PREFACE

The year 1971 marked the 150th anniversary of the first complete translation of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch into a European language: Mashafa Henok Nabiy, The Book of Enoch the prophet. An Apocryphal production, supposed to have been lost for ages; but discovered at the close of the last century in Abyssinia; and now first translated from an Ethiopic MS. in the Bodleian Library, by Richard Laurence, LL.D., Oxford, at the University Press for the Author, 1821.¹ This was followed in 1838 by the publication of the Ethiopic text by the same author: Mashafa Henok Nabiy, Libri Enoch prophetae versio Aethiopica. Laurence’s manuscript was the Oxford Bodleian MS. 4, one of the three codices codex (ancient manuscript book) that the English traveler J. Bruce brought back from Abyssinia to Europe in 1773.²

The existence of a Book of Enoch, kept by the Abyssinian Church among their sacred scriptures, had been known in Europe in a vague way since the end of the fifteenth century. However, only portions of the work itself were available, and these only through secondary sources. There were substantial extracts quoted in Greek in the Chronography of George Syncellus (written 808–810), which had been accessible since the early seventeenth century in the edition by J. J. Scaliger.³ Several quotations, allusions, and reminiscences found in the works of Greek and Latin writers of the first four centuries were carefully collected by J. A. Fabricius, beginning in 1703.⁴ In 1800, S. de Sacy published a large selection from Enoch 1:1–32:6 in a Latin translation.⁵

Over the course of the last century and a half, however, new editions of the Ethiopic text have appeared (A. Dillmann 1851, J. Flemming 1902, R. H. Charles 1906), alongside several translations into European languages.

¹ Reprinted 1832, 1838, 1878, 1883, 1909, 1912: translation of Enoch 1:1–108:15 on pp. 1–162, Enoch 65:1–68:1 on pp. 163–8.
² Eighteenth century, 105 chapters (= 108 chapters of Dillmann’s edition), siglum A or a in Dillmann’s, Flemming’s, and Charles’s editions.
³ Thesaurus temporum. Eusebii Pamphili, Caesareae Palaestinae episcopi Chronicorum Canonum omnimodae Historiae libri duo (Treasury of Times. Two books of the Chronic Canons of universal history by Eusebius Pamphili, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine), Leiden, 1606, "Animadversiones in Chronologica Eusebii" (Observations on the Chronology of Eusebius), pp. 244a–245b.
⁴ A more complete edition was published later: Codex pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti, collectus, castigatus, testimoniisque, censuris et animadversionibus illustratus (Pseudepigraphical Codex of the Old Testament, collected, corrected, and illustrated with testimonies, censures, and observations), Hamburg 1722.
⁵ Magasin encyclopédique (Encyclopedic Magazine), vi, 1800, tome i, pp. 382–98.