Arabian prince, and subsequently of Pompeius.1 But we may surely object that Pompeius was not a king; that the exaggeration would be too gross to describe Aretas and Pompeius, who came to Jerusalem in succession, as kings of the Gentiles coming in crowds' (A0pool) against the land; and that Pompeius at all events, instead of bringing fate' upon himself by his invasion of Palestine, withdrew in triumph. This last objection might be obviated if we supposed the book to have been written during the three months of the siege; but the whole passage appears to me to be an apocalyptic picture of the destruction of the Gentile powers; and the coincidence between the quarrel of the kings and the inroad of the Gentiles does not seem sufficient to disturb our former conclusion.

In the Jewish Sibylline Oracles we meet with that tendency to clothe Hebrew ideas in an Hellenic dress, which is so marked a feature in the Jewish Alexandrine philosophy; and this circumstance points to Egypt as the place of their composition. The name of Sibyl was given generally among the Greeks to supposed prophetesses of the olden time. According to Lactantius,2 Varro enumerates as many as ten of these. Attached to no

historical figures, the title may represent, under a mythological form, a kind of impersonal spirit of prophecy. Sibylline vaticinations may at first have circulated orally, and only gradually have been committed to writing and formed into collections. None of the original collections have come down to us; but parts of them may have been

1 See Volkmar's Handbuch der Einleitung in die Apokryphen. Zweite Abtheilung. Das vierte Buch Esra. Zum erstenmale vollständig herausgegeben, als ältester Commentar zum Neuen Testament. Tübingen, 1863, S. 396, Anm. 2. Also the same work, Dritter Band. Mose Prophetie und Himmelfahrt, eine Quelle für das Neue Testament, zum ersten Male deutsch herausgegeben, im Zusammenhang der Apokrypha und der Christologie überhaupt. Leipzig, 1867. S. 58.

2 Div. Inst. i. 6.

3 See Lücke, Einl. in die Offenb. i. S. 84.

adopted by the Jewish and Christian authors of those which we now possess. At a time when rationalistic explanations were given of the old mythology, and monotheistic belief was making way among the educated classes, it was not unnatural that a Jew who believed that God was accessible to all, and indeed dwelt 'in all mortals,' should seek to address the Grecian world in the name of its own mysterious prophetess, and, making her a prophetess of the true God, appeal through this accepted medium to the common conscience of mankind.

SECTION IV.-The Book of Enoch.

On the Book of Enoch we must bestow a more lengthened consideration, both on account of the interesting nature of its contents and on account of the great diversity of opinion which prevails as to its origin and date. If it could be proved to be in its entirety a Jewish work proceeding from the time of the Maccabees, its Messianic doctrine would be of the highest value as indicating the belief of at least a section of the Jews in the pre-Christian period. But when we find that not only does such an orthodox writer as Philippi regard it as wholly Christian, but such an able critic as Hilgenfeld, followed by Colani and others, considers the most Messianic portion to be from a Christian hand, while Volkmar, though accepting in part its Jewish origin, places it as late as 132 A.D., and supposes that it has been involuntarily coloured by Christian teaching, and those who contend for the earliest date admit that it has been interpolated with Christian phrases, we cannot but feel that it is impossible to accept it on the mere

1 See Fragment I. of the Procemium, v. 18. Пâσɩ Вporoîσw ¿vòv tồ κριτήριον ἐν φαὶ κοινῷ. Otto adopts the emendation of Maranus, νέμων for évov. See his edition of Theophilus of Antioch, ii. 36, n. 16.

authority of critics as a trustworthy evidence of Jewish belief before the time of Christ.

It is only in recent times that these questions have come under discussion; for no Greek copy of the Book of Enoch has survived, and it was long supposed that the work had been irrecoverably lost. A few Greek fragments, indeed, had been discovered in the Chronographia of Georgius Syncellus, a Byzantine monk about the end of the eighth century. But in 1773, Bruce, the celebrated traveller, brought three Ethiopic copies from Abyssinia. One of these, a magnificent copy, in quarto, he consigned to the library at Paris. A second, which he took home, was in a collection of the books of Scripture, 'standing,' he says, 'immediately before the book of Job, which is its proper place in the Abyssinian canon.' The third he presented to the Bodleian Library. Several other manuscripts have since that time been found in Abyssinia. For many years this literary treasure was allowed to rest undisturbed in the libraries. At length, in 1800, Silvestre de Sacy published in the Magasin Encyclopédique a notice of the book, together with a Latin translation of the first three chapters, of the 6th to the 16th inclusive, and of the 22nd and 32nd, from the Paris manuscript. The first complete edition appeared in the form of an English translation by Laurence in 1821.4 Dr. Hoffmann, of Jena, was the first to bring the labours of Laurence before the attention of

