The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

36 INTRODUCTION
He shows, in En. 26, an astonishingly detailed knowledge of the surroundings
of Jerusalem, with their mountains and rivers.^ Judaea, the centre of
the earth, is considered by him to be a blessed country, full of trees with
imperishable foliage (En 26: i). There he sees a sacred mountain, the hill
of the Temple, whose continuation is the hill of Ophel; from its eastern
slopes comes the spring—^the Biblical Gihon, 'Ain Sitti Mariam in Arabic—
which gives birth to the Cedron, flowing (at first) towards the South (v. 2).
To the east of Sion, separated by the valley of Jehoshaphat, is situated
a higher hill, the Mount of Olives, whose continuation is the 6ebel Batn
el-Hawa, at the foot of which rises an important ravine, the Wadi Qaddum
(v. 3).2 To the west of the Mount of Offence (to the south-west of the Mount
of Olives) is situated the imposing spur of er-Ris running from the Gebel
*Abu-T6R, at the foot of which opens up the deep and dried-up vale of
Gehenna (v. 4A), the accursed valley of En. 27. Another valley is situated
at the foot of three mountains (26: 46): this refers to the sheer slopes of the
Silwan, especially the Wadi Bir 'Ayyub, and as far as the barren rocks of
Hallet et-Turi.3 Fig. 4 represents the map of En. 26-7, as the author himself
might have drawn it.
On the site of the lands of the aromatics (En. 28: 1-32: i) I have written
elsewhere.'^ Here just a general remark. The constantly eastern (and, towards
the end, north-eastern) direction of the journeys of the patriarch is necessarily
imposed by the final destination of his journey, namely the eastern Paradise.
In fact the author—^who knew a lot about the natural habitats of perfumes
and spices—by implication makes two independent expeditions from
Mediterranean ports: one from Gaza to Timna in the Yemen, the principal
centre of the trade in incense and myrrh, towards the East and then towards
the South; the second, for all the other aromatics, from a Phoenician port
' An Aramaic fragment, 4QEn^ i xii (En. * Equivalent to the D'»OIRN bfll of Joel 4: i8
25: 7-27: i), overlaps in part with this descrip- and the Nefiel Sanpayd of the Byzantine era;
tion, but for the rest the Greek text of C must see Milik, RB Ixvi (1959), 553-5.
be our primary witness. Commentators on the ^ ^or this area see Milik, Studii Bibl. Franc,
Ethiopic Enoch, such as Charles and Martin, Liber Annuus, vii (1956^), pp. 232 ff., fig. i.
are strangely satisfied with the explanations of Note that in the last-named place-name the
Dillmann, who knew no version but the Ethi- Palestinian Arabic dialect has kept the Aramaic
opic (hence certain mistakes and the vague term ITN^H: 4QEn** i xii 5 (JLVN), iQGenAp
nature of the identifications). Neither is it xxii 4 (KHViI).
true that this account *mixes with real geo- ^ See my article in RB Ixv (1958), 70-7;
graphy features drawn from eschatological and below, notes to En* i xxvi (28: 3-29: 2
texts of Ezekiel and Zachariah* (Grelot, RB and 31: 2-32: 3) and En'' i xii (30: 1-32: i).
Ixv (1958), 4^).