The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

274 THE ASTRONOMICAL BOOK
moderately thick, finely granular, and fairly smooth. It preserves a good
part of the astronomical document, more than the other manuscripts. The
fragments mostly belong to the synchronistic calendar, but some are from
the final part of the work, En. 76 to 79 and 82. Number of Unes per column,
approximately 40; number of letters per line, varying from 52 to 80.
The third copy (4QEnastr^), cream or dark brown skin, moderately thick,
taut and smooth, has preserved only three passages of the text, from En.
76 to 78. The writing is in a fine hand of the late Hasmonaean period, probably
from the middle of the first century B.C.
The fourth copy (Enastr^), dark blue skin and fairly thick, is preserved
practically only in a single fragment, a horizontal strip containing from six to
two lines of the text, which comes from three successive columns placed
towards the end of the scroll. Column i contains a description of winter; so
it should be placed after the existing conclusion of the Astronomical Book in
the Ethiopic Enoch, where we have the description of the two first seasons
only, spring (En. 82: 15-17) and summer (82: 18-20). The writing of
4QEnastr ^ dates from the second half of the first century B.C.
THE SYNCHRONISTIC CALENDAR
At the beginning of the Astronomical Book the Jewish author describes the
movements of the sun and the moon (En. 72-5), calculated within the framework
of his special calendar composed of 364 days, i.e. 12 months of 30 days,
with intercalary days at the end of the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th months (72: 32;
74: 10; 75: 2). Not one fragment of 4Q corresponds to this section. We
find there, on the other hand, a calendar in which, day after day and month
after month, he describes scrupulously and in a very stereotyped way the
phases of the moon, the waxing and waning of which are expressed by the
successive fractions of the fourteenth parts of its light, or more precisely by
the 7I parts. He synchronizes the conjunctions and the oppositions of two
stars by reference to 'gates' from which they rise and in which they set. The
synchronism of a lunar year of 354 days (alternately 6 months of 30 days and
6 months of 29 days) and of a solar year of 364 days is effected in a triennial
cycle by the addition of an intercalary month: 364 x 3 = 354X 3 + 30. Now
the description of 12 lunar months occupied, at the very least, twenty-seven
columns of Enastr^. It does not seem to me very likely that the author would
have continued in the same detailed way the description of the second and