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What part of the Book of Enoch was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls? Daryl Hubber Author has 875 answers and 841.3K answer viewsUpdated 1y

The Qumran Manuscripts

First Enoch is a composite work that is generally grouped into five “books”:

1. The Book of Watchers (chs 1–36)
2. The Book of Parables (chs 37–71)
3. The Astronomical Book (chs 72–82)
4. The Animal Apocalypse or Book of Dreams (chs 83–90)
5. The Epistle of Enoch (chs 91–108)

Fragments of all of these sections have been found at Qumran, with the exception of the Book of Parables (usually dated late first or second century CE). Eleven distinct manuscripts of Enoch have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, with the earliest fragments dating to the end of the third century BCE, and the others ranging from early second to the turn of the common era. Scholars date the periods of composition between the late third and second centuries BCE (see Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91-108, 2008, pp 6–7) – with the exception, once again, of the book of Parables.

Influence and Reception

Evidence that the books of Enoch were influential at Qumran is provided by their reuse in many other Dead Sea Scrolls texts. These include the Aramaic works:

• Aramaic Levi Document
• “4QTestament of Qahat
• “4QPseudo-Daniel
• 1QGenesis Apocryphon
• Words of Michael (possibly)

And the following Hebrew documents:

• 4QPesher on the Periods
• 4QPesher on the Apocalypse of Weeks
• 4QExhortation on the Flood
• 11QApocryphal Psalms
• 4QSongs of the Maskil
• Book of Jubilees

I Enoch was accepted as an authoritative work by some early Christian writers and church fathers. It is quoted almost verbatim in the epistle of Jude, while 1st and 2nd Peter appear to draw on the same ideas – unsurprising given the similarities between Jude and 2nd Peter. Additionally, the demonology of the gospels and other parts of the new testament ultimately derives from ideas first expressed in Enochic literature.

We find Enoch described as scripture in the Epistle of Barnabas (16:5, late first or early second century):

• Again, it was revealed how the city and the temple and the people of
  Israel should be betrayed. For the scripture saith: And it shall be
  in the last days, that the Lord shall deliver up the sheep of the
  pasture and the fold and the tower thereof to destruction. And it
  came to pass as the Lord spake. [the section in italics summarises a section of the Animal Apocalypse that describes the ‘destruction’ of the people of Judah (described as ‘sheep’) and the temple = “tower” – I Enoch 89: 70–77]

Tertullian (late second and early third century CE) also viewed the book of Enoch as sacred scripture, while noting that it was not accepted as such by ‘some’ Christians, and maintaining that it was excluded from the Jewish canon because it contained prophecies of Jesus:

• I am aware that the Scripture of Enoch, which has assigned this order (of action) to angels, is not received by some, because it is not admitted into the Jewish canon either… But since Enoch in the same Scripture has preached likewise concerning the Lord, nothing at all must be rejected by us which pertains to us; and we read that “every Scripture suitable for edification is divinely inspired”. By the Jews it may now seem to have been rejected for that (very) reason, just like all the other (portions) nearly which tell of Christ… To these considerations is added the fact that Enoch possesses a testimony in the Apostle Jude. (de Cultu Feminarum, 3)

Other early church fathers display knowledge of material that ultimately derives from 1 Enoch without explicitly quoting or acknowledging the book (Athenagoras – c177 CE, Clement of Alexandria – late first/early second century, Irenaeus – late second century). The subject of this material is usually focused on Enoch’s description of the fallen angels bringing evil into the world, and their transmission of forbidden knowledge to humankind.

I Enoch was finally excluded from most Christian canons in the 4th century CE. However, its continuing use in Ethiopic Christianity – which had close links to Egypt – along with manuscript finds in Egypt dating to the 4th and 5th centuries CE, suggest that it may have enjoyed a relatively high status in Alexandrian circles for some time after it was discarded from Western canons.

Arguments about 7Q5

Are any New Testament books present in the Dead Sea Scrolls? Probably not. Scroll 7Q5 is a small Greek language papyrus containing 11 letters, which some scholars have identified with Mark 6:52-53, but this identification has not been widely accepted. Most of the scrolls were copied before the life of Christ, and none of the scrolls from Qumran can be later than 68 A.D., so there would not be much time to get a New Testament manuscript into the collection.

The Strange “nu” Story of 7Q5 Posted on March 19, 2022 by Brent Nongbri

Someone has done a real number on the Wikipedia page for 7Q5. [[Update 20 March 2022: I see that a good citizen has cleaned up some of the Wikipedia page. The version I cited is here. Let’s hope the page keeps improving.]] Some older versions of the page were both more informative and much less cluttered. Now it is a mess. So it goes with Wikipedia.

