PREFACE

THIS new text of the Ethiopic Version The Ge'ez language version of the Book of Enoch, which preserved the most complete text of the work through the centuries. has been the labour of many years. It is practically exhaustive; for no pains have been spared to secure a first-hand and complete knowledge of the MSS. Abbreviation for manuscripts. evidence. I have not, however, restricted myself to the mere task of publishing the Ethiopic Version as it is found in the best MSS.; for this Version, even when first made, exhibited many unintelligible passages, which were due either to the mistakes of the Ethiopic translator, or to the corruptions of the Greek text before him, or to the mistakes of the Greek translator, or ultimately to corruptions of the Hebrew text before the Greek translator. With these various sources of corruption I have sought to deal: in some cases, I think, with indubitable success: in others, my reconstructions are at the best merely provisional and tentative. In this work Halévy Joseph Halévy (1827–1917), an Orientalist and traveler who argued for the Hebrew origins of the text. led the way and made a permanent contribution, but many of his reconstructions were valueless from the outset as they were based on Dillmann’s August Dillmann (1823–1894), a pioneer in the study of Ethiopic texts. inadequate text of 1853. As a result of these studies I have abandoned the view that Enoch was originally written in Hebrew, and come to the conclusion that, like Daniel, it was written partly in Aramaic and partly in Hebrew.

The Greek and Latin fragments have been printed in parallel columns with the Ethiopic Version and their relations with it have been fully discussed in the Introduction.

The Ethiopic text has been printed directly from a photograph of the chief MS. g A specific manuscript designation used by scholars to identify a particular source document. with the necessary corrections from other MSS.; but the orthography The conventional spelling system of a language. of this MS. has been nearly always adhered to, although it very frequently confuses the aspirates and sibilants Speech sounds produced with a breathy or hissing quality, which often became interchangeable in later Ge'ez writing..