The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

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drjcFerat, vaos deov evSo^ojs €7TI T& ovofjuart Kvplov (taking up OLKoSoiMriO'qGeraL
Se €776 TW ovofian Kvplov in § 8, p. 28, 23-4). This quotation is absolutely
accurate, and not approximate, since the author of the Epistle is at pains to
elucidate the last part of the sentence on two occasions. Thus it is not a vague
echo of En. 93: 7 or of En. 91: 13, and probably not of a primitive formulation
of the Greek Testament of Levi 17: 10 either, but is quite plausibly
a verbal quotation from the Greek version of pseudo-Ezekiel, to be added
therefore to the meagre collection of other quotations from this apocryphon
and to the three Chester Beatty-Michigan fragments.
The two copies of the commentary to the 'Book of Periods', 4QI8O and
181, discussed above (pp. 249-53) date from the early years A.D.
Reduced to simple genealogical lists, apocalypses of jubilees and of Weeks
appear again in the Gospels. The genealogy of Christ in Luke 3: 23-38 contains
seventy-six names. If one deducts the first six patriarchs, one finds
again in the era of the patriarch Enoch the beginning of a computation of
seventy generations—exactly the same, therefore, as En. 10: 12.
In Matthew i: 1-17 the reckoning begins with Abraham, and the series
of ancestors of Christ is divided into three great ages, each one embracing
fourteen generations. In other words, the sacred history from Abraham up
to the birth of Jesus is looked upon as the cycle of six Weeks (3 x 14 =6x7)
which will be completed by the seventh—eschatological—^Week ushered in
by Jesus Christ. In this vision of the history of the world we can easily detect
the influence of the apocalypses which were formulated by the authors of the
Book of Dreams and the Epistle of Enoch. The influence of the Enochic
Book of Dreams is evident again in another essential element of the genealogy
of Matthew. There, the seventy shepherds correspond to the six years of
twelve months, thus 70 » 72 = 6 x 12. Here, the actual total of the ancestors
of Christ amounts to only forty people, thus 40 » 42 = 3 x 14 = 6 x 7. By
the number forty the author of the first Gospel wishes to express the idea
of the mystical Desert (see Milik, Ten Years..., pp. 60, 78, 87, 89, 99, 115,
116, 123). The forty generations antecedent to Christ symbolize the duration
of the afflictions in the Desert which, once overcome, secure entry into the
Promised Land under the leadership of the new Joshua.
The chronological idea of the seven periods of the history of salvation,
underlying the genealogy of Matthew, combined with the image of the six
days of Creation and of the Sabbath (days of a thousand years, according to
Ps. 90: 4), was to be thoroughly exploited by Christian chronographers and
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