The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

THE GREEK VERSION 73
Quite recently I have found a second witness of the Chronography of Syncellus,
which contains Enochic extracts, namely MS. Vat. Barberini Greek 227 (sixteenth
century), ff. io% ii-ii^ 17 and 21% 8-23% 21. There are some variants
as compared with the Paris MS. 1711, but the text is essentially very similar.
Panodorus had to hand an excellent copy of the Book of Watchers in Greek.
However, the needs of his work, not to mention the transmission of the
chronicles through many centuries, have often rendered the texts of S and
S' less than faithful to the original, particularly in En. 7-8; one example is the
insertion of Jub. 7: 22 in En. 7: 2.
The numerous approximate quotations, allusions, and reminiscences
that one finds in the Greek Christian authors of the first to fourth centuries
prove to be of very little textual use. The earliest and the most faithful is the
explicit quotation of En. i: 9 in the Epistle of Jude 14-15, best preserved
in the Latin version of pseudo-Cyprian, Ad Novatianum (see below, p. 184).
Equally faithful is the quotation of En. 21: i by Origen, Deprinc. iv 4 8 (35);
this is known only in Latin:^ *Sed et in libro suo Enoch ita ait: "Ambulavi
usque ad imperfectum"' = /cat icfxLSevaa ews (/xexpt C) TTJ? dKaraaKevdarov
of C. On the other hand, the continuation of the same passage is puzzling:
*scriptum namque est in eodem libello dicente Enoch: "Universas materias
perspexi'". The same explicit quotation occurs in Ed. proph. of Clement of
Alexandria, ii l :^ '^EvXoyrifidvos el 6 jSAeVcov d^vaaovsy KaQruxevos eirl Xepov^iiJi\
6 AavLTjX Xeyei (Dan. 3: 54) ofMoSo^wv rco 'Evcbx rep elprjKori' "/cat euSov rag vXa$
Trdaag''. It seems to me difficult to accept that this is a direct reference to
En. 19:3: Kdyd) 'Evcbx ?8ov ra decop'qfiara fiovos rd irepara TrdvrcDV. At the very
most one might envisage it as an explanatory gloss of the Enochic passage
indicated; note in particular the philosophical meaning of vXr]y a term which
one just would not expect in a literal translation of a work of Enoch. Such an
explanatory phrase—in which an attempt is made to elucidate the rather
unclear expression ra irepara Travreov, which is, moreover, a mistranslation
(see p. 35)—would have its appropriate place in a collection of Old Testament
quotations, enriched with glosses, exegetical notes, summaries, etc. We have
suggested above (p. 46) that the Enochic quotation in the Epistle of Barnabas
16: 5 is actually a summary of En. 90: 26-9 (and not of En. 89: 56-74); it
too may have come from an annotated florilegium of quotations which were
used in anti-Jewish polemics. Another analogous summary is quoted in the
same Epistle at 4: 3 :^ ro reXetov aKdvSaXov rjyyLKev irepl oS yeypairrai^ cog 'Evojx
^ Ed. P. Koetschau, GCS 22 (1913), 359- ^ Ed. Prigent and Kraft, p. 92.
^ Ed. O. STAHLIN, GCS 17 (1909), 137-