Where does the source text lie? Different strategies on editing and translating First Enoch, 1850–2018

In this chapter, I survey modern Western editions and translations of an ancient Jewish text, called First Enoch, surviving in Aramaic, Greek, and Ge'ez. After introducing the work, I analyze the editions and translations regarding how they deal with possible displacements of a text or later interpolations in the text, and how they interact with greatly differing textual traditions. Some of the sources edit and translate diplomatically one text of a work, whereas many conflate different textual traditions and reconstruct a hypothetical source text. Especially in the latter case, the de facto source text has changed significantly in 168 years, often mirroring the ongoing scholarly discussions. The translator always plays a crucial role in constructing the source text.