Enoch And The Watchers 4Q227
This fragmentary manuscript is similar
to portions of the book of Jubilees, an important writing of Second Temple
Judaism that survived only among Christian readers and that has long been known
to us from versions in Greek and Ethiopic. Among Ethiopian Christians Jubilees
was so treasured that it actually became a part of the Old Testament. Fifteen
fragmentary exemplars of Jubilees have turned up among the scrolls,
establishing the work as one of the most common among those caches and clearly
testifying to its importance for those who hid the texts. Like the Ethiopian
Christians, they may have considered the book a part of the canon of Holy Writ/
In that light, the present work seems to be a retelling of Jubilees, and it may be that we should consider it an example of "rewritten Bible," the interpretive phenomenon we encounter so often in the scrolls. Surviving fragments of 4Q227 relate to Jubilees 4:17-24, but give the material in a different order. Jubilees 4:18 reports that the angels taught Enoch the calendar, which seems to be the subiect of our fray. 2, 1. 1. Jubilees 4:22 says that Enoch testified against the Watchers, or fallen angels, who had taken human wives and whose progeny were the Giants (Gen. 6:1-2; cf. text 33, The Book of Giants). Our author also relates this story, in 1. 4, and apparently goes on to connect it, under the influence ofJubilees 4:23., to the judgment of the entire world.
Frag. 2 i[ . . .
E]noch, after we taught him 2[ . . . he was with the angels of God] six full
jubilees 3[ . . . the la]nd, into the midst of the sons of man and he test)fied
against them alI 4[ . . . ] and also against the watchers. And he wrote all [ .
. . ] heaven and the ways of their hosts and [ho]ly ones 6[ . . . SO th]at the
ri[ghteous ones] shall not commit error [ . . . ]