The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

42 INTRODUCTION
the 4Q fragments; this may be the result of the paraphrastic work of translators,
mainly of Abyssinian copyists, for two of the three Greek fragments
which are still extant (En. 85: 10-86: 2 and 87: 1-3 in Oxyrhynchus Pap.
2069, fragments i'^+2'^ and i''+2'', and En. 89: 42-9 in a Vatican manuscript)
are fairly close to the Aramaic text.^
The fictitious framework of these two dreams, the teachings of Enoch to
his son Methuselah (83: i and 85: 1-2), was borrowed from the Astronomical
Book. The genealogy of the antediluvian sage is already that of Gen. 5:
15 ff., as his grandfather Mahalal'd is mentioned (83: 3 and 6). A new
legendary detail is provided in the form of his wife's name, Edna: this was
chosen deliberately, for 'ednd means in Aramaic 'The Paradise' (in Hebrew,
'ednah is the feminine form of the masculine 'eden). We know that the hero
of the Babylonian flood, Utnapistim, lived at the mouth of the rivers with his
wife ;^ so, it would seem, did the Sumerian Ziusudra.^ In Berossus Xisouthros,
at the time of his being carried off by the gods, was accompanied by his
wife, his daughter, and his guide. Our writer also probably envisaged Enoch,
as the resident of Paradise, in the company of his wife named Taradise';
according to Jub. 4: 20 she was called Edni, thus *My Paradise', and Edna
was Enoch's daughter-in-law (Jub. 4: 27).
The author emphasizes that Enoch had his dreams while he was still
unmarried, the first when he was learning to write, and the second just before
his marriage. En. 83: 2. We must not look in this for an 'ascetic' tendency,
but rather an allusion to the rites of incubation which demanded temporary
continence.
The second dream (En. 85-90) presents a tableau of world-history from the
creation of the first man to the eschatological advent of the Kingdom of God.
Individuals and peoples appear in this in the guise of various animals, whilst
the angels are transformed into men dressed in white; the great protagonists
of the sacred history, such as Noah (89: i, 9) or Moses (89: 36, 38), are
changed into men at the culminating moments of their careers. To retrace
rapidly the distant past the writer uses books of the Pentateuch (Genesis,
Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), Joshua, Judges (?), Samuel and Kings,
perhaps the great prophets, and finally Ezra.^
' See below, notes to En** 2 iii (En. 89:43-4) * It would be useful to undertake a detailed
and to En^ i (En. 86: 1-3).
study of the Enochic text with a view to
^ Text of Gilgame^ quoted above, p. 33. discovering whether it contains elements
^ '[provided] Ziusudra with a wife'; M. Civil, foreign to these books which later became
loc. cit. pp. 144-5, line 255a and the note on canonical,
p. 172.