The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

56 INTRODUCTION
whom Methuselah visited in Paradise: p ]T\b faK?[ '3D p X^l. . .]
[... ... and not from the Sons of Heaven but from Lamech thy son. •
(col. V 4; ed., p. 18). Similar phrases occur in En. 106: 5, 6, 12.^ In columns
vi to xvii of the Genesis Apocryphon the life-story of Noah was continued,
finishing with the division of the earth among his children (cols, xvi-xvii).
A few years ago J. Starcky published an impoHant fragment which he
considered to be 'Un texte messianique aram^en de k Grotte 4 de Qumran'.^
Shortly afterwards, J. A. Fitzmyer suggested that one could see in this a
narrative of the birth of Noah.^ This hypothesis seemed attractive to me right
away, and can now be regarded as established, thanks to the identification of
three other copies of the same account.^ A passage represented by two
manuscripts certainly relates the birth of Noah in great detail, since it even
gives the weight of the baby: nxa D^D f^pfl ^pfl[a].5 In my opinion,
these four Aramaic manuscripts (and the Hebrew version in 4QI86) belong
to a 'Book of Noah' in which the birth of the Patriarch (with an astrological
section giving a series of horoscopes), and probably his whole life, was
narrated in great detail.
A 'Book of Noah', containing a section on ritual, is quoted by the Greek
version of the Aramaic Testament of Levi: iv rfj ypa