At the end of the Persian or beginning of the Hellenistic period in ancient Israel, a Jewish scribal tradition of uncertain origin and provenance ascribed to Enoch, the seventh patriarch from Adam, arcane knowledge about the astronomical workings of the universe, the sinfulness of angelic beings, and the coming of God’s judgment. This tradition took the form of several books, originally written in Aramaic and later translated into Greek, and from Greek into Classical Ethiopic (Gəʿəz). New Testament references, citations in patristic literature, and Christian chronographs preserved the Greek portions of the pseudepigraphic books of Enoch. At some point in the history of ancient Ethiopia, the classical Ethiopic version of the apocalyptic and astronomical books of Enoch was included in the collection of authoritative books of the Christian Church, thus reaching modern times. Since the first publications of the texts of 1 Enoch in Gəʿəz in Europe in the nineteenth century, knowledge of this early apocalyptic tradition has been based on the Ethiopic version and on some portions of individual Enoch booklets preserved in the Chronography of Syncellus, the Codex Panopolitanus, and the Chester Beatty papyri. From the perspective of modern scholarship, 1 Enoch is a collection of five books, apocalyptic in form and content, with the notable exception of the Astronomical Book with its 364-day year and descriptive astronomy.
The Qumran discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which contain Jewish religious literature of various kinds, led to a heightened interest in the study of Enochic literature. Qumran Cave 4 yielded 11 fragmentary manuscripts of the Books of Enoch, some of which correspond to 1 Enoch, and several manuscripts of the Book of Giants, a composition which, departing from the myth of the fallen Watchers in 1 Enoch 6–11, describes the tragic fate of the giants, who were the sons of the watchers and the daughters of man. The preliminary publication of the vast majority of the Qumran Aramaic manuscripts by Józef Tadeusz Milik in his 1976 monograph (The Books of Enoch) presented the books of Enoch to the scholarly community in the language in which they were written. Since Milik dated 4Q208, a manuscript containing lunar calculations related to the Ethiopian Astronomical Book, to the end of the third or beginning of the second century BCE, the calendrical tradition of Enoch proved to be older than previously thought. Except for the manuscripts of the Astronomical Book (4Q208 [announced, not published], 4Q209 [partially published], and 4Q210; 4Q211), Milik’s monograph included the preliminary edition of the seven manuscripts (4Q201; 4Q202; 4Q204; 4Q205; 4Q206; 4Q207; 4Q212), which overlapped with the Ethiopic or Greek texts of the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36), the Book of Dreams (1 Enoch 83–90), and the Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 91–105; 106–108). The Book of Parables was not attested among the Qumran manuscripts.
The conference “The Aramaic Books of Enoch and Related Literature from Qumran,” organized by the KUL Center for the Study of Second Temple Judaism, was devoted to the study of the early Jewish apocalyptic tradition preserved in the Qumran fragmentary manuscripts, first published by Milik and then by other editors. This volume collects the contributions of the conference participants, who emphasized the priority of the fragments written in the original language of composition of the Books of Enoch.
The introductory essay provides an overview of the discovery and publication of the Aramaic Books of Enoch at Qumran by Józef Tadeusz Milik, who participated in the excavations that brought the manuscripts to light, identified their contents, and assembled the fragments into a meaningful whole (Henryk Drawnel). He is also responsible for the identification and textual reconstruction of the Book of Giants, a previously unknown Jewish composition related to the Book of the Watchers and the Manichaean Book of Giants. In collaboration with Matthew Black, Milik prepared the Qumran Aramaic manuscripts for publication, which appeared in 1976 and remains an important reference point in modern research on the oldest textual witnesses to the Book of Enoch in the language of their composition.
The papers presented in the first part of the volume deal with the vocabulary (Mathias Coeckelbergs), the orthography (Edward Cook) and the language (Steven E. Fassberg) of the Aramaic scrolls. The second part is devoted to the astronomical and calendrical problems found in the Aramaic and Ethiopic texts of 1 Enoch. The Aramaic astronomical book preserves vocabulary and themes about the functioning of the universe, which were creatively used in the introduction to the Book of the Watchers (Henryk Drawnel). The Aramaic fragments of the Astronomical Book mostly contain lunar calculations, which have preserved a particular kind of scientific and scribal language, and whose presence in the Enoch texts may have resulted from the influence of the Achaemenid Aramaic chancellery tradition (Holger Gzella). The connection between Mesopotamian texts, especially the MUL.APIN compendium, Enūma Anu Enlil Tablet 14, and the Astronomical Book, testifies to the interest of the Enochian scribes in the schematic astronomical tradition with its complete and unified descriptive model of the universe (John M. Steele).
Several papers presented in the third part of the proceedings volume discuss the topics related to the first book in the collection of Enochic books as attested in 1 Enoch. The Book of Watchers and the fragmentary Aramaic texts of the Book of Watchers (4Q201, 4Q202, 4Q204, 4Q205, and 4Q206) bear witness to literary creativity and multiple traditions rather than to a text faithful to the tradition found in the Greek and Ethiopic versions (Kelley Coblentz Bautch). They also provide us with the original proper names (Shlomi Efrati) and other terminology related to the angelic world (Ida Fröhlich). Finally, the myth of the fallen Watchers (1 Enoch 6–11) in the Book of Watchers does not deal with human wickedness as the cause of the flood, but rather highlights the supernatural causes of human sinfulness on earth (James VanderKam).
The final part of the Lublin conference proceedings includes three studies devoted to Aramaic traditions from Qumran that are related to the Aramaic Books of Enoch. One paper examines the Aramaic text of the Book of Giants and its transmission in the Manichaean religion throughout the ancient Near East in the Hellenistic era and its translation into Asian languages in late antiquity (Matthew Goff). Another paper discusses the exegetical tradition in the Genesis Apocryphon, which attempts to fill in the gaps in the biblical text and to exonerate the patriarchs from what might be considered their flawed actions or attitudes (Jaap Doedens). Finally, the Visions of Amram, an apocalyptic text related to the Visions of Levi, remodels the biblical figure of Amram, son of Levi, thus necessitating a multidisciplinary approach to the study of authority in the Visions of Amram as well as in related testamentary literature (Melissa Sayyad Bach, Kasper Siegismund and Jesper Høgenhaven).
The conference volume thus includes the contributions of specialists in Aramaic Qumran literature, the Books of Enoch, and Babylonian astronomy who have undertaken the challenging task of reflecting on the Aramaic Enoch manuscripts from Qumran. It is hoped that the volume in which the papers are published will be a source of additional insight and inspiration for further study and research into the Enochic tradition, whose origins have not yet been clearly explained and whose influence on Second Temple literature, including early Christian writings, cannot be underestimated.
The director of the Enoch Seminar, Prof. Gabriele Boccaccini, lent a helping hand in organizing the conference, which had to be held online due to the Covid pandemic. Joshua Scott was instrumental in setting up the webinar platform for the conference and ensuring that it ran smoothly. I am very grateful for the involvement of the Enoch Seminar in the preparation of the conference. My thanks also go to René Bloch and Karina Martin Hogan, editors of the Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, who graciously accepted the proceedings into the series. Additional thanks are due to the staff at Brill, who handled the administrative and editorial work with competence and dedication to ensure the success of the production process.
Henryk Drawnel
Center for the Study of Second Temple Judaism
The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland