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Texts and Manuscripts The recent editions of 1 Enoch by Knibb and Uhlig provide detailed discussions of the textual history of 1 Enoch and its component parts. The present section updates these discussions, fills in some lacunae, and provides information otherwise necessary for the purposes of this commentary. 2.1. Aramaic Texts 2.1.1. Aramaic the Original Language? Since the Ethiopic version of 1 Enoch was first introduced to the West at the beginning of the nineteenth century, scholars have almost universally acknowledged that the Ethiopic version derives from a Greek translation of a Semitic original, although they have debated whether that original was in Hebrew or Aramaic. The discovery of the Qumran Aramaic Enoch MSS. makes it virtually certain that Aramaic was the language in which chaps. 136, the Book of Giants, and chaps. 72107 were composed, although the authors may have drawn on some Hebrew sources. Whether the Book of Parables (chaps. 3771) and chap. 108 were composed in Hebrew or Aramaic is less certain, since no Aramaic fragments of either section were found at Qumran. 2.1.2. Manuscripts The Qumran Aramaic Enoch fragments divide into three groups. Seven MSS. preserve various parts of chaps. 136, 8590, and 91107. Four MSS. contain only the Book of the Luminaries (chaps. 7282) and related calendrical material. Nine Aramaic MSS. contain parts of the Book of Giants, hitherto known only from Manichaean sources. Since all of the fragments have been published, it is necessary here only to summarize the relevant information. 2.1.2.1. 1 Enoch 136, 85107 4QEna (4Q201); DSSC, 80; Milik, Enoch, 14063; Stuckenbruck, DJD 36:37. Fragments from five of six columns containing 1 Enoch 110 and perhaps 12. Milik dates the MS. to the first half of the second century B.C.E., but suggests that aspects of its orthography and the confusion of letters may indicate that it was copied from a MS. dating from the third century at the very least.
and the careless original has been corrected by the same scribe against a better MS., perhaps one similar to 4QEna.
4QEnastrb (4Q209); DSSC, 8182; Milik, Enoch, 274, 28789, 29396; Tigchelaar and Garca
Martnez, DJD 36:13271. Fragments from several columns, containing parts of the synchronistic calendar, as well as material corresponding to 1 Enoch 7679 and 82. Milik dates the Herodian hand to the early years of the first century C.E. George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 2. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
1QGiantsa (1Q23); DSSC, 21; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 4359; idem, DJD 36:4966.
Thirty-one fragments, only one of which contains more than one or two words.
1QGiantsb (1Q24); DSSC, 2122; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 5963; idem, DJD 36:6772; DJD 31:1947.
Eight small fragments.
2QGiants (2Q26); DSSC, 36; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 6366; idem, DJD 36:7375.
One fragment with a few words from four lines.
4QGiantsa (4Q203); DSSC, 81; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 66100; idem, DJD 36:841; Puech, DJD 31:17
18. Thirteen fragments, one preserving a good part of thirteen lines, some others containing several words from several lines. Milik believes this was part of 4QEnc and dates it in the last third of the first century B.C.E. (see above).
4QGiantsb (4Q530); DSSC, 140; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 100141; Puech, DJD 31:1947.
Twenty fragments containing a fair amount of text. Cross suggests a date 10050 B.C.E.
4QGiantsc (4Q531); DSSC, 140; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 14177; Puech, DJD 31:4994.
Substantial amount of text preserved on forty-eight fragments, some of considerable size. According to Stuckenbruck, the script combines features of both early and mid-to-late Herodian hands, that is, 30 B.C.E.50 C.E.
4QGiantsd (4Q532); DSSC, 140; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 17885; Puech, DJD 31:95104.
Six fragments with little continuous text.
4QGiantse (4Q556); DSSC, 143; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 18591; Puech, DJD 31:10511 (as 4Q533). George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer;
Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 3. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
4QGiantsf (4Q206 23); DSSC, 81; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 19196; idem, DJD 36:4248; Puech, DJD
31:11115 (as 4Q533). Three small fragments, originally published as part of 4QGiantse, which Milik believes were part of 4QEne and which he dates to the first half of the first century B.C.E.
6QGiants (6Q8); DSSC, 152; Stuckenbruck, Giants, 196213; idem, DJD 36:7694.
