The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

64 INTRODUCTION
(year), the sign [of Sekanyah. In the sixth (year), the sign of] Gemul. In the
second (year), the sign^ of Sekanyah; in the fifth (year), the sign of [Gemul.
After] the Release, the sign of Sekanyah. ^^In the fourth (year), the sign of
Gemul; [at the Release, the sign] of Sekanyah. In the third (year), the sign of
Gemul; ^^in the sixth (year), the sign of Sekanyah. [In the second (year), the
sign] of Gemul. In the fifth (year), the sign of Sekanyah: ^^after the Release,
the [sign of the beginning of the (new) Jubilee, Ge]mul. The fourth Jubilee
(counts) seventeen* signs; ^^from the (last) to the Release (there remain) two
(yearly) signs of (the triennial cycle of) Sekanyah ...
* Actually sixteen (see fig. 7); the scribe adds the *sign' of the beginning of the fifth
jubilee, mentioned immediately before.
The cycle of the seven jubilees can be reduced to a table (Fig. 7). It can
easily be seen from this table that the computation is actually a cycle of six
jubilees, since the distribution of the triennial cycles in the seventh jubilee
exactly repeats that of the first. Whatever may have been the reason for the
invention of this cycle, it required no small amount of faith to attribute it,
or that of any other Qumran calendar, to Enoch; for all these calculations
take account of twenty-four priestly families whose organization and introduction
to the service of the temple at Jerusalem date from the Persian era.
Be that as it may, the calendar of the seven jubilees, and to a lesser extent
other computations of this kind, could be entitled the 'Book of the Signs'.'
Now, apart from the passage of Jub. 4: 18, I find a vague reminiscence of
a *Book of the Signs', connected with the priestly number of twenty-four, in
the extra-canonical traditions of the Samaritans. This Aramaic apocryphon,
the oldest and the most important, composed during the Arab period, is
well known; it bears the Arab title Kitdh aWAsdtir and was first published
by M. Gaster.2
In this work the beginning of the section relating to Enoch is expressed
in the following terms (f. 2"" 19-25 = Gaster ii 6-7): w^wldyrd Ihnwk wbnh
mdynh wsmh flm rbth btr yg' snh Up hnwk bspr h*wtwt dyt^bnh ^'dm w'nyn
kd' ^bny shm by' Irhwth wy^' Ibhwr krnyh bnyy'qb wltwldwt 'bdyU 'lyzvn: 'And
Jared begat Enoch and he built a town called Shalem the Great. And when
^ ha-^Otdt was, in fact, the siglum which I and 174-90; xv (1944), 71-87 and 128. I quote
myself gave quite spontaneously to 4Q26OB. from the earliest copy of it (parchment, thir-
2 The Asatir, The Samaritan Book of the teenth century), which is in my possession
'Secrets of Moses*, 1927; later published by (cf. RB Ixvii (i960), p. 103), adding to it
Z. Ben-Hayyim in Tarbiz, xiv (1943), 104-25 Caster's numbering.