Wednesday, March 09, 2011

The 1 Enoch MS at the Remnant Trust

THE MANUSCRIPT OF 1 ENOCH held at the Remnant Trust is back in the news:
Winona Lake group collects historical documents public can touch

March 06, 2011|By Kristin Bien (kbien@wsbt.com)

WINONA LAKE —

If you think rare books and ancient manuscripts are confined to museums, vaults and hollywood movies, you're mistaken. The Remnant Trust in Winona Lake has a growing collection of rare books and historical artifacts.

"We have cool stuff. We have cool books. We have stuff that nobody else has," says Kris Bex, The Remnant Trust president.

[...]

One of the Trust's rarest documents is a hand-written book from the mid-1400s.

"This is the Book of Enoch, which is one the lost books of the Bible," says Bex as he opens the book, "this is a manuscript in its original form. It is in a dialect of Ethiopian. And the only other complete manuscript of the Book of Enoch is in a temple on the island of Lake Tana in Ethiopia and there is only one monk who is allowed to even go in and see it."

[...]
The interview seems to have suffered some garbling here. This is one of the oldest manuscripts of 1 Enoch, but there are others, some complete and some not. I don't know anything about the manuscript at Lake Tana. For earlier coverage of this story with more information and some comments by James VanderKam, go here.