the-book-of-enoch-r-h-charles - Fallen Angels

Introduction Ixiii
under {a), i.e. 37* 40=' 45^ 65" 68^ 69i3, in which cases Schmidt
suggests that tlie corrupt passages in question can be best explained
by an Aramaic original, though possible also by a Hebrew original.
His suggestions on 51^ 41^ are unnecessary, as the corruptions are
native to E, and that on 52^, as we shall see later, is untenable, and
his transformation of 38^ ' whose elect works hang upon the Lord of
Spirits ' into ' whose worship has been rendered solely to the Lord
of Spirits ' is wholly uncalled for, since there is no difficulty in the
phrase which recurs twice in 40^ 46^ and has a parallel in Judith 8^*.
The plurals Surafen, Kiruben, Afnin in 61^0 IV are certainly
Aramaic in form, but crtpai^eiV which occurs only twice in the O.T.,
i.e. in Isa. 6^' ", appears both times in the oldest MSS. of the K A of
the LXX in this form, in Isa. 6^ and in B in 6". The Aramaic form
Xepovfteiv is often found in the LXX. Hence this evidence for an
Aramaic original is without weight.
But ' the most convincing evidence ... of an Aramaic original is
furnished by the Ethiopic translations of the term "Son of Man".
They are walda sab'6 462' 3. * 48^ 60" : walda b'gsi 62= 692»'»> b 7111
and walda 'gguala 'gmaliejaw 62'''''' 1* 63ii 69^^' ^7 701 71'' ....
Of these the last is the most peculiar. Literally it means " the sou
of the offspring of the mother of the living "... and is a rendering
of 01 avOpiairoi, 01 viol tuiv avOpomoiv and especially of vlo's avOpa-n-ov.'
Schmidt then proceeds to emphasize the importance of these different
renderings in the Parables, whereas in the N:T. it is the last that is
uniformly used as a rendering of 6 vlos tov avOpuiirov, and observes
' before 62 he uses no other term than walda sab'6, the equivalent of
the Aramaic NK'3 13. Later he employs four times the phrase walda
bS'si which corresponds to the Aramaic N"|3)T ma. . . . This title is
found in the Palestinian Lectionary, the Curetonian Fragments, and
the Sinaitic text.' Prom the above evidence Schmidt concludes
that, if the translator had ' a Greek text before him in which the
N.T. title o vios TOV dvOpuiirov was uniformly used ', it would be
scarcely conceivable that he would have used three distinct Ethiopic
expressions to render it, and ' these of such a nature as to correspond
exactly to the three different Aramaic terms '. He holds, therefore,
that ' the conclusion seems inevitable that he translated directly from
the Aramaic. . . . General considerations strengthen this conclusion.
If the Parables of Enoch were translated from a Greek text one
would certainly expiect to find somewhere a quotation from it or
a reference to it in early Christian literature '. But Schmidt can
find none.