Thirty-three papyrus fragments, one preserving a good part of five lines of text. Cross suggests a date 501 B.C.E. The precise codicological relationship of the Book of Giants to the MSS. of the Enochic corpus remains uncertain in my view. Although Milik is correct in assigning 4QGiantsa to the same MS. as 4QEnc, there is no hard evidence as to where it might have been located on the MS., and as I argue below, there is warrant for expecting and believing that the account of Enochs cosmic journeys had an ending that described his return to earth (3.1.2.2). 2.1.3. Implications The manuscript data summarized here suggest that the Qumran Scrolls provide a significant body of material for the textual criticism of 1 Enoch. Milik claims that 50 percent of the Book of the Watchers is covered, 30 percent of the Astronomical Book, 26 percent of the Book of Dreams, and 18 percent of the Epistle of Enoch. In fact, as Knibb has calculated, the preserved text covers the equivalent of only 196 of the 1,062 verses of the Ethiopic text (one-fifth), and if one counts actual preserved letters, it preserves considerably less than one-fifth of the text. Nonetheless, as I shall indicate below (2.8), the Aramaic fragments are of invaluable text-critical help for sections of 1 Enoch where the Aramaic is substantially preserved. In addition, the fragments help us to reconstruct the literary shape of the early stages of the Enochic tradition (see 3.1.13). They also indicate the considerable importance of the Enoch material for the Qumran community (see 6.2.6). 2.2. Greek Version Approximately 28 percent of 1 Enoch has been preserved in fragmentary texts of a Greek translation of the Aramaic original. 2.2.1. The Book of the Watchers (Chaps. 136) 2.2.1.1. The Akhmim Manuscript (Codex Panopolitanus) This Greek MS. of the fifth or sixth century C.E. was discovered in 1886/87 in a grave in the Coptic cemetery at Akhmim (Panopolis), Egypt, and was published in editions by Bouriant (1872) and Lods (1872, 1873). It contains incomplete texts of the Gospel of Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter, followed by George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 4. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
the text of 1 Enoch 19:3 ()21:9 (), and then, without even the break of a space, by another complete text of 1 Enoch 1:132:6a. The inclusion of the Book of the Watchers and of the two Petrine writings in one codex is not surprising, given the evident relationships between the two traditions (see 6.3.6.4) and the texts common interest in journeys to the realm of the dead. Perhaps the codex was compiled and deposited in the grave by analogy to the Egyptian practice of burying a copy of the Book of the Dead. The incomplete text of 19:321:9 is almost identical with the corresponding part of the following, fuller text of the Book of the Watchers. Agreements, often in error, between these Greek texts and the Ethiopic version over against the Greek fragments of Syncellus (see 2.2.1.2) indicate that G and E derive from a common archetype. This MS., however, has its own unique readings, both longer and shorter than E. In general, however, it corresponds quite closely to E and the corresponding material preserved in G. 2.2.1.2. The Chronography of George Syncellus Some fragments of the Book of the Watchers have also been preserved in the of George Syncellus, composed at the beginning of the ninth century C.E., on the basis of the fifth-century chronographic works by Pandorus and Annianus. The preserved sections of 1 Enoch in G are: 6:19:4; 8:410:14; 15:816:1 (ed. Dindorf, 2023, 4246, 4647). One section has no precise parallel in 1 Enoch. These fragments, which Scaliger first called to the attention of scholars in 1658, provided the only textual evidence for 1 Enoch in the West before the publication of the Ethiopic version and the only substantial piece of text of the Greek Enoch before the publication of the Akhmim MS. (see 2.2.3). Overall, the text preserved by Syncellus is superior to that of the Akhmim MS., but it has its own unique incorrect readings as well as additions that reflect the interests of the chronographer(s). 2.2.2. Fragments of the Book of the Luminaries and the Animal Vision Fragments 3 and 1 of the fourth-century Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2069, published by Hunt in 1927, have been identified by Milik as containing bits of 1 Enoch 77:778:1; 78:8; 85:1086:2; 87:13. 2.2.3. An Excerpt from the Animal Vision (Codex Vaticanus Gr. 1809) A Greek text of 1 Enoch 89:4249 was written into the margins of an eleventh-century tachygraphic manuscript discovered by Mai in the Vatican Library and published by him in 1844. Gildemeister deciphered the text and published it together with some comments in 1855. The text is introduced as An excerpt from the book of Enoch ( ), is followed by some brief comments identifying some of the animals in the vision, and concludes with the remark that the vision described human history in this (symbolic) manner from Adam to the consummation (). 2.2.4. The Epistle of Enoch (Chester BeattyMichigan Papyrus) George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 5. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
