The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

50 INTRODUCTION
As a traditional Jewish scribe, the author of the Epistle of Enoch shows
himself to be particularly sensitive to the spreading, among his co-religionists,
of works of Greek literature and above all euhemeristic works composed in
Greek by the Jews themselves. He deplores that 'sinners alter the words of
truth and contradict and change many of them and they lie and perpetrate
numerous (literary) forgeries and they rewrite the (holy) Scriptures under
their own names' {[rovs Xoyovsi] rrjs dXridelag e^aXXoiovaiv /cat dvTi\ypa\(l>ov(JLv
ol afiaprojXol /cat dXXdaaovaL[v] rovs TTOXXOVS^ /cat i/jevSovrai (-T€ MS.) /cat
7rXdaGo[vGLv] TrXdafiara jxeydXa /cat rds ypa(f>ds dv[aypd](l)ovaLV irrl rots ovo-
/xaortv avrwvy 104: 10; cf. 98: 15). We must suppose him to be referring
to the historical and apologetical works, in prose and in verse, of Demetrius,
of Philon the Ancient, of Eupolemus, Artapan, Aristeas, Cleodemus-Malka,
of pseudo-Hecataeus, Ezekiel the Tragic, and so on. Against this Graeco-
Jewish religious literature he sets his own pseudepigraphical work. He wishes,
certainly, that it shall be used with respect but he allows it to be disseminated
under other names than that of the patriarch which he assumes (/cat 6eXov
Trdvras rovs Xoyovs fiov y/)a^a>[crtv] CTT' dXrjdelas irrl rd ovofjuara avrchv {avrov
MS.) /cat [jti^Jre d^iXcoaiv iirjre dXXotcoacDGtv {-aovacv MS.) rcov Xoyojv rovrcov
{rov Xoyov rovrov MS.), dAAa rrdvra irr* dXrjdeias ypd(j>coaiv a iyoj Sta/xapri;-
povfiaL avrotsy 104: ii). In antediluvian perspective the literary activity of
the Hellenistic era is naturally a mystery (104: 10). A second mystery will
be the diffusion of various Enochic documents (at j8tj8Aot fiov; Eth. omits (lov)
among the 'just, holy, and wise' men of the same age (104: 12-13).
The Greek town in which the author of the Epistle of Enoch lived could
well have been a port on the Palestinian coast. The passage on the 'captains
of ships' {vavKXrjpoiy loi: 4-9) contrasts sharply, in its sober familiarity with
the facts of the sea, with the simple metaphor of the vessel tossed by the
tempest which is found, for example, in the book of Hymns (iQH iii 13-18,
vi 22-4). Equally characteristic of someone used to the maritime voyages of
his Greek fellow citizens is the apostrophe of 97: 7: ot5at vfitv ol dfxaprcoXol