The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

254 THE BOOKS OF ENOCH
It is precisely this Book of Dreams, composed one year before the book of
Daniel, which gives us an apocalypse of the seventy Weeks, presented in a
very original manner, namely, through the metaphor of the seventy shepherds
who are the angels charged with successively ruling Israel, each one for an
era. The author divides the complicated periods of angelic dominion into
four sections corresponding to the successive number of the angels: 12 + 23 +
23 + 12 (En. 89: 59-90: 25). The start of the cycle begins with the Assyrian
invasion of the kingdom of Israel and the fall of Samaria in 724-721, events
which are mentioned, moreover, in the same verse as the destruction of
Jerusalem (89: 66). Thus the first age extends from Salmanassar to the return
under Cyrus (89: 65-72), the second to Alexander the Great (w. 72-7),
the third to the year 200 (90: 1-5), the fourth to the advent of the eschatological
era (90: 6-17). The four great eras correspond accurately to the four
empires (of which the Book of Daniel, among others, speaks). It must be
emphasized, however, that the choice of the numbers of the angels is also
significant; the author wished to express by it the concept of a week of years of
history (necessarily shortened by two units 'months': i2 + 23 + 23 + i2«
6x12), to be completed by the sabbatical year of the eschatological kingdom.
We should recall, finally, in connection with En. 89-90 and En. 10: 12, that
the chronological scheme of the seventy ages presided over by the seventy
angels intersects, according to the oldest Biblical traditions, the geographical
scheme of the seventy nations, each one of which is guided by a Son of
God. Indeed, the ethnic table of Gen. 10 contains the names of the seventy
nations, descended from the three sons of Noah. Now this list is simply an
ethno-geographical illustration of the theological subject expressed by Deut.
32: 8: D'^^x nDoa"? D^ay n'pm mx nnona nii ]R'7^ " P M I
(Read Q^'^X with a fragment of 4Q and early versions as against ^XllZ?''
in MT and Sam.) The expression '. . . the nations corresponding to the
number of the sons of God' certainly implies the number of seventy angels,
guardians of the peoples (cf. Dan. 10: 13 and Jub. 15: 32).
A cycle of seventy weeks of years is equivalent to a cycle of ten jubilees
70 X 7 = 10 X 49. Now an apocalypse of ten jubilees appears in a group of
Qumran manuscripts which will be edited by J. Strugnell under the sigla
4Q384 to 389. In these various copies of one and the same document attributed
to Ezekiel, Strugnell finds a long and rather confused series of Weeks
and jubilees, but the fragmentary state of the manuscripts seems to him
scarcely to permit any further elucidation. Thanks to his kind authorization
(and the loan of the manuscript of his edition and the photograph), I am able