AI.I.I SIONS IN SACRED BOOK'S OP TH K EAST. 



211 



evidence on the subject of its style and matter may be got from 

 an astronomical treatise, written just about that time and also 

 rendered subsequently into other languages. 



In the March of 1914, there was published by the Irish Texts 

 Society, an English translation made by Maura Power of an 

 Irish Astronomical Tract. This tract is part paraphrase and 

 part translation of a Latin version of an Arabic treatise by 

 Messahalah, a Jewish astronomer of Alexandria, who flourished 

 shortly before a.d. 800. This Arabic work was translated into 

 Latin by Gerard of Sabionetta in the thirteenth century, and of 

 Gerard's translation there were several editions during the 

 succeeding centuries, but it is probable that the Irish Tract is 

 not based on any of those we now possess. 



If we compare the Irish Tract and the " Secrets of Enoch," we 

 find them of about the same total length, divided into short 

 chapters having, in the Irish text, Latin headings, and in the 

 Slavonic, headings which may or may not have been translated 

 from the Greek. The Irish Tract is known to derive its origin 

 from a Jew of Alexandria ; Dr. Charles derives the Greek 

 original of the " Secrets of Enoch " also from a Jew of Alexandria 

 living, as he avers, at a much earlier date than Messahalah. 

 The Irish Tract is strictly a scientific one — an astronomical 

 educational text-book for use in the Irish schools of the fourteenth 

 or fifteenth centuries. The Slavonic Tract purports to be a 

 theological one, but its theology is based on a mystical astronomy. 

 Nevertheless, in Chapter I of the strictly scientific Irish 

 treatise, the author speaks of "the seven spheres of the 

 firmament " as if there were seven and seven only, and yet in 

 Chapter XXIX he says : 



"As Ptolemy and the other philosophers declare, there are ten 

 large spheres, and the largest sphere of those, which is called the 

 very great sphere, possesses the same motions as the sphere of the 

 signs, since both move westward." 



Now neither of these is an " interpolation," and the author's 

 scientific mind received no jar by the inconsistency ; he knew 

 the meaning of both conceptions. 



" The very great sphere " and the tenth sphere of which 

 Slav. Enoch says, " In the tenth heaven, in the tenth heaven is 

 God ; — in the Hebrew language it is called Avarat," are the 

 same. But the author of the Irish Tract continues in Chapter 

 XXX :— 



"Be it known unto you that the very great sphere is the straight- 

 sphere. Ill-informed persons have given many erroneous opinions 



P 2 



