AUTSIOXS IX SACRKl) HOOKS OF THE K AST. 



205 



though in the remainder it differs for the most part slightly or 

 not at all ; in one or two cases it transposes or paraphrases the 

 subject matter of A. Titles to the chapters are found in A, but 

 not, as a rule, in B, and Professor Sokolov does not include 

 them in his text, though he had A before him. Dr. Charles 

 also believes that these titles have no claim to antiquity. It is 

 evident that both A and B are translations from the same 

 Greek original ; almost certainly one is a copy and the other a 

 l^rdcis of the same Slavonic translation — as translations they 

 are not independent. 



Dr. Charles says that the main part of the book was written 

 for the first time in Greek ; he concludes this from the fact that 

 the writer follows the Septuagint, both in his chronology, and 

 in his ([notation from Deuteronomy xxxii, 35. Also from the 

 statement in Slav. Enoch XXX, 13 : " And I gave him (that is 

 Adam) a name from the four substances: the East, the West, the 

 North, and the South " ; Adam's name being here derived from 

 the initial letters of the Greek names of the four cardinal points. 

 This argument is not, however, conclusive, since not only does 

 the writer (in A) make a mistake in the order of the cardinal 

 points, thus transposing Adam into Adma, but, though the 

 conceit is undoubtedly only possible in Greek, it is frequently 

 used by writers of other languages, as by the Venerable Bede 

 in his Latin work In Genesim Expositio. More cogent evidence 

 to the fact of a Greek original is, I think, afforded by the third 

 verse of the same chapter, where the names of the " Seven 

 Planets " are given in their Greek form (but here B omits the 

 passage). 



We may take it, then, that A, B, and the other Slavonic 

 manuscripts are copies — more or less complete and correct — of 

 a single translation which we will call T, from a single original 

 Greek manuscript which we will call 0. From the evidence in 

 hand we cannot allow that there were several Greek manu- 

 scripts differing from each other substantially, or that transla- 

 tions, differing essentially from each other, were made from 

 them. When was T made ? 



T could not have been made at an earlier date than the 

 ninth century A.D., for it was only in the latter half of this 

 century that St. Cyril devised the Slavonic alphabet, and in 

 conjunction with St. Methodius translated parts of the Bible 

 into Slavonic. Therefore the Greek manuscript 0, from which 

 T was made, must have been in existence as late as the ninth 

 century a.d. When, then, was 0, or the original of 0, first 

 written ? 



