BOOK OF L. — Apocryphal, mentioned in a biblical catalogue of the 10th century (Vat. cod. 423, f. 415), after the books of the Old and New Testaments, in third place in a list of apocrypha, after the book of Adam and the book of Enoch. It was found in the «4th scroll» (among those belonging to the Syro-Jacobite Convent of S. Marco in Jerusalem), discovered at 'Ajn Fešbah in September 1947, which J. Trever began to read in 1949, separating two pieces from it (12.1 cm. × 21.7 cm.) with 26 lines of Aramaic text. Trever dates this manuscript to between 25 B.C. and A.D. 25.
In lines 3 and 8, mention is made of Bit'ēnōl («daughter of Enos»), who in the Ethiopic version of the book of Jubilees 4:28 appears (Bētēnōs) as the wife of L. In the Aramaic text of the «4th scroll», L. always speaks of himself in the first person. In the Ethiopic book of Enoch, traditions concerning L. are used, but always in the third person (the use of the first person is reserved for Enoch). An attempt is being made to decipher this «4th scroll» in its entirety.