The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

22 INTRODUCTION
Uriel who showed Enoch the revolutions of the celestial luminaries'
celebrated on 28 July (21 Hamle).^ A sermon for this feast, published by
A. Caquot,2 was evidently well known and appreciated, for a long passage
of it is quoted in a 'Life' of an Abyssinian Saint.^
THE BOOK OF WATCHERS
(En. 1-36)
We give this convenient title to the first section of the Ethiopic Enoch,
drawing on Syncellus' €/c rod irpdyrov ^i^Xiov (or Xoyov) ^Evcbx rrepl TCOV
iyprjyopwv; it corresponds well with the theme of the section (and matches the
title of the Book of Giants from Cave 4 of Qumran), the fragments of which,
with their Aramaic context restored, overlap with half of the Ethiopic text:
En. i: 1-6; i: 9-5: 6; 5: 9-9: 4; 10: 8-19; 12: 3; 13: 6-14, 16; 14: 18-20;
15: II (?); 18:8-12; 18: i5(?);2i: 2-4; 22: 3-7; 22:13-24: i; 25:7-27: i;
28: 3-32: i; 3^- 3> 6; 33: 4-34: i; 35: 1-36: 4. The first copy, 4QEn*
dates from the first half of the second century B.C. It was, therefore, like the
second copy, En^ (mid second century), brought to Qumran from elsewhere.
Both of them probably contained only the Book of Watchers, whilst the three
others—copied in the scriptorium of Qumran in the course of the first
century A.D.—formed part of the Enochic collection, in particular En"",
the original scroll of which brought together in all probability the Book of
Watchers, the Book of Giants, the Book of Dreams, and the Epistle of
Enoch. The practice of copying into the same volume at the very least the
Book of Watchers and the Book of Dreams called for recensional alterations,
which are quite obvious if one compares the passages common to En* and to
En^ (see the notes to En^ i i, below, pp. 186-8). The Greek version was
to follow this more recent recension.
The orthography of En* is very striking: on the one hand archaistic, as in
^in or "^11 'fish'; on the other, 'popular' and phonetic in character (e.g.
' I. Guidi, Le synaxaire dihiopien, ii (PO vii, On Uriel in iconography (and in magic) see
3), p. 377 (361). P. Perdrizet, *L'archange Ouriel' in Seminarium
* *L'hom61ie en Thonneur de Tarchange Kondakovianum, 2 (1928), 241-76; and S.
Ouriel (Dersana Ura'el)* in Annales d'Ethiopie, Der Nersessian, Manuscrits armdniens illustris
i (195s), 61-88. des XIPy XIIP et XIV^ sikcles de la Biblio"
^ S. Kur, Actes de lyasus Mo'a dbhd du thkque des Peres Mdkhitharistes de Venise, 1936,
couvent de St-Etienne de Hayq, CSCO 259/ pp. 95-6.
Aeth, 49, p. 19 (translation: 260/50, pp. 15-16).