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Introduction to the Greek-English Book of Enoch Interlinear
Where were the texts found, and how old are they?
Gizeh: (Gizeh MS., also called the Cairo Codex, since it is now in the Cairo Museum - and also called Codex Panopolitanus, was found in 1886/1887 in a Coptic tomb in Akhmim-Panopolis in Upper Egypt. It is dated to the fifth or sixth century.
Excavations in Oxyrhynchus, ca 1903
POxy2069: (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2069, found in a debris dump in Oxyrhynchus in Egypt during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stored at Oxford University and published in 1927, but not recognized as fragments of the Enoch Book until 1971, by Josef T. Milik, they are dated to the end of the fourth century.
V1809: (An extract from a Byzantine chronicle found in Rome, dated towards the end of the tenth century.
Syncellus: (Part of the Ecloga Chronographic by George Syncellus, written at the beginning of the ninth century. Syncellus is believed to have quoted his Enoch fragments from the Annianus chronicle, which in turn quoted the Alexandrian monk Panodorus' chronicle, both works from the beginning of the fifth century.
CB185: (Chester Beatty Papyri, discovered in the 1930s, derived from Copts in Egypt and dated to the fourth century.
7QEnoch: (Discovered in Qumran cave 7, 1955, dated to about 100 BC.
So, these texts are all much older than the Ethiopic Enoch texts, which date back to about the 15th - 17th centuries. Does that mean they are better and more reliable than the Ethiopic? Not necessarily. Of course, they may be because they are older, but they are not preserved in a complete form, as the Ethiopic were. This may indicate that they were not considered sacred writings, by those who read and copied them, while the Ethiopian scribes clearly did, and still do.
The Ge'ez language is also a Semitic language, like the Aramaic, which makes it much easier to translate, in its original form, sentence structure and word choice, than from Aramaic to Greek. Of course, we do not know if the Ethiopic text is translated from Aramaic or Greek, but it is more likely that it came from the Aramaic, since both languages had translations, as can be seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Anyway, both the Ethiopic and this Greek text have value, in order to understand the entire Enoch texts, which have been preserved for us.
For more information on the motivation for this interlinear, go to the introduction to the Ethiopian interlinear, as the same applies to both. But in short: What we want is translations, not interpretations, of the holy scriptures given to us by God.
So if a word is unclear how it should be translated, it is better to just leave it in its original form and explain that you do not know what it means, than to come up with an interpretation or guess, which of course only reflects the translator's own viewpoints and religious preferences (and perhaps even delusions or denials).
There is still some work to be done before the interlinear is completely finished, such as the dictionary is still missing quite a lot of translations, but rather than wait, I feel that I shall post the interlinear now, because it can still be helpful and edifying.
I have a facebook-page, where anyone who wants to contact me, can do so: facebook.com/enoksbok
Leif Strom, editor.
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