The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

PREFACE
THE year 1971 was the 150th anniversary of the first complete translation of
the Ethiopia Enoch into a European language: Mashafa Henok Nabiy^ The
Book of Enoch the prophet. An Apocryphal productiony supposed to have been
lost for ages; hut discovered at the close of the last century in Abyssinia; and
now first translated from an Ethiopia MS. in the Bodleian Library y by Richard
Laurence, LL.D., Oxford, at the University Press for the Author, 1821.^
It was followed in 1838 by the publication of the Ethiopic text by the same
author: Mashafa Henok Nabiy^ Libri Enoch prophetae versio Aethiopica.
Laurence's manuscript was Oxford, Bodleian MS. 4, one of the three
codices which the English traveller J. Bruce brought back from Abyssinia
to Europe in 1773.^
The existence of a book of Enoch kept by the Abyssinian Church among
the sacred books of their Bible had been known in Europe, in a vague way,
since the end of the fifteenth century. But of the work itself only portions
had been available, and at second hand. There were substantial extracts
quoted in Greek in the Chronography of George Syncellus, written in the
years 808-10 and accessible from the beginning of the seventeenth century
in the edition by J. J. Scaliger.3 Several quotations, allusions, and reminiscences
in the works of Greek and Latin writers of the first four centuries
were carefully gathered together by J. A. Fabricius, beginning in 1703.^
In 1800 S. de Sacy pubUshed in a Latin translation large extracts from
En. i: 1-32: 6.5
In the course of the last one and a half centuries, however, new editions
of the Ethiopic text have appeared (A. Dillmann 1851, J. Flemming 1902,
R. H. Charles 1906), several translations into European languages, and a
* Reprinted 1832, 1838, 1878, 1883, 1909, Canonum omnimodae Histortae libri duo, Lug-
1912: translation of En. 1: 1-108: 15 on pp. i~ duni Batavorum, 1606, *Animadversiones in
162, En. 65: 1-68: I on pp. 163-8. Chronologica Eusebii*, pp. 244^1-2456.
* Eighteenth century, 105 chapters (= 108 * A more complete edition was published
chapters of Dillmann's edition), siglvim A or later: Codexpseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti,
a in Dillmann's, Flemming*s, and Charles's collectus, castigatus, testimoniisque, censuris et
editions. animadversionibus tllustratus, Hamburg 1722.
^ Thesaurus temporum. Eusebii Pamphili, * Magasin encyclopidique, vi, 1800, tome i,
Caesareae Palaestinae episcopi Chronicorum pp. 382^8.