THE AND THE ETHIOPIAN MANUSCRIPT TRADITION: NEW DATA1

Loren T. Stuckenbruck with Ted M. Erho

Introduction

The existence of works relating to1 Enoch among Aramaic fragments from Qumran put an end to debate that questioned its antiquity.2 However, the presence of these materials, which preserved a small portion of the early Enochic corpus (less than 5 percent), could not eclipse the enduring value of not only the fragmentary texts but also, and especially, the Ge‘ez version preserved in manuscripts dating from the 15th century until the mid-20th century. In what follows, I would like to focus on several aspects of 1 Enoch as preserved in the Ge‘ez version: (a) the number of copies contain- ing the book and the number of copies that can be assigned to the older recension; and (c) the place of the book among the Ethiopian Scriptures.

The number of manuscript copies of 1 Enoch and the old recension manuscripts

The first edition of Enoch in Ge‘ez was produced by August Dillmann in 1851.3 Dillmann produced a text based on a text-critical collation of

1 Ever since meeting Hanan Eshel at the Society of Biblical Literature Meeting in Orlando (1998), I have been inspired by his polymathic commitment to recovering new information and ideas. It is with this in mind that I feel it such a privilege to offer the following paper in his honor. 2 For a critical discussion of the evidence, see Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “The Early Tradition Related to 1 Enoch from the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Overview and Assess- ment,” in The Early Enoch Literature (ed. Gabriele Boccaccini and John J. Collins, JSJ Supplements 121; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 41–63. 3 August Dillmann, Liber Henoch Aethiopice, ad quinque codicum fidem editus (Leipzig: Fr. Chr. Guil. Vogel, 1851). 258 loren t. stuckenbruck with ted m. erho five manuscripts, all dated to the 18th century (two from the Bodleian Library in Oxford, two from the Curzon collection in , and one from the Rüpp collection in Frankfurt). Between the time of this edi- tion and the one which was published in 1901 by Joh. Flemming and L. Radermacher, the number had grown to twenty-six.4 A significant development by this time had been the identification of two recensions, an older one (Eth. I) represented by six manuscripts (three from the [485, 485a and 491], two from the Abbadianus collec- tion in Paris [35 and 55], and one from )5 and a more recent one (Eth. II) that reflected a standardization of the text of the sort that was being carried through since the 17th century. R.H. Charles’ edition, published in 1906,6 was based on thirty-two manuscripts, including the six from the “α”-recension (= Eth. I). Charles’ valuable work illus- trates the difficulty of providing a truly text-critical edition of1 Enoch. Whereas the more numerous manuscripts of the later recension, as a whole, reflect a fairly consistent text that do not vary widely, the older recension manuscripts contain many variants, making the notion of an Urtext in Ge‘ez remote and almost impossible to reconstruct. Michael Knibb’s edition, published in 1978, takes a different approach to the text. Knibb provides a photographic edition, with an English translation, of an 18th century manuscript from the later recension (Eth. II) at the John Rylands Library in Manchester.7 Knibb provides a valuable collation (rather than a critical) of this manuscript with a few of the other Eth. II manuscripts and with what had now become seven manuscripts from Eth. I. The manuscripts listed by Knibb are essentially the same as those of Charles, except for the addition of a 15th manuscript from Lake Tana (Tana 9, which also includes a fur- ther text for part of the Astronomical Book, listed as Tana 9a). Since Knibb’s work, the list has continued to grow. In his com- mentary on the Animal Apocalypse (1993), Patrick A. Tiller offers a

4 Joh. Flemming and L. Radermacher, Das Buch Henoch (GCS; Leipzig: Hin- richs, 1901), 1–13. This edition, however, was only able to make use of 14 of the manuscripts. 5 The manuscript is now deposited in Tübingen at the Staatsbibliothek Preussis- cher Kulturbesitz; cf. Michael A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch vol. 2 ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 23. 6 R.H. Charles, The Ethiopic Version of the Book of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), xvii–xiv. Charles had previously published an edition in 1893 based on 15 mss. of which he determined the three from the British Museum (485, 485a and 491) to be of primary importance. 7 See Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 21–37.