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Re: orion Re: I (H)Enoch Chapter 108
Thanks to Donald Goodell and David Suiter for comments on Enoch 108.
There's a lot to think about here. (And I'm going to look for an
opportunity to work "scribal cambiata" into converstaion sometime.) If I
may ask some questions and make a few comments--thought, I admit, I don't
read Ethiopic yet.
On the table are at least three, perhaps overlapping, hypotheses.
That chapter 108 is Christian (Milik, Suiter, and the opening assumption of
Kraft). That 108 is Essene (Charles, Flusser, Goranson). That 108 is a
collection of miscellaneous additions and misplaced fragments, maybe (did
you imply this?) originating in more than one language and/or religion
(Goodell).
J.T. Milik's The Books of Enoch (Oxford, 1976) makes some
tantalizing but sparse comments on chapter 108. Milik himself wrote (p.57)
that it is "enigmatic" and the reason for its addition "obscure." I assume
he doesn't use e-mail, and I assume book reviews didn't dwell on chapter
108--if I'm wrong, please direct me. So, does anyone "here" know if he
published what he announced (p. 98 n.6): "On a very early Christian
Apocalypse of Enoch see my forthcoming paper"? The text that note notes is
about Egyptian Gnostic texts quoting Enoch.
In the index to this extraordinarily learned and sometimes very
speculative book, listed under Christian, Greek (!), literature, we can try
to decipher: "Apocalypse of Enoch [explicit quot. in the Mani-Codex; ?
incipit in En. 108, quots. in TXIIPatr, etc]." Has anyone these references?
(On p. 24 he--apparently--suggests TLevi 14:1 refers to En 108:1.) The page
numbers given do not always lead to obvious references to this chapter.
Milik wrote that 108 must be Christian, "certainly later than the fourth
century, since it is missing,[sic] in the Chester Beatty-Michigan
papyrus..."--an observation which hardly seems stringent--and that it may
be the incipit or summary of a much longer work (p. 106-7). And that it
seems to point to "the doctrine of the salvation of all sinners." If so,
the dualism, supercessionist or not, has a happy twist, apokatastasis,
which our friend Origen would like. He suggests(?) that TLevi 14:1 refers
to Enoch 108.
If this chapter/apocalypse of Enoch is Christian, it would have to
be Jewish-Christian, wouldn't it, like Apocalypse of John? I agree with
David Suiter that a Christian text can lack Christian characteristics.
Donald Goodell, since you, more than once, commented upon floating
passages and displacements in the whole book, and since you gave the
example of the woman taken in adultery passage in the gospels, may I ask:
does any of the chapter 108 text act like that example, by appearing
earlier in any manuscript? Do you dismiss thematic and/or dating reasons
for grouping these lines in chapter 108?
This is all very interesting. I hope I can afford to keep in the
academic business enough to pursue some of these things, iffy though it
looks today.
regards,
Stephen Goranson
For private reply, e-mail to stephen goranson <goranson@duke.edu>
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