The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

SHEMARYAHU TALMON 53
The gist of this statement is echoed in Jubilees (4Q227), a fragment of a
Qumran composition which evidently is related to Jubilees. 59 There
Enoch is presented as having received divine instruction pertaining to
the movements of the luminaries in the heaven and the (progress) of the
months, which he passed on to his descendants:
E[noch] after we taught him…six jubilees of years[…the ea]rth among the
sons of mankind. And he testified against all of them…and also against
the Watchers. And he wrote all the…sky and the paths of their hosts and
the [mon]ths…s]o that the ri[ghteous] should not err…
The reliance of the author of Jubilees on the Book of Enoch or rather the
“Book of the Heavenly Luminaries” (1 En. 72–82) in matters calendrical
implies that in his days this book was as much appreciated as was Jubilees
when CD was composed, and that it was most probably authored several
generations before Jubilees, viz., not later than in the late fourth century.
Milik considers chapters 72–82 (Astronomical Enoch, or Books of
Enoch ar [= 4Q208-211]) the earliest component of 1 Enoch, dating it to the
end of the third or the beginning of the second century B.C.E. 60
However, the fragments of several manuscripts of the book found at
Qumran evidently do not stem from an autograph, but rather from secondary
copies. Therefore, it is plausible to date the original composition
much earlier.
The “Book of the Heavenly Luminaries” reports that when Enoch felt
his death approaching, he entrusted the knowledge of the proper “computation
of the days” to his son Methuselah, and enjoined him to pass it
on to all future generations:
And now, my son Methuselah, all these things I recount to you and write
down for you. 61 I have revealed everything to you and have given you
59. See James C. Vanderkam and Jozef T. Milik, “4QPseudo-Jubilees c Frag. 2, ” in
Qumran Cave 4.VIII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 1 (ed. H. W. Attridge et al.; DJD 13; Oxford:
Clarendon, 1994), 173–75.
60. Jozef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1976). However, scholars have sounded caveats concerning Milik’s identifications
of the 4QEnastr fragments (= 4Q208-211) with the Astronomical Enoch
since they are, “very different from the Ethiopic text, and sometimes impossible to
bring into relationship with it” (S. Stern, Calendar and Community, 6). See also Michael
A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch: A New Edition in the Light of the Aramaic Dead Sea
Fragments (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 2:11–13.
61. It stands to reason that by having Enoch bequeath his wisdom to Methuselah
both orally and in writing, the author intended to draw a parallel between Enoch’s
testament and that of Moses (Deut 31:1–13, 24–30). At the same time, the insistence
on “dual” transmission may reflect literary standards of the Persian era, which also
permeate postexilic biblical writings (cf. Ezra 1:1; Neh 6:1–9; 2 Chr 30:1, 10; Esther