LIBRO DI L - Enciclopedia Cattolica, Vol. VII, p. 522

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

BOOK OF L. - Apocryphal work, mentioned in a biblical catalogue of the 10th century (Vat. cod. 423, f. 415), after the books of the Old and New Testaments, in 3rd place in a list of apocrypha, following the Book of Adam and the Book of Enoch. It was found in the 4th scroll (among those belonging to the Syriac-

Article illustration — (courtesy of Rev. A. P. Frutaz)

Jacobite monastery of St. Mark in Jerusalem) discovered at 'Ain Fešḥah in September 1947, from which J. Trever in 1949 began to read it by detaching two pieces (12.1 cm. x 21.7 cm.) with 26 lines of Aramaic text. Trever dates this manuscript between 25 B.C. and 25 A.D.

In lines 3 and 8, Bit'ēnōš («daughter of Enos») is mentioned, who in the Ethiopic version of the Book of Jubilees 4:28 appears as (Bēlēnōs) the wife of L. In the Aramaic text of the «4th scroll», L. always speaks of himself in the 1st person. In the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, traditions relating to L. are used but always in the 3rd person (the use of the 1st person is reserved for Enoch). Work is underway to fully unroll this «4th scroll».

Bibl.: J. Trever, Identification of the aramaic fourth scroll from 'Ain Feshka, in Bull. of the Amer. Schools of or. research, 115 (1919), pp. 8-10; G. Lambert, Les manuscrits du désert de Juda. V, in Nouvelle revue théologique, 82 (1950), pp. 493-95. The catalogue of Vat. cod. 423 was published, following Th. Zahn, by E. Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, III, 4th ed., Leipzig 1909, p. 358 sqr. Antonino Romeo