No More Learning

[150] {301}[Byron falls in with the popular theory as to the existence
of fossil remains of marine animals at a height above the level of the
sea. The "deluge" accounted for what was otherwise inexplicable. ]

[151] {302} The book of Enoch, preserved by the Ethiopians, is said by
them to be anterior to the flood.

[Some fragments of the _Book of Enoch_ (_vide ante_, Introduction to
_Heaven and Earth_, p. 281), which were included by Georgius Syncellus
(a Byzantine writer of the eighth century A. D. ) in his _Chronographia_,
pp. ii, 26 (_Corpus Script. Hist. Byzantintae_, 1829, i. 20), were
printed by J. J. Scaliger in 1606. They were, afterwards, included (i.
347-354) in the _Spicilegium SS.
Patrum_ of Joannes Ernestus Grabius,
which was published at Oxford in 1714. A year after (1715) one of the
fragments was "made English," and published under the title of _The
History of the Angels and their Gallantry with the Daughters of Men_,
written by Enoch the Patriarch.

In 1785 James Bruce, the traveller, discovered three MSS. of the _Book
of Enoch_. One he conveyed to the library at Paris: a second MS. he
presented to the Bodleian Library at Oxford (_Travels_, ii. 422, 8vo ed.
1805). In 1801 an article entitled, "Notice du Libre d'Enoch," was
contributed by Silvestre de Sacy to the _Magasin Encyclopedique_ (An.
vi. tom. i. p. 369); and in 1821 Richard Laurence, LL. D. , published a
translation "from the Ethiopic MS.