The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE BOOK OF WATCHERS 25
showed him all that is on the earth and in heaven {the dominion of the sun},^
and he described all (that). He witnessed against the Watchers who were
sinning with the daughters of men. For they had begun to go unto the
daughters of men, so that they became impure, and Enoch witnessed against
them all.' This is a clear reference to the two parts of the Book of Watchers:
angelological (En. 6-16) and cosmographical (En. 17-36). The text of the
Hebrew fragment (quoted above, p. 12), lines 1-4, is even more detailed:
.. Enoch, after we had instructed him [in all that concerns the ear]th [and
the sky], during six jubilees of years, [came back to the] earth in the midst of
the sons of men, and he witnessed against them all [because of their sins ?]
and also against the Watchers.' The witnessing against men is the initial
part of the work (En. 1-5).
In any case, the dates of our manuscripts of 4Q allow us to establish
that from the first half of the second century B.C. onwards the Book of
Watchers had essentially the same form as that in which it is known through
the Greek and Ethiopic versions. All the laborious critical Vivisection' of our
document by 'many hands' (Charles, p. i) accomplished during the last
century and a half is shown to be useless and mistaken.
We can accept as obvious, however, the fact that the author of the Book of
Watchers used an early written source which he incorporated without any
great changes in his own work (En. 6--19). While treating his venerable model
with due respect, he judged it opportune to complete and revise it in terms
of his own preoccupations. For the four archangels mentioned in 9: i and
10: I, 4, and II he substituted seven (En. 20), one of which, namely Uriel,
was already to be found in the Astronomical Book. The description of the
western journey of the patriarch, the only one mentioned in his source (En.
17-19), was reworked in chapters 21-5, mainly from the eschatological point
of view—^with descriptions of the places of abode, on the one hand, of God
and the blessed, and on the other, of sinners, the wicked angels, and the stars.
The rest of the work. En. 1-5 and 26-36, is to be attributed exclusively to
the author of the existing book. The most original part of his literary composition,
that which describes the surroundings of Jerusalem and the lands
of spices (En. 26-32), reveals some details about the actual person of the
author and the approximate date of his work. He was certainly a Judaean,
since he looks upon Jerusalem as the centre of the earth, and the hill of the
temple of Jerusalem as 'the sacred mountain' par excellence (26: 1-2).^
' A Greek or Ethiopic addition ?
mountain of the Most High, in the Samaritan
* Cf. the reference to the temple of Gerizim, source of the historian Eupolemos (above p. 9).