Enoch and Qumran Origins: New light on a forgotten connection.

• Author: Flannery, Frances
• Position: Book review

Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection. Edited by GABRIELE BOCCACCINL. Grand Rapids, Michigan: WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING Co.C>, 2005. Pp. xviii + 454. $40 (paper).

The sixty-one essays in this excellent volume derive from the proceedings held in Venice, Italy in July 2003 at the second meeting of the Enoch Seminar, an international gathering of scholars whose work seri ously engages the Enochic corpus (including 1 and 2 Enoch, "3 Enoch" or Sefer Hekhalot, and several manuscripts from Qumran, such as The Book of Giants and the 4Q Enoch fragments). The meeting focused on the studies of five specialists in Second Temple Judaism, namely, John J. Collins, James C. VanderKam, George W. E. Nickelsburg, Florentino Garcia Martinez, and Gabriele Boccaeeini. This volume is organized accordingly, with essays assembled in five sections, each of which concludes with a response from the scholar whose work is under discussion.

The ongoing Enoch Seminar and its resultant publications attest that our understanding of Second Temple Judaism is still manifestly incomplete and subject to serious reevaluations, with the Enochic corpus playing an enormous role in any comprehensive construction. As Boccaccini notes in his introduction, our current recognition of the importance of the Enochic texts owes much to two scholars in particular, namely, George W. E. Nickelsburg, whose definitive Hermeneia commentary on 1 Enoch 1-36, 81-108 came out in 2001, and Paolo Sacchi, founder of the journal Henoch (1979) and author of the first intellectual history of Enochic Judaism, L' apocalittica giudaica e la sua storia (1990).

It is impossible in a short review to do justice to the range and depth of scholarship in these essays; here I can only mention the thrust of each section. Part I centers on Collins' work on Daniel as it relates to the Book of Dreams (1 En. 85-90), especially regarding his thesis that different (but not necessarily conflicting) apocalyptic "conventicles" were responsible for the production of both Daniel and 1 Enoch. Part II addresses VanderKam's studies of Jubilees and 1 Enoch, including the relationship of their respective ideologies, calendrical practices, and possible social groups. The contributors in part III focus on Nickelsburg's work on The Apocalypse of Weeks (I En. 93: 1-10, 91:11-17), mainly regarding text-critical matters, the relation of the Apocalypse to texts from Qumran and Iran, and questions about social...