The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

76 INTRODUCTION
from two to four lines of text are missing; the number of lines per page
varies from 41 to 46. The six leaves containing the Epistle of Enoch are
distributed as follows: f. i (pp. 15-16), CB inv. no. 100; f. 2, CB 170; f. 3,
M 5552; f. 4, CB 169; f. 5, M 5552; f. 6 (pp. 25-26), CB 167.1
The scribes of the Enochic texts C/C and CM (= Chester Beatty-Michigan
papyrus) copied only the Book of Watchers and the Epistle of Enoch, respectively.
CM was attached to a Christian text; C and C were bound up, after
the copy was made, with Christian texts. As for P. Oxy. 2069, it is not quite
certain whether this is a single codex or two volumes copied by the same
scribe. In any case, the editor points out that the papyrus of fragments 3
and 5 (which I identify with the Astronomical Book of Enoch) 'is lighter
coloured and better preserved than in the rest'.
This independent circulation of various Enochic works in no way excludes,
in my opinion, the existence of more comprehensive collections which might
have imitated the Aramaic Enochic Pentateuch in two volumes put together
in the course of the first century B.C. by Judaean scribes, or rather, to be more
exact, by the Essene copyists of Qumran. The presence of En. 106-7
the CM papyrus certainly seems to be evidence of the fact that this Greek
text of the Epistle of Enoch was extracted from a collection which probably
combined the four Enochic books (see above p. 57). I suggested above
(p. 72) that George Syncellus, who drew on the chronicles of Annianus and
Panodorus, gives a long quotation from the Book of Giants. Now, it has
certainly been proved that these two Alexandrian scholars of the early fifth
century incorporated in their works extensive extracts from apocryphal
books, such as Jubilees and the Enochic writings. At a later date these quotations
were in turn extracted, in part, by other chroniclers, Greek, Latin,
Syriac, etc. Syncellus combined extracts from the Book of Watchers and
the Book of Giants under the same heading and the same colophon. It
can be concluded from this that in a codex of the fourth to fifth centuries,
which Panodorus had to hand, the Book of Giants followed on directly
from the Book of Watchers. I believe that his volume of the books of Enoch
also contained the Book of Dreams and the Epistle of Enoch. The Greek
extract of Vat. Gr. MS. 1809 corresponding to En. 89: 42-9 is followed by a
lemma where the animals are identified with the peoples against whom David
' Editio princeps of the text by C. ^onner, Papyri,,,, viii. Enoch and Melito, 1941, plates,
with the collaboration of H. C. Youtie, The f. 8^-13'. Description of the codex, Kenyon,
Last Chapters of Enoch in Greek (Studies and loc. cit., i (1933), 9-10, and Bonner, The
Documents, viii), 1937. Photographic edition Homily, pp. 5-8 and 81. Cf. Black, op. cit.
by F. G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical