ARAMAIC BOOKS OF ENOCH

The complete text of this book in Aramaic was very long, filling voluminous scrolls, which explains why it was never included with the other Enochic writings on the same strip of parchment. This work, enriched by cosmographic information and moral considerations, seems to me the oldest Jewish document attributed to Enoch. An indirect allusion is found in Genesis 5:23, where the writer, having fixed the age of the patriarch at 365 years, implies the existence of astronomical works circulating under Enoch's name. It is highly likely that the chronology of the Bible, in particular the Mosaic Pentateuch, was elaborated by priestly redactors of the Persian era, taking as their starting point a calendar of 364 days.

The invention of this calendar may have been attributed by its anonymous creator to Enoch, the antediluvian sage par excellence. In the Persian period, this reckoning was theoretical. It was only the Essenes who introduced it into their liturgical life during the second half of the second century, without taking account of its discrepancy with the solar year of 365¼ days.

An obvious allusion to the Astronomical Book occurs in the historian Eupolemos, whose History of the Jews was completed in 158 B.C. In the first extract quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, Eupolemos gives a detailed account of Abraham as the inventor of astrology who teaches the Phoenicians the "evolutions of the sun and moon."