The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE BOOKS OF
ENOCH
FIRST COPY (4QEn% Pis. I-V)
WHITE or cream skin, blackened in places, very thick and very stiff; surface
fairly smooth, partly damaged and flaking easily; verso similar to the recto,
blotted with ink. Ink rather faint: it has often spread and blurred the lines of
writing, or even disappeared.
There were probably no guide-lines, except perhaps the vertical lines
which marked off the columns of the text.
The recto bears traces of wear, as a result of the scroll's having been read
many times. It was withdrawn from use, perhaps a century after the copy
was made, and the verso—at the very least the large piece containing columns
ii and iii of group no. i—^was re-used for copying a genealogical list {Tb)Tl
several times), as it seems, of the patriarchs. This might have been a schoolexercise,
as the surface of the verso is badly blotted with ink.
The fragments which have been identified belong to the first six columns
of the text of the Aramaic Enoch, no doubt set out on two leaves of the
scroll: first leaf, columns i-iv; second leaf, columns v-vi. The arrangement
of the text is very economical: lines of writing fairly close together; the words
in the lines almost without a gap; narrow upper and intercolumnar margins,
approximately i-2 cm broad; but the lower margin seems wider, approximately
3 cm (fragment 2). This scroll did not have a fly-leaf, i.e. a blank
first column. Instead the first column of the text had only about fifteen lines
of writing, and the upper half left blank, to allow the hand to hold it as the
text was read, the use normally reserved for the first blank column. Here is the
table of codicological details of 4QEn*:
Leaf Col. Letters Width Sections Text Sigla of Fragments
per line of col. of text preserved fragments on plates
I i 67 20 cm En. i: 1-2: I En. 1: 1-6 4QEna I i 4QEn* I a, b
ii 47 135 2: 1-6:4 2: 1-5: 6 ii 1-17 c,d
iii 39 125 6:4-8:2 6:4-8: I iii 1-23 Cy e
iv 42 13 8: 3-10:2 8: 3-9: 3, iv i-ii, f-k
6-8 19-22
2 v 48 13*5 10: 2-19 10: 3-4 V 1-5
vi 40 12-5 10: 19- 10: 21-11: i; ; vi 1-6,
12: 4-6 14-17