For those who might not know this manuscript, it was one of several small fragments of papyrus found when archaeologists excavated Cave 7Q at Qumran. The profile of the manuscripts from this cave was a bit different from that of the other caves near Qumran. The Cave 7 manuscripts were all papyrus (as opposed to animal skin) and all in Greek (as opposed to Hebrew or Aramaic). Maurice Baillet (1923-1998) published the 7Q texts in 1962. He was able to identify two texts (7Q1=Exodus, 7Q2=Letter of Jeremiah). Unfortunately, many of the fragments contain just a few letters and could not be identified with known texts with any degree of confidence. Among these was 7Q5, a small fragment that Baillet published with the assistance of Marie-Émile Boismard (1916-2004). Here is the plate published in DJD alongside the editors’ transcription:

Beginning in 1972, José O’Callaghan (1922-2001) tried to identify several of the 7Q scraps as New Testament texts. Because the material in the caves near Qumran is generally thought to have been deposited before or during the war against Rome in the 60s CE, any manuscripts found there could in theory be assigned on objective grounds to a period before the war.

Hence, O’Callaghan was claiming to have identified the earliest surviving Christian manuscripts, allegedly copied within thirty years of the death of Jesus. O’Callaghan’s claims thus attracted a great deal of attention. Most specialists were not persuaded by O’Callaghan’s arguments, and some of his proposed identifications have been conclusively refuted (for instance, 7Q4 and 7Q8, which O’Callaghan identified as parts of 1 Timothy and James, are now widely regarded as both being part of a roll that contained 1 Enoch). But the identification that has received the most attention was O’Callaghan’s claim that 7Q5 was a fragment containing the remains of Mark 6:52-53. O’Callaghan’s diplomatic transcription is below at left, and his transcription with reconstruction is at right.

This proposed identification provoked a strong reaction. The vast majority of qualified scholars emphatically rejected O’Callaghan’s arguments for several reasons. O’Callaghan’s reconstruction

• depended upon highly suspect readings of several letters (such as the proposed nu in the second line, omitted in O’Callaghan’s diplomatic transcription but present in his contextual transcription).
• required the existence of an otherwise unattested textual variant (the absence of the words επι την γην in Mark 6:53).
• necessitated that one of the nine undisputed letters on the papyrus must be a scribal error (tau for delta in line 3).

After a flurry of articles in the 1970s demonstrating the problems with O’Callaghan’s thesis, the guild moved on. But the idea was resurrected by Carsten Peter Thiede (1952-2004) in the late 1980s and 1990s. Thiede made his case mostly through a sensationalist media campaign. This effort again elicited an overwhelmingly negative response from scholars, but, as the current version of the Wikipedia page indicates, the theory refuses to die in some circles, despite its documented weakness.

Over the years, much of the discussion about the papyrus has revolved around the identity of the letters after the omega in line 2. O’Callaghan read a nu while the original editors read an iota-space-alpha. If the nu is not present, then O’Callaghan’s already shaky identification loses any plausibility. In the years after O’Callaghan’s proposal, better images of the fragment were made available (such as the one below), and the original editors’ reading of an iota after the omega has been accepted by nearly all specialists. But the palaeographic argument–to the extent that there even is a meaningful argument–is not what got my attention in this story.

In a short pamphlet published in 1989, Stuart Pickering and Rosalie Cook of Macquarie University pointed out something that I had not noticed before: Much (or all?) of the hoopla surrounding this fragment was based on O’Callaghan’s misreading of a printed text. It’s kind of amazing. The whole debacle of this proposed identification seems to have resulted from O’Callaghan’s inability to properly equate a photographic plate with a printed transcription. Let me unpack this a little. Here is what O’Callaghan wrote back in his 1972 article criticizing the original edition of the papyrus:

“After the ⲱ, the ⲁ suggested by the editors seems inadmissible. The traces of the facsimile are too uncertain to allow a satisfactory reading, even though one comes to discover the left vertical stroke and the peculiar descending contour of a ⲛ similar to that of line 4. However, I am not quite able to explain the movement of this inner stroke, which rises too much in its last phase. For all these reasons, in the new transcription, I prefer to limit myself to putting a dot instead of a letter.” (“Detrás de la ⲱ la ⲁ sugerida por los editores parece inadmisible. Los trazos del facsímil son demasiado inciertos para permitir una lectura satisfactoria, a pesar de que se llega a descubrir el palo vertical izquierdo y el peculiar contorneo descendente de una ⲛ semejante al de la línea 4. Sin embargo, no me acabo de explicar el repliegue de este trazo interior que en su última fase sube demasiado. Por todo ello, en la nueva transcripción prefiero limitarme a poner un punto en vez de una letra.”)

