The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE ASTRONOMICAL BOOK 21
surely be to the mention of Methesulah and his descendants in the Epistle.
In the Divine Institutions^ vii. 16 (S. Brandt, CSEL 19(1890), 636), Lactantius,
describing the end of the world, employs several phrases which recall En. 80:
2-6: 'nec terra homini dabit fructum; non seges quicquam, non arbor, non
vitis feret. . .; luna . . . meatus extraordinarios peraget, ut non sit homini
promptum aut siderum cursus aut rationem temporum agnoscere . . .; tunc
annus breviabitur et mensis minuetur et dies in angustum coartabitur.' But
the principal source for this part of his work is the Sibylline Oracles,^ and it
is to the anonymous authors, Jewish and Christian, of these Oracles (who
were certainly influenced by Enochic literature) that we must assign the direct
borrowing of the apocalyptic texts that reappear in Lactantius.
The Astronomical Book of Enoch was well known in Eastern and Western
Christian iconography. The Octateuch illustration of three manuscripts, at
least, contains a miniature where, on the right, Enoch is standing with an
unrolled scroll; to the left of him Death is cowering and flinching from him
(an allusion to Enoch's immortality); open tombs in the lower left part of the
miniature represent the Resurrection (prefigured by Enoch's assumption to
heaven). The upper left is occupied by twelve busts and the attributes of
twelve months, and the upper right by busts of Sun and Moon in the starry
heaven.^
In the famous Caedmon Manuscript (Oxford, Bodl. MS. Junius 11) the
lower part of the picture on p. 51 represents Enoch (in text: Enos)y son of
Cain, together with his wife holding a child, standing inside the City of
Enoch. He is, however, confused here with his homonym, the seventh just
Patriarch, as above him appears the symbol of Aries, the sign of the first
month of the year. This picture is quite independent of the Anglo-Saxon
text, where no mention of astrology occurs.3
In the Monophysite Churches of Egypt and Abyssinia the Astronomical
Book was to become the indirect object of a festival, that of *the archangel
^ In particular book VIII (cf. lines 178- with the miniature in the Vatican MS. Gr.
81 and 214-15) which has many lacunae; J. 746, f. 48^, according to J. Strzygowski, Der
Geffcken, 00*5(1902), 150 ff. Bilderkreis des griechischen Physiologus, des
* See Th. Ouspensky, UOctateuque de la Kosmas Indikopleustes und Oktateuch nach
Bibliothhque du Sirail h Constantinople (Bull. Handschriften der Bibliothek zu Smyrna (Byzande
rinst. Arch. Russe k Constantinople, xii), tinisches Archiv, Erganzung der Byzantinischen
1907, pp. 119-20 and pi. XII, 32 (MS., f. 53^); Zeitschrift, Heft 2), 1899, p. 115 and pi. XXXIV
D.-C. Hesseling, Miniatures de VOctateuque (miniature of the Smyrna MS.).
grec de Smyrna (Codices Graeci et Latini ^ gee the facsimile edition by I. GoUanch,
photographice depicti, Suppl. VI), 1909, p. vi pp. xlii-xliii and illustration p. 51.
and pi. 27 (MS., f. 18'); the latter is identical