Ethiopic Enoch is, famously, a collection of five books ending ch. 105, plus an appendix chs. 106-108. Of the main five books, four have Aramaic traces in Qumran, as well as citations from such Yachad literature as Jubilees. Enoch 8:4-9:4 is also found in Hebrew, as is 106:13-107:2. The second book - the Similitudes - is found only in Christian sources, but not just Ge'ez.
Other patches absent from Qumran are chs. 94f from the fifth book; although there seems no reason this bit should be deliberately excluded (Chester Beatty Papyri XII in Greek has 97:6 to 104... and then chs. 106-107; Latin ch. 106 also exists). chs. 79:6f. is absent from the Astrological third book, again, for no known reason. Then there's chs. 83-88:2 off the start of the book after that.
That last gap bypasses, in Ethiopic, a dream-vision and then a prayer. From chs. 85f is the famous Animal Apocalypse, wherein Edna is named so is considered known to Jubilees. This leaves chs. 83-84. Wikipedia is unaware of any translations before Ge'ez. Did anyone cite it? Does Enoch need it?
Loren Stuckenbruck last January proposed: no. The paper was "Enoch’s Prayer for Rescue from the Flood: 1 Enoch 83–84, with a New Translation and Notes" DOI:10.5040/9780567701299.ch-021, in a "conversation" with Charlesworth who had done so much to advance the translation overall. Apparently on ResearchGate you can ask the author for a PDF, but until then we must read Google Books' snippets.
Stuckenbruck uses additional Ge'ez MSS for his edition. Matthew Black and George Nickelsburg argued that the Animal Apocalypse (and Watchers) were double-translated, to Greek thence to Ge'ez. Although: some examples, like ch. 90 ראמא (wild-ox, auroch) > *ῥῆμα (word) > nagar, could have happened via Coptic whose script is Greek and whose vocabulary heavily-swapped with Greek. But we are short on Greek and Coptic translations of chs. 85-90, much less 83-84 [UPDATE 4/9/23 but hey - Barnabas!], so: Ge'ez it is.
Here, Knibb is acknowledged as finding parallels between 4Q203 "Book of Giants" ll.9-10 and at least Enoch's prayer ch. 84. Stuckenbruck finds additional parallels with Aramaic Levi and Jubilees 1:19-20, whose text is better anyway. Conversely Enoch imputes a different motive to God than did Genesis 6 in MT/LXX. There, God (or the Elohim?) feel regret, and (especially in LXX) reach a decision. In 1 Enoch 84:4, Enoch perceives that God is "wrathful".
If I may: the Hebrew analogues for God's wrath tend to show up only after Moses receives the Law at Sinai. 1 Enoch 84 again reminds of Jubilees, which transplants post-Sinai regulations back to Patriarchal times in Genesis. Obviously Levi precedes Moses as well.
Stuckenbruck considers 1 Enoch 83 a pure midrash, with little in common with the general Enochian agenda as Qumran knew it. Where Aramaic Enoch has little respect for Torah as it actually existed (to which Torah-disrespect, we should add 1 Enoch 84), 1 Enoch 83 exists to plant 1 Enoch 84 in its Torah context. Enoch here doesn't dream the Maccabean Apocalypse; he dreams the Flood.
If I were to speculate, as I suppose I must because nobody can find any reader of 1 Enoch 83-84 until the Ethiopians got it, I should agree with the Ethiopians that at least 1 Enoch 84 was already there when they found it. Free-floating prayers are known in the Jewish and early-Christian tradition at least since the Psalms and also the Prayer of Manasseh. Here, I gather that somebody who couldn't inject this prayer into Genesis 6 nor even Jubilees instead did it to the next best thing, which was one of those Enoch books. 1 Enoch 83 was composed or possibly rewritten accordingly, as was 1 Enoch 85:1. I'd pin the interpolation to upper Egypt.
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