the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

380 QUMRAN AND THE DATINGOFTHEPARABLES OF ENOCH
was an exception, because its first editor, Laurence, maintained that the
book had originally been written in Hebrew and was datable to the early
part of the reign of Herod the Great.
While there was some discussion in the nineteenth century as to
whether BP was originally Christian or Jewish, 7 beginning with Charles
(1893) the idea of the book’s Jewish, pre-Christian origin was commonly
accepted. Under the entry “Apocryphes de l’Ancien Testament,” in the
Dictionnaire de la Bible, Suppléments, 1:359, B. J. Frey dated all of 1 Enoch,
including BP, to the second century B.C.E.
However, assigning an early date to the Book of Parables created some
serious problems for Christian theology, which was used to considering
the name “Son of Man,” a title that Jesus had given himself, as characteristic
of Jesus and a direct consequence of the Son of Man in the book
of Daniel. It was common to interpret the Son of Man in Daniel as the
direct archetype of Jesus the Christ. 8
Thus, given the objective problems created for Christian theology if
BP is considered to predate Jesus, during the first decades of the twentieth
century some attempts were made to maintain that even though the
work was Jewish, the messianic titles must have been inserted later by the
Ethiopic Christian tradition. 9 These attempts were later abandoned due
to their inconsistencies; it is impossible to eliminate the Son of Man from
the original version of BP without eliminating the book itself.
Subsequently, Sjöberg lowered the pre-Christian dating, drawing
attention to the only event clearly mentioned in the text, 10 a Parthian
changes; it is no longer a purely literary distinction, but a historical one. A pseudepigraphic
text can be titled as Old Testament Pseudepigraph only if it is datable prior
to the closure of the Christian canon (roughly 100 C.E.). This definition of “Old
Testament Pseudepigrapha” is accepted by most scholars up until the present, with the
exception of Albert-Marie Denis, Introduction aux Pseudépigraphes grecs d’Ancien Testament
(Leiden: Brill, 1970), and Charlesworth’s vast edition (OTP). Denis and Charlesworth
consider many books of this type Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, even if they were
composed after 100–150 C.E., when the Old Testament period was clearly closed. On
the Spanish edition, see Paolo Sacchi et al., Apocrifi dell’Antico Testamento (Biblici, Testi e
studi 5; Brescia: Paideia, 1999), 3:33–34. The Introduction is published also in Henoch
21 (1999): 97–130; see 115–16.
7. On the history of the interpretation of BP during the nineteenth century, cf. the
entry “Apocryphes de l’Ancien Testament,” by Jean-Baptiste Frey, DBSup 1:359.
8. Cf. John J. Collins Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 304–10.
9. Cf. Nils Messel, Der Menschensohn in den Bilderreden des Henoch (Giessen: A.
Töpelmann, 1922). In 1909 Léon Gry (RB 18 [1909]: 462–64) admits that the BP could
have undergone many Christian interpolations. However, these Christians must have been
Aramaic speaking people, because the Fathers of the Church ignored BP. The author,
though, has many doubts that all messianic passages can be attributed to Christians.
10. Erik K. T. Sjöberg, Der Menschensohn in dem äthiopischen Henochbuch (Lund: C. W.
K. Gleerup, 1946).