The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

S8
INTRODUCTION
Lebanon. In any case, the poetical doublet of CD (the first element of which
is borrowed from Amos 2: 9) is certainly not derived from En. 7: 2, but must
come from a work devoted more particularly to the descendants of the
Watchers. If the source is the Book of Giants, we may then assign the
composition of that book to the years between the date of Jubilees (at
the earUest about 128 to 125 B.c.)^ and that of the Damascus Document
(about no to 100 B.c.).2
When I come to edit the tiny fragments of 4QEnGiants* separately, I shall
suggest that this manuscript, copied by the scribe of 4QEn'', formed in all
probability part of a single scroll on which four Enochic documents were
brought together: Book of Watchers (En^), Book of Giants (EnG*), Book of
Dreams (En*"), and Epistle of Enoch (En*"). At the time when this scroll was
copied, in the second half of the first century B.C., there probably existed,
already complete, a pentateuchal collection of the writings attributed to the
antediluvian sage. For practical reasons, above all because of the considerable
length of the Astronomical Book, this Enochic Pentateuch was divided
into two volumes, the first of which contained only the calendar and the
short treatise on astronomy and cosmography attributed to the patriarch.
In ancient times it was a common habit to divide works of a certain length
between successive volumes, in particular if the format of the scrolls or of
the codices had to be restricted for any reason whatever. Manuscripts from
Qumran provide examples of this for the books of Isaiah, Jubilees, and
Tobias.
The history of the Enochic Pentateuch in the Greek version and in the
early translations derived from it will be discussed below (pp. 70 ff.). But one
point should be mentioned here. In the commentary to EnGiants* (below,
pp. 319-20) I attempt to prove that the last of the quotations 'from the first
book of Enoch on the Watchers' found in the Chronography of George
Syncellus (who borrowed them from the Chronicles of Panodorus or Annianus)
comes in reality from the Book of Giants. In other words, in the codex
of the fourth century A.D. which the Christian historians of Alexandria had
available, the Book of Giants followed immediately on the Book of Watchers.
It was thus only at a subsequent date that our document was rejected from
the Christian Enochic corpus (perhaps by reason of its popularity with
the Manichaeans) and was replaced by the Book of Parables.
' Campaigns of John Hyrcanus I in Trans- 255-6, cf. Jub. 34: 2-9 and 38: 1-14).
Jordan, in Samaria, in Idumaea, after the death * Cf. Milik, Ten Years, pp. 58-60, 88-92,
of Antiochus VII Sidetes in 129 {AnU xiii 145.