The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

En* I ii FIRST COPY 149
LI. 9/10. At the beginning of the verse the text of En* is the most complete; C and E both
omit the phrase *on all of them their (foliage) blossoms' while En*^ omits *and it covers
the trees'.
L. 10. The phrase in C, els reifjLrjv kol So^avy omitted by E, is a hendiadys of nnDK^D ^^^^
= els TiiJLTjv Soirjs. The Aramaic equivalent of yvwre is not at all clear to me; for [ J^Jl of En^^
and [ ]^ [ ] of En* one can conjecture IS^X, 'learn', mis-spelled, or else the Hebraism l^^H,
'praise (God)', as you behold all these works of nature. Instead of rovrcov = in En*,
C has the personal pronoun avrovy thus anticipating the phrases which follow and which refer
to God.
L. II, The second part of En. 5:1, which speaks of the living God, the Creator, differs in
En* and En^. The formulation of the text in EnS ^1D^ ^ X['»n i^TlbH H 1^''Dt2?X1]
[]'»'7X XnaS; laS? Kin nb^y appears to me to be approximately the
same as that in the Aramaic archetype of C, at the very least if one assumes that an omission
added in the margin has been wrongly inserted in the text of C; here, therefore, I correct:
Kal vorjaare on 6e6s ^cov koI ^fj els Trdvras rovs alcovas eTrolrjaev avrd ovrcos. The last two words
of this passage abridge Trdvra rd epya ravra, which is found in E.
LI. 11-12 (En. 5: 2-3). The text of En* is considerably shortened here in comparison with
that of C, as a result of three long omissions, the third of which is due to homoeoteleuton;
curiously, however, with only a little obvious reconstruction, it gives a complete and satisfactory
meaning. On the other hand, it is possible that C and E have here paraphrased the text
of earlier Greek manuscripts, or of the Semitic archetjrpe of the Greek version, which was just
as short as that of En*. Be that as it may, the final phrase of 5: 2, 'and they all (sc. His works)
do His Word' according to En*, has been paraphrased in C as follows: oAA' wcrrrepel Kara
eTreirayrjv rd Trdvra yelverai,
LI. 12-14 (En. 5: 4). It seems highly improbable to me that a phrase of En*, 'and you, you
have changed your acts', which is an excellent contrast to the image of nature, the cycle of
whose works never varies, should be translated in Greek by a tame phrase such as that of C:
vpXs Be OK evefilvarai, I suggest, therefore, that this phrase in En*, as also a parallel phrase restored
at the beginning of 1.13, may well have been omitted in a Greek manuscript by homoeoteleuton
with the preceding stichos,