,
fais relatifs aux Cyranides, 1942, pp. 277-88 eighteenth century; cf. G. Vajda, Encyclopidie
(three manuscripts of the fourteenth century); de Vlslam, new edn., iii (1970), 1056-7.