The Greek translation, in which it was known to the fathers, appears to be irrecoverably lost. There is no trace of it after the 8th centuiy. The last remnant of it is preserved by Syncellus.
IL Idenlity of the extant Forms. — There can be no doubt that the Ethiopic translation exhibits the iden- tical book which, as most believe, Jude quoted, and which is also mentioned or cited b}* many of the fa- thers. The fragment preserved by Syncellus (reprint- ed by Laurence and Hoffmann) is obviously the same as chap, vii, etc., the deviations being of little import- ance (though one considerable passage quoted bj- Georg. Syncell. is wanting in the present book, Dillm. p. 85), and probably accidental. It is manifest, also, to an}' one who will compare the quotations made b}' the fathers with the Ethiopic version, that both point to the same original. The extracts in question could not have been interpolations, as they are essential to the connections in which the}' are found. The men- tion of books of Enoch in the Testament of Judah, in the Testament of Benjamin, in Origcn (c. Cels. and Homil. in Num.'), and of the "first book" of Enoch in the fragments preserved by Syncellus, consist with the idea that the whole was then, as now, divided into different books. Tertullian leads us to believe that it was of the same extent in the Greek text then exist- ing as it is in the present Ethiopic.
III. Canonicily. — Notwithstanding the quotation in Jude, and the wide circulation of the book itself, the apocalypse of Enoch was uniformly and distinctly sep- arated from the canonical Scriptures. Tertullian alone maintained its authority, while he admitted that it was not received by the Jews: his arguments, however, are exceedingly puerile {De cullii faminarum, i, o). Origen, on the other hand (c. Cels. v, 207, ed. Spenc), and Augustine {De Civ. xv, 23, 4), definitively mark it as apocryphal, and it is reckoned among the apocry- phal books in the Apostolic Constitutions (vi, 16), and in the catalogues of the Sijnops. S. ScripturcB, Nicepho- rus (Credncr, Zrtr Gesch. d. Kan. p. 145), and.Mont- fancon {Bihl. CoisHn. p. 193).
IV. Origimil Ijmfftiar/e. — The book of ' Zohar, in which arc various allusions to Enoch, seems to speak
of it as an important Hebrew production which had been handed down from generation to generation. The Cabbalists, whose opinions are embodied in Zo- har, thought that Enoch was really the author, a sen- timent quite at variance with any other hypothesis than that of a Hebrew original. x\t all events, a He- brew book of Enoch was known and used by Jewish writers till the 13th century (Dillmann, Eiiil. Ivii). One of the earliest references to the book occurs in the Hebrew Book of Jubilees (Dillmann, in Ewald's Jahrb. 1850, p. 90). The careful reader soon sees that the work was composed at first in Hebrew, or rather He- brew-Aramaean. This was long ago perceived by Jo- seph Scaliger, though he had before him nothing but the Greek fragments preserved by Syncellus. Hot- tinger, however, observed, in opposition to Scaliger, that a Hebraizing style is no sure proof of a Hebrew original. Iloftmann adduces the Helirew-Aram£ean etymology of names, especially the names of angels, as an evidence of the Aramtean original — an argument which is more pertinent; and Laurence infers from the book of Zohar that Hebrew was its primitive lan- guage. The writer's thorough acquaintance with the canonical Scriptures of the Jews in the tongue in which they were composed; their use of them in the original, not the Greek translation of the Septuagint; their lie- brew etymologies of names, especially the appella- tions of angels and archangels ; the fact that all words and phrases can easily be rendered back into Hebrew and Aramofan, and the many Hebrew idioms and terms that occur, prove that neither Greek nor Ethi- opic was the original language, but the later Palestin- ian Hebrew. Thus Tamiel (viii, 7) is compounded of Dri and PS, ihe vpright of God; Samyaza of D"c3 and i^tS", thename of the strong. The same conclusion fol- lows from the term Ophanin (Ix, 13), which is evident- ly identical with the Hebrew ■J"^;SX. It is remarka- ble, also, that as Ophanin occurs in connection with the Cherubim, so the Hebrew term '"'SEX is found in the same association (1 Kings vii, 30; Ezek. i, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21 ; X, 2, 6, 9, 10, etc. ; Murray's Enoch Jlesti- tutits, p. 33 sq.). The names of the sun are Orgares and Tomas (Ixxvii, 1), from C^H "ilX and rTSp!. In Ixxvii, 1, 2, we read that " the first wind is called the easter7i, because it is the first,'''' which can only be ex- plained by the Hebrew Cip, ■':T2"I|T'; "the second is called the south, because the Most High there de- scends," i. e. dTil, from C"i "1'^'^ (Dillmann, Das Buch Henoch, p. 235, 236). The names of the conduct- ors of the month are also Hebrew (Ixxxii, 13), as IMurray (p. 46) and Hoffmann (p. 090) remark. See Joseph hal-Lewi, in the Journal Asiatique, 1867, p. 352 sq.
At what time the Greek version was made from the original can only be conjectured. It could not have been long after the final redaction of the whole, prob- ably about the time of Philo. Having appeared in Greek, it soon became widely circulated. The Ethi- opic version was made from the Greek probably about the same time as the Ethiopic translation of the other parts of the Bilde with which it was afterwards con- nected, or, in other words, towards the middle or close of the 4th century. See Exmoric Veksioks.