Books of Enoch Collection

Scriptural Research Institute

05/2020 · Scriptural Research Institute

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The five books of Enoch are a collection of books written in Semitic languages, and often grouped together as the 'Book of Enoch,' or '1st Enoch.' The books were likely written at different points in time and different Semitic languages. The first book was the Book of the Watchers, which is generally considered to be the oldest book in the collection, however, the age of the book is debated. The book is now known to have originated long before Christianity since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, was lost for well over a thousand years to Europeans, and assumed to be a Christian-era work when the Europeans rediscovered it in Ethiopia. The five books of Enoch only survive in Ge'ez, the classical language of Ethiopia, however, do not survive intact, and some sections of text do not survive.

The Ge'ez texts are believed to be translations from a Greek source, which was itself a translation of an Aramaic source. Many fragments of the Aramaic texts were discovered among the Dead Sea scrolls, as well as Hebrew and Greek fragments. The Aramaic texts are mostly the same as the Ge'ez texts, however, scroll 4Q209 also includes a section of text from 3rd Book of Enoch, the Astronomical Book, which is lost from the Ge'ez copies. A few fragments of Greek translations have been found in Egypt in the past two centuries, which generally match the Ge'ez translation. A small fragment of a Latin translation was also preserved by the Vatican through the centuries, which also matches the Ge'ez copies for a small fragment of 4th Book of Enoch, Dream Visions.