1 Enoch (Ethiopic Text)

Swete, The Old Testament in Greek vol. III. Students are very grateful to this scholar for the inclusion of the Enoch text in this edition, but the text as printed leaves much to be desired. It is occasionally unintelligible, where a comparison of the Ethiopic Version would have suggested the true text.

Radermacher, The Book of Enoch, edited ... by J. Flemming and L. Radermacher, pp. 18-60, 113-114. Leipzig, 1901. This text, on the whole, is well edited and forms an advance on preceding editions. But, unless I am greatly mistaken, Dr. Radermacher is not a Semitic scholar A scholar of languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, or Ethiopic.. This deficiency in his equipment proved a sore handicap in the task he undertook. How is a purely classical scholar to edit a Greek text which is Greek in vocabulary, but largely Semitic in idiom The "flavor" or grammatical structure of the language.? To show that our text is of this character it will be sufficient to adduce the following passages: xxii. 9 "of which the spring of water is in it" original Greek: οὗ ἡ πηγὴ τοῦ ὕδατος ἐν αὐτῷ (Hebrew: asher . . . bo אשׁר . . . בו) = ‘in which there is the spring of water.’ xvii. 1 "in which those being there become" original Greek: ἐν ᾧ οἱ ὄντες ἐκεῖ γίγνονται (Hebrew: asher . . . sham אשׁר . . . שׁם) = ‘where the dwellers become.’ Here, it is true, "there" original Greek: ἐκεῖ could be taken with "those being" original Greek: οἱ ὄντες. xxxii. 3 "of which they eat of its holy fruit" original Greek: οὗ ἐσθίουσιν ἁγίου τοῦ καρποῦ αὐτοῦ (Hebrew: asher . . . piryo אשׁר . . . פριו) = ‘whose holy fruit they eat.’ The editor’s failure to recognize this idiom in xvi. 1, has led him to emend the text in such a way as to obliterate wholly its original form. The unemended text runs: "from the day . . . of death from whom the spirits going forth from the soul of their flesh."¹ original Greek: ἀπὸ ἡμέρας . . . θανάτου ἀφ᾽ ὧν τὰ πνεύματα ἐκπορευόμενα ἐκ τῆς ψυχῆς τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτῶν. This Semitic construction is supported by E The Ethiopic Version. though in a slightly corrupted form. Hence it must be preserved, though as I pointed out in 1893, there is according to E the loss of "the giants" original Greek: τῶν γιγάντων before "from whom" original Greek: ἀφ᾽ ὧν. This very phrase, moreover, "the giants" original Greek: τῶν γιγάντων is found in G^s The Syncellus Greek fragment., though this version inserts after it a gloss (?) containing the names of the three orders of giants as they are given in the Targum of Jonathan An ancient Aramaic translation/interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. on Gen. vi. 1-4.

The text and notes are accurately edited, but there are some errors. In v. 6 Radermacher reads "the undefiled" original Greek: οἱ ἀμίαντοι as an emendation of the corrupt reading which he says is ama | toi αμα | τοι and not "sinners" original Greek: αμαρτητοι, as Bouriant and Lods stated. Bouriant and Lods were certainly wrong, and Dillmann’s edition and mine, which were necessarily based on the work of these scholars, shared in their error. The autotype reproduction An early photographic printing process. of the text was not published till after the issue of these editions. But if Bouriant and Lods deciphered the MS. wrongly, so also has Radermacher. It reads amartoi αμαρτοι. The r ρ is partially obliterated, but it is unmistakable in the photographic reproduc-

¹ I have given the idiom in Hebrew, though the original was in Aramaic.