The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

74 INTRODUCTION
Xeyet. In my opinion this is a recapitulatory note to En. io6: 19-107: i,
where the word yeypairrai refers to the contents of the heavenly Tablets which
Enoch had read concerning the last generations before the final catastrophe,
foreshadowed by the Flood. In the next phrase,
avvr€r[ji7]K€v rovg Kaipovs KOL rag ij/xepa?, pseudo-Barnabas implicitly quotes
En. 80: 2: *And in the days of the sinners the years shall be shortened.*
As often in his quotations, different passages of the same sacred book are
telescoped together; they have, however, a common denominator and a
common 'keyword'. In our case the phrase about the 'last scandal' recalls
En. 80: 7-8: 'they shall err, and take them [sc. stars] to be gods, and evil
shall be multiplied upon them'; the keyword is the expression 'written in
heavenly tablets', which occurs also in En. 81: i and 2. The whole passage of
En. 80: 2-8, with its astronomical meaning reinterpreted—probably already
by Jews, and certainly by Christians—in an apocalyptical sense, was to
enjoy a lasting popularity, starting with Mark 13: 20 and Matt. 24: 22,
passing through Lactantius (passages quoted above, p. 21), and finishing with
medieval apocalypses.
As far as I know there do not exist any studies devoted to the influence of
the Enochic writings in their Greek form on Jewish and Christian apocalyptic
literature, beginning with the Graeco-Jewish Sibylline Oracles (which go
back to the first century B.C., if not earlier), and going on through the Fourth
book of Esdras, the Apocalypses of Baruch, the Apocalypse of Peter, and so
on. So far as the New Testament is concerned, it will be necessary henceforth
to dismiss definitively all the alleged references to the Book of Parables,
since the latter is a Christian work of the third century, if not later (see
below, pp. 89 ff.).
Of the Book of Dreams in Greek until now only one extract was known.
En. 89: 42-9, in a tachygraphical manuscript. Vat. Gr. 1809.^ This is an
extract from a Byzantine chronicle, for in it the text is followed by the identification
of the animals with the peoples against whom David struggled
(above, pp. 45-6).
A detailed description of this manuscript is given by S. Lilla.^ The second
' F. ziS"" upper margin; pointed out by A. im Codex Vaticanus Graecus i8og, i. Fasc. in
Mai, Patrum nova bibliotheca, ii, Rome 1844, Denkschriften der k, Akademie der Wissen^
plate at the head of the volume; identified and schaften, philos.-hist, Classe, 28, Vienna, 1878
deciphered by J. Gildemeister, *Ein Fragment (transcription of the extract from Enoch,
des griechischen Henoch', ZDMG 9 (1855), pp. 94-5 no. XVI and pi. XI); ibid., 2. Fasc.
621-4; edited more correctly by M. Gitl- 34, 1884.
bauer. Die Ueberreste griechischer Tachygraphie ^ II testo tachigrafico del 'De divinis nominibus"