The preserved leaves of this fourth-century Greek papyrus codex contain the text of 1 Enoch 97:6107:3, together with all but the last few lines of the Homily on the Passion by Melito of Sardis, and three fragments of a Pseudo-Ezekiel text. An estimate of the original size of the codex suggests that it contained the whole of the Epistle of Enoch plus the story of Noahs birth (chaps. 91 or 92107). The collection of three texts may have been assembled to serve a polemical or apologetic purpose. Bonner published the Enoch text with copious notes in 1937, and the plates followed in 1941 in Kenyons edition with an introduction. Important comments on the text followed in articles by Jeremias, Torrey, and Zuntz. The product of a careless scribe, this papyrus is marred by more than three dozen omissions, often sizable ones, many of them caused by homoioteleuton. Otherwise, aside from a few corruptions (usually of single words) and a number of spelling errors, it appears to be quite reliable in the material it reproduces. At one point (98:45) it contains an extensive double reading that indicates somewhere in the tradition behind this MS. a collation against a second MS. that may have had independent access to the Aramaic. 2.2.5. Date and Provenance Although the Chester BeattyMichigan Papyrus provides a fourth-century terminus ad quem for the Greek translation of at least the Epistle of Enoch, the wide usage of the Book of the Watchers by the Greek and Latin fathers of the second to fourth centuries indicates a much earlier date for at least the Book of the Watchers, and the writings of Tertullian suggest that he knew a large part of the corpus (see 6.3.2.616). References to the work in Greek in the Epistle of Barnabas indicate 13538 C.E. as a terminus ad quem (see 6.3.2.3), and the quotation of 1:9 in Jude 1415* and the use of Enochic material in Revelation indicate that the translation was in place by the end of the first century (see 6.2.78). Parallels in the Wisdom of Solomon (see 6.2.7) suggest that the Greek is the product of a Jewish translator who worked before the turn of the era. In such a case, its provenance would have been circles that found compatibility between sapiential and apocalyptic traditions (see 5.1.1.23, 6.2.7). 2.3. Latin Quotations and References to 1 Enoch Several quotations of 1 Enoch and references or allusions to its contents have been preserved in the Latin language. A ninth-century Latin MS. includes an extract from the story of Noahs birth (106:118) in a collection of four passages about the great sins of great sinners and their great punishments. PseudoCyprian (Ad Novatianum) quotes 1:9 (see 6.3.11), and in De idol. 4, Tertullian quotes 99:67, ascribing the text to Enoch the prophet (see 6.3.2.9). Other Latin fathers allude to the story of the watchers or its motifs (see 6.3.2.8, 10, 16, 17). While these quotations and allusions might attest a Latin version of the Book of Enoch, the evidence is slim and far from compelling. 2.4. A Coptic Fragment of the Apocalypse of Weeks The fragment of a two-columned sixth/seventh-century Coptic MS., discovered in 1939, preserves the text of a small part of the Apocalypse of Weeks, 93:3b4a + 5ab (recto) and 6c7a + 8cd (verso). Whether the George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 6. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
MS.
contained only an extract from 1 Enoch, viz., the Apocalypse, or the whole Epistle is uncertain. A verbatim correspondence between the Coptic and the Aramaic of 93:3c against the Ethiopic indicates that the E has blurred a faithful Greek rendering of its Aramaic archetype (see 93:3, textual note b). 2.5. A Syriac Excerpt from the Book of the Watchers A Syriac text of 1 Enoch 6:16 is found in Chronicle 1.4 of the twelfth-century Jacobite patriarch Michael the Syrian, where it is ascribed to the chronographer Annianus (see 2.2.1.2). Its text often agrees with G against G E (see textual notes to 6:16). Brock argues that Michael took the extract either from a Syriac translation of Annianus or a Syriac chronicle that drew on Annianus. 2.6. The Ethiopic Version of 1 Enoch The corpus that we know as 1 Enoch (chaps. 1108) is extant in its entirety only in an Ethiopic (Geez) version that was translated from a Greek translation of the Aramaic original between the fourth and sixth centuries. The translation was part of the larger project of translating the Old and New Testaments. Along with the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Enoch was accorded canonical status in the Ethiopian Bible (see 6.3.7.12). Postulating a Greek textual basis for the Ethiopic version of 1 Enoch requires some qualification. First, we have no Greek text or fragments for the Book of Parables (chaps. 