The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE ASTRONOMICAL BOOK 19
The character of the Greek version of the Astronomical Book may be
gleaned from the Ethiopic adaptation. It can be seen clearly now that the
Egyptian Jews responsible for the translation from Aramaic were at pains
to shorten the voluminous, prolix, and terribly monotonous original. The
lunisolar calendar, which occupied the major part of the book, was transposed
into simple tables, one of which, containing the distribution of the
'doorways' of the moon by days of the months of the solar year of 364 days,
is given below. The introduction and the remainder of the work were freely
adapted, in an attempt not only to abridge it, but also to bring it up to date
here and there, in relation to the state of astronomical knowledge in the
Hellenistic world. ^ As ill luck would have it, the Greek translators were not
able to procure a complete copy of the Aramaic, and had to use one from
which a good part of the final section of the work was missing. This suggests
that there were only very few copies of the Astronomical Book in circulation
among the Egyptian Jews of the Graeco-Roman era. (Alternatively, it was the
Ethiopic translator who could not find a complete copy of the Greek version,
and the scarcity of the work was among the Christians of the Byzantine
period.)
Until recently there were no known samples of the Greek text of this book.
However, I have now identified two small scraps of a Greek papyrus, Oxy.
2069, fragment 3'' and 3^ as being parts of En. 77: 7-78: i and 78: 8.^
Otherwise there exist merely an allusion to MaBriiiara ^Eva>x (the Greek title
of the Astronomical Book of Enoch) made by Anatolius the Alexandrian,
bishop of Laodicea in 269 (Eus., Hist. Eccl. vii. 32. 19), and a brief summary
preserved in the Chronography of Syncellus, drawn no doubt from the
chronicles of the Alexandrian monks, Panodorus and Anianus {ca. A.D. 400):
1. Tov 8e TOV TTpwTOV Trap* ^E^paiois [irjva Trepl lorrjixeplav eivai TRAPAARA-
TaTiKa Kal ra iv tco ^Evojx /XA^T^JLTARA: extract from the Canons of Anatolius
on Easter, quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, Hist. Eccl. (ed. G. Bardy,
SC 41 (i9S5)> 277); cf. En. 72: 6-10.
2. *Ev TOVTCDi (Anno Mundi 1286) yap /car* imTpoTrriv tov eVi TrdvTcov deov'
6 em Tciv acTpcov dpxdyyeXos OvpirjX* eiirjvvae twl ^Evcox' '^^ ^^'^^ I^W' '^^^
TpOTT'q' Kal ivtavTos. (09 iv ttji jStjSAcot avTOV ^Evc^x (f>€p€Tac Kal to e^etv tov
iviavTov vjS' (in Barb. 7]^\ corrected in margin to v^') ipSo^idSas ... (in the
year 956 before the Flood) iyvcopiaOr] twl ^Evwx* ^al to is jlcct' avTov 6
^ Cf. Charles's notes to 78: 15-16 and to ^ See below, p. 75, and my paper in
79- 5- Chronique d'^gypte, 1971, no. 92, 333-41-