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

JAMES C. VANDERKAM 481
not previously available have been identified. These are treated in
Devorah Dimant’s paper (vol. 2, ch. 22) in this same collection.
1. 1 Enoch
The year 1976 marked a watershed in scholarship on the books of
Enoch, because of the publication that year of Milik’s The Books of Enoch:
Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4. 47 In it Milik furnished a more detailed
study of the Enoch material than would have been possible in the DJD
format: not only did he present the texts, restorations, translations, comments,
and plates, but he also added an extensive introduction to the
texts and a learned study of the history of Enochic material in subsequent
centuries. His controversial theses about an earlier form of the Enochic
Pentateuch and the late date for the Book of Parables have elicited many
responses, a large number of them negative. 48 It will probably serve no
helpful purpose to rehash the arguments about the date of the Book of
Parables (or Similitudes); it seems wiser to focus on what the fragments do tell us
about Enochic booklets at Qumran and the effect they had on the
literature of the community. 49
As is well known, four of the five sections of Ethiopic Enoch are
attested in the Aramaic copies of the book from Qumran Cave 4.
According to Milik, seven copies (4Q201–202, 204–207, 4Q212 =
4QEn a–g ), all in Aramaic, contain parts of the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch
1–36 [BW]), the Book of Dreams (1 Enoch 83–90 [BD]), and the Epistle of
Enoch (1 Enoch 91–107 [EE]), while four others (4Q208–211 =
4QEnastr a–d ) offer sections of the Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72–82 [AB]).
The amount of preserved material is really quite small, although with
restorations Milik claims that fifty percent of the Book of the Watchers, thirty
percent of the Astronomical Book, twenty-six percent of the Book of Dreams,
47. Jozef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1976).
48. See the discussion in James C. VanderKam, “Some Major Issues in the Contemporary
Study of 1 Enoch,” Maarav 3 (1982): 85–97.
49. There are several summaries of scholarship on 1 Enoch in the last few decades:
Matthew Black, “A Bibliography on 1 Enoch in the Eighties,” JSP 5 (1989): 3–16;
Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, “The Books of Enoch (1
Enoch) and the Aramaic Fragments from Qumran,” RevQ 53 (1989): 131–46; “I Enoch
and the Figure of Enoch: A Bibliography of Studies 1970–1988,” RevQ 53 (1989):
149–74. A wonderful resource for analysis of the versions of the book and exegesis of
it is now available in George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of
1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36; 81–108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001).