3771) and the final appendix to the corpus (chap. 108). Thus there is no hard evidence that the Ethiopic of these chapters was not translated directly from a Semitic text (Hebrew or Aramaic). Indeed, Ullendorff and Knibb have argued that the Ethiopic version knows both Aramaic and Greek versions of the text, although they leave open the question as to what extent the Ethiopic is dependent on the Aramaic and the Greek. Was the text translated from Aramaic and revised against the Greek, or was it translated from Greek and revised against an Aramaic text? VanderKam has argued, however, that the textual confusions between the Greek and the Ethiopic are more economically explained as having taken place on the Greek than on the Ethiopic level. In this commentary I have postulated an Aramaic Greek Ethiopic chain of transmission, partly because of the close correspondence in word order between the Greek and Ethiopic and also because of readings in the Ethiopic that must have derived from a corrupt Greek text. In at least one case it appears that a Greek scribe had access to either an Aramaic text or another Greek text that had access to the Aramaic. At this writing I am aware of forty-nine pre-1900 Ethiopic MSS. of 1 Enoch. The majority of these MSS. contain other books of the Bible and place Enoch either with the Prophets or before Job. Table 1 lists all MSS. cited in the editions of Charles, Knibb, Uhlig, and Tiller, as well as other pre-1900 MSS. in the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library collection. As table 1 demonstrates, a thousand years separate the fourth- to sixth-century translation of 1 Enoch from our earliest extant MSS. of the translation. Of the forty-nine MSS. listed, only six can be George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 7. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
dated to the sixteenth century or earlier (g/g,q,u,T9,1768,2080), and only six others to the seventeenth century (t,z,4437,6281, British & Foreign Bible Society, and Pontifical Biblical Institute). Since the edition of the Ethiopic by Flemming (1902), which was based on twenty-six MSS., scholarly consensus has divided the MSS. into two groups, designated as I and II or and (Charles and in this commentary). Manuscripts of the group include g,m,q,t,u,T9,1768,2080,6281, all of which can be dated to the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth century. The MSS. of the second group, which date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are the product of scholarly recensional activity. Uhlig summarizes the history of the text as follows. (1) At the end of the thirteenth century, the biblical text was marked by lacunae, many substantial variants, and paraphrase with a tendency toward simplification. Although no MS. of 1 Enoch derives from this period, T9 does provide some witness to it in variants that distinguish it from other MSS. of the group. (2) The MSS. of the group derive from a series of recensions in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. MS. 2080 may reflect an early recension, while the others are the product of fifteenth-century recension. Subgroupings within this group include: t,u,6281; u,2080; T9,q; and gmt. (3) The seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury recensional process that produced the MSS. of the group emended difficult passages, filled omissions, and corrected grammatical mistakes. Table 1 My Sigla Library/NPlace
Knibb
Uhlig
Tiller
umber
18
1105
Bodl 4
Ox 1
18
198
Bodl 5
Ox 2
198
Frankfurt Fr MS.
George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 8. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
18(?)
1102
Curzon 55
Lo1
18(?)
1108
Curzon 56
Lo2
BL Add. 24185
London
19
1106
BL Or. 485
London
16 early 1108
BM 485
Lo4
BL Or. 485a
London
,g
BM 485a Lo4(2)
BL Or. 484
London
18
1108
BM 484
Lo5
BL Or. 486
London
18
60:13b i 108:15
BM 486
Lo6
BL Or. 490
London
18
1107
BM 490
Lo7
BL Add. 24990
London
18
1108
George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 9. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
BL Or. 491
London
18
1108
BM 491
Lo9
BL Or. 492
London
18
187
BM 492
Lo10
BL Or. 499
London
18
1106
BM 499
Lo11
1108
Ryl
Ma
16
1108
Berl
Be
Abbadian Paris 16
19
177
Abb 16
Pa1
Abbadian Paris 30
18
1108
Abb 30
Pa2
Abbadian Paris 35
17 end
1108
Abb 35
Pa3
Abbadian Paris
1516
1108
Abb 55
Pa4
George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 10. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
55
Abbadian Paris 99
19
1108
Abb 99
Pa5
19
198
18
1108
Vat 71
Va1
Munich thiop. 30
Munich
18
1108
Munich 30
17
1108
zb
18
1108
zb
Paris 32 Pa8
1108
,a
Garrett MS.
Pr
,a
Westenho Hamburg 18 lz
1106
,b
WestenhoHa
,b
George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 11. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
lz MS.
Ca
Ca
T9
Lake Tana 9
Kebran
15
1108
Tana 9
TS
aa
Ull
Edward Ullendorff
18 early 1108
Ull
Ull
ab
Va2
193132 1108
Va2
Va3
Cerulli 110
Vatican City
192122 1108
Va3
Va4
Cerulli 131
Vatican City
19
1108
Va4
1768
EMML 1768
1108
Co1
bk
George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 12. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
2080
EMML 2080
1108
Co2
bn
4437
EMML 4437
1108
Co3
bs
4750
EMML 4750
(Collegevi 18 lle)
1108
Co4
bt
6281
EMML 6281
(Collegevi 17 lle)
1108
Co5
bv
EMML 6686
EMML 6706
(Collegevi 18 lle)
EMML 6930
(Collegevi 18 lle)
6974
EMML 6974
(Collegevi 18 lle)
bw
EMML 7103
(Collegevi 18 lle)
7584
EMML 7584
(Collegevi 18 lle)
by
George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 13. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.
17(?)
1108
Lo12
1718
2:3 108:15
Ro
George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneiaa Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001). Page 14. Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:22 AM January 28, 2014.