The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE ASTRONOMICAL BOOK OF ENOCH
(4QEnastr^'''^'^ Pis. XXV~XXX)
To the third part of the Ethiopic Enoch, En. 72 to 82, which bears the title
*Book of the revolution of the luminaries of heaven', there correspond four
Aramaic manuscripts from Qumran, all out of Cave 4. The scrolls of which
these fragments formed a part circulated independently of the other Enochic
writings. I introduce them here in a preliminary form, less complete than the
edition of 4QEn* to 4QEn8 which has been given above. In particular, the
numbering of the fragments, and of the lines of text preserved on these
fragments, remains provisional.
The first example (4QEnastr% formerly Enastr^) is represented by thirtysix
fragments which belonged to several columns of the first leaves of the
scroll. As a matter of fact, these fragments contain only the 'synchronistic
calendar', i.e. the writer's 'synchronizing' of the movements of the sun and
moon (see below, p. 278). The resume of this calendar is found in En. 73 :
1-74: 9. The skin is glazed white (blackened in places), thick and taut, very
damaged, and flakes easily; the text on it is often scarcely legible because
of the rubbing of the surface. The handwriting of Enastr* is rather unusual,
but fairly archaic; it resembles 'an archaic or early Hasmonaean semiformal
script of ca. 175-125 B.C.' (Cross, p. 137, fig. i, line 6; cf. ibid., line 7
and p. 138, fig. 2, line i). It seems to me, however, to be older than the alphabets
discussed by Cross, and to be related, by many a detail, to the writings of
fig. I, lines 2-5. As a result, I would date 4QEnastr* to the end of the third
century or else to the beginning of the second century B.C. The scribe never
used final forms of letters, e.g. J^'ID, JZD, H, DO*'. His orthography is
extremely variable and unusual, thus XOD*', but also Xa^'D*', Da**, and
aav. Given the date of this manuscript, one may ask whether it represents
the oldest form of the Astronomical Book, which may have contained only a
broad introduction (approximately equivalent to En. 72) and the synchronistic
calendar. This would have made a respectable scroll of about twenty
or thirty columns.
The second copy (4QEnastr^, formerly Enastr*) is written in the same
beautiful Herodian script as iQIs^, iQM, iQGenAp, and the original hand of
iQH, on a cream skin (bluish, or brown, or even purplish-blue in places),
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