1 These, with one exception, have their counterparts in the Ethiopic translation.

2 Quoted by Laurence, 3rd edition, Preliminary Dissertation, p. xiv.

3 An. vi. tom. i. p. 382 sq., referred to by Laurence.

4 Second edition, 1833, third 1838. 'The Book of Enoch the Prophet: an apocryphal production, supposed for ages to have been lost; but discovered at the close of the last century in Abyssinia; now first translated from an Ethiopic MS. in the Bodleian Library. By Richard Laure ice, LL.D. Oxford.' My references are to the third edition.

German scholars.1 He translated the English version of the first fifty-five chapters into German,1 and enriched it with an introduction and commentary. The first part, embracing these fifty-five chapters, was published in 1833; the second, in which the editor made use of a newly-acquired manuscript, and translated from the original Æthiopic, appeared in 1838. Gförer translated the English into Latin for his Prophetæ Veteres Pseudepigraphi, 1840. Dillmann published the Æthiopic text in 1851, and a German translation, with introduction and commentary, in 1853. This last edition still holds its place as the best representative of the Æthiopic version.

As the value which we attach to this work depends largely on the answer which we give to the question whether it is the production of one or of several authors, it is necessary to take a survey of its contents. It will be best to do this in the first instance without inserting any explanations or inferences of our own. The division into chapters is rather differently given in different manuscripts; but we shall follow that which Dillmann has preferred. According to his arrangement there are one hundred and eight chapters, occupying eighty octavo pages; and as the chapters are of very unequal length, from a few lines to several pages, I will refer not only to them, but to the pages of Dillmann's edition.

The first five chapters (pp. 1-2) form a general introduction to the work. The first three lines seem like a

1 Das Buch Henoch in vollständiger Uebersetzung mit fortlaufendem Commentar, ausführlicher Einleitung und erläuternden Excursen, von Andreas Gottlieb Hoffmann. Erste Abth. Kap. 1-55, Jena 1833. Zweite Abth. 1838. This was intended as a first volume of a work on Die Apokalyptiker der ältern Zeit unter Juden und Christen; but a second volume never appeared.

2 Erste Abth. Vorrede, S. xiii.

Zweite Abth. Vorrede, S. iv-v.

See the Vorwort to his Das Buch Henoch, übersetzt und erklärt, 1853.

title or superscription :- The words of blessing of Enoch, wherewith he blessed the elect and righteous, who shall exist in the day of trouble, when all wicked and godless men shall be removed.' In the next verse the writer passes without any mark of transition from his own words to those of Enoch, and the narrative then proceeds in the first person. We should observe, however, that this changes to the third in different places throughout the book, so that there is no consistent attempt to conceal the later hand of an editor. Enoch declares that he saw a vision in the heavens, shown to him by the angels; but what he saw was not for the present, but for distant generations. He spoke with God about the elect, and learned that he would come down upon Mount Sinai, and execute judgment; and then the elect should be blessed, but the godless destroyed. He observed everything in heaven and on earth, and perceived that every work of God went on regularly, without transgressing its laws. He specifies the lights in heaven, summer and winter, water, clouds, dew, rain, trees (of which fourteen are evergreen), and again the days of the summer with the heat of the sun, seas and rivers. 'But you,' he says, 'have not persevered, and have not fulfilled, but transgressed, the law of the Lord.' Therefore the sinners should receive everlasting condemnation, and find no favour. But the righteous should not be punished their life long, but should complete the number of the days of their life, and become old in peace; and of the years of their happiness there should be many in everlasting delight and peace, their whole life long.'

After this general introduction, the first main division of the book embraces chapters vi.-xxxvi.; for the thirtyseventh chapter begins-The second vision of wisdom