The book of Enoch : translated from Professor Dillmann's Ethiopic ...

14
The Book of Enoch.
text to arrive at a true interpretation of the author's
meaning. But this writer's despair of a true interpretation
is overhasty and his condemnation of the text is unwar-
rantable.
Anger, Vorlesungen ilber die Geschichte der Messia?iischen
Idee, 1873, pp. 83-84.
Veenes, Histoire des ldees Messianiques, 1874, pp. 66-117 >
264-271. These sections are composed mainly of a French
translation of Dln/s German version. Vernes thinks that the
earliest part of Enoch was written in Aramaic by a con-
temporary of J. Hyrcanus ; and that the Similitudes spring
from a Christian and Gnostic circle about the close of the
first century a. d. (pp. 264 sqq.).
Kuenen, Religion of Israel, 1 874-1 875, iii. 265, 266 (trans-
lated from the Dutch Edition of 1869-70).
Tideman, { De Apocalypse van Henoch et het Essenisme/
(T/ieol. Tijdschrift, 1875, pp. 261-296). Tideman regards the
book as proceeding from different authors living at different
periods. His analysis is as follows :
(1) The oldest book : i-xvi ; xx-xxxvi; lxxii-lxxxii ; xciii;
xci. 12-19; xcii; xciv-cv from the hand of a Pharisee in the
early times of the Maccabees 153-135 b. c.
(2) The second book: lxxxiii-xci. 10 from an Essene writer
who added it to the older book 134-106 B. c.
(3) The Apocalypse of Noah : xvii-xix ; xli. 3-9 ; xliii. 1,
2 ; xliv ; liv. 7-lv. 2 ; lix-lx ; lxv-lxix. 25 ; lxx ; cvi-cvii,
from au author versed in Jewish Gnosticism 80 a. d.
(4) The Similitudes (with the exception of the Noachic in-
terpolations) written by a Christian in the days of Domitian
or Trajan when the Christians were persecuted and the Romans
were at war with the Parthians 90-100 A. D.
(5) Ch. cviii by the final editor of the book, a Christian
Gnostic of the type of Saturninus, 125 a. d.
Christian interpolations are found in xc. 38
; cv.
Tideman thinks that we have in the Similitudes a combina-