My former colleague Michael Knibb, who has died aged 84, was a professor of theology at King’s College London. His research focused on ancient texts that tell of heavenly journeys and visions of the end times associated with the mysterious patriarch Enoch, known from the Book of Genesis in the Bible.
The Enoch literature only became known to European scholars in the 18th century, after travellers to Ethiopia encountered translations of the texts into classical Ethiopic. The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in the middle of the 20th century revealed ancient documents containing the Enoch literature in the original Aramaic, enabling Michael to produce a new edition of the Ethiopic Enoch literature that integrated ancient evidence from the scrolls.
-copy-dd1f2bf0.jpeg?w=600)