O’Callaghan seems to have mistakenly thought that in the view of Baillet and Boismard, an alpha followed immediately after the omega in line 2. So, it’s not the case that O’Callaghan judged the editors’ omega–iota-space-alpha sequence to be a bad reading in need of improvement. Rather, he appears to have failed to understand that Baillet and Boismard rendered the script ⲱⲓ (omega–iota) by means of a printed ῳ employing the iota subscript. O’Callaghan took the printed ῳ to represent just one letter–ⲱ–and then believed the editors had misconstrued the following vertical line (“el palo vertical”) as part of an alpha. Amazing. So much ink spilled as a result of nothing more than a silly error.

But wait! There’s more! In the following issue of Biblica, Baillet, one of the original editors, weighed in and actually pointed out O’Callaghan’s mistake: “After the omega, the reading ⲛⲏ is absolutely impossible. There is first of all an iota, which is adscript in the document but subscript in the edition, and which J. O’Callaghan has completely ignored. The iota is certain, and it is absurd to see it as the left stroke of a nu.” (“Après l’oméga, la lecture ⲛⲏ est absolument impossible. Il y a d’abord un iota, qui est adscrit dans le document, mais souscrit dans l’édition, et que J. O’Callaghan a complètement négligé. Cet iota est sûr, et il est absurde d’y voir le jambage gauche d’un nu.”)

With this mistake pointed out already in 1972, the same year of O’Callaghan’s publication, the matter should have ended there. A quick retraction from O’Callaghan would have been appropriate. But O’Callaghan did not admit to his initial mistake. Instead, after his own visit to see the papyrus in person, O’Callaghan defended his readings, even this obvious error, in a series of subsequent publications (though in 1976, he allowed that some of his other 7Q identifications were open to question).

We all make mistakes, and if we’re lucky, the peer review system catches them before they go into print. It is disappointing that the journal editors and peer reviewers did not catch this particular error and save all of us a great deal of time and energy.

Sources mentioned:

Baillet, Maurice. “Les manuscrits de la Grotte 7 de Qumrân et le Nouveau Testament.” Biblica 53.4 (1972), 508-516.

Baillet, Maurice, J.T. Milik, and R. de Vaux (eds.). Les ‘petit grottes’ de Qumrân, DJD 3.2. Oxford: Clarendon, 1962.

O’Callaghan, José. “The Identifications of 7Q.” Aegyptus 56.1 (1976), 287-294.

O’Callaghan, José. “¿Papiros neotestamentarios en la cueva 7 de Qumrān?” Biblica 53.1 (1972), 91-100.

Pickering Stuart R. and Rosalie R.E. Cook. Has a Fragment of the Gospel of Mark Been Found at Qumran? Sydney: Macquarie University Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, 1989.

The 7th Cave at Qumran, where 7Q5 was found.

The argument is as follows:

1. First, the combination of letters ννησ <nnēs> in line 4 may be part of the word Γεννησαρετ <Gennēsaret>.
2. Secondly, the spacing before the word και <kai> (“and”) suggests a paragraph break, which is consistent with the normative layout for Mark 6:52-53.
3. Furthermore, a computer search “using the most elaborate Greek texts … has failed to yield any text other than Mark 6:52-53 for the combination of letters identified by O’Callaghan et al. in 7Q5”.^[4]

A few counterarguments exist.

The spacing before the word και <kai> (“and”) proposed as a paragraph break may not be indicative of anything.
In papyri spacings of this width can be also found within words (Pap. Bodmer XXIV, plate 26; in Qumran in fragment 4Q122).
Other examples in the Qumran texts show that the word και <kai> (“and”) usually was separated with spacings – and this has nothing to do with the text’s structure (as proposed by O’Callaghan).
The sequence ννησ can be also found in the word εγεννησεν <egennēsen> (“begot”), which was the original suggestion as to its identity.
This suggestion was proposed by the authors of the fragment’s first edition (editio princeps) published in 1962.
If so, the fragment likely would be part of a genealogy account.[citation needed]

READ

JOURNAL ARTICLE Greek Qumran Fragment 7Q5: Possibilities and Impossibilities Carsten Peter ThiedeBiblica, Vol. 75, No. 3 (1994), pp. 394-398 (5 pages)

JOURNAL ARTICLE No NU in Line 2 of 7Q5: A Final Disidentification of 7Q5 with Mark 6:52-53Robert H. Gundry Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 118, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 698-707

Identificación del fragmento 7Q5 con Jeremías 16:3..4

Scriptio continua (Latin for “continuous script”) is a style of writing that does not use spaces, different letter cases, or punctuation to tell apart words, phrases, or sentences. It was a common way of writing for texts in Ancient Greek and Classical Latin.