The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

14 INTRODUCTION
of his son and of his grandsons, after which he will again be withdrawn
from amongst them.^ Now, the three angels are the appointed guides of
Enoch according to the Book of Dreams. In 87: 3-4 'these three . . . carried
me off. .. and brought me up to a high place' (in order to behold the generation
of the flood); in 90: 31 'these three . . . those who had first carried me
off . . . made me sit in the midst of the ewes' (for judgement). The first
passage is preceded by a reference to the four white men who come from
heaven and the three (others) with them (87: 2). This clearly refers to the
list of seven archangels of En. 20, in which to the four archangels of 9: i
(Mika'el, gari'el, Rafa'el, and Gabri'el; cf. ch. 10 = ch. 88 and 89: i) are
added 'Cri'el, Ra*u'el, and Remiel. En. 81 is accordingly later than the
year 164, the date of the composition of the Book of Dreams; but it is earlier
than the date of Jubilees, where, in 4: 24 (and also in the Hebrew fragment of
4Q which depends on it), we have called attention to the chronology of the
teachings of Enoch to Methuselah as it is reflected in En. 81.
In spite of his discreet monotheism ('the sinners . . . will look upon the
stars as gods', 80: 7), the author of the astronomical Enoch is not very far
removed from the religious concepts of his age when he has the stars guided
and the days and the months presided over, in the Egyptian and Phoenician
manner, by the angels, as minor celestial beings. The level of his knowledge of
astronomy was very severely criticized by O. Neugebauer.^ It is true that
this 'extremely primitive level of astronomy', as revealed in the descriptions
of the phases of the moon and the doorways of heaven (Neugebauer, pp.
51-8), and in the ratio 2: i for the length of days and nights (En. 72), scarcely
allows of conclusions on the relative archaism of this type of observation or
on mutual influences. But the division of the horizon into 360 degrees, and
even the ratio 2:1, certainly seem to come from a scholarly Babylonian milieu
which popularized some elements of astronomical observations, of arithmetic
and geometry—in short the Chaldaica of which Eupolemos speaks
(above, p. 9). The essential interest of the author of Enastr is centred,
however, on the ideal calendar, with days of weeks and festivals fixed in
relation to the days of the months. He admires the beauty of his sacred
arithmetic so much that he accuses the peoples and even the chiefs of the
stars (En. 80: 6) of not following this reckoning of heavenly origin.
^ In V. 5 we must certainly read *and these and not *and these seven saints',
three saints (brought me and set me down on ^ Orientalia, 1964, pp. 58-61 ('The Astrothe
earth in front of the door of my house)', nomy of the Book of Enoch'); see below, p. 277.
with the second group of Ethiopic manuscripts