Thesaurus temporum (1606 Scaliger), book

Theusaurus temporum (1606) is a book by Joseph Justus Scaliger.

Abstract

Contains the editio princeps of the Greek Enoch Fragments of Syncellus. The date of publication of the fragments is 1606 (the year 1658, indicated in some major commentaries, refers to the 2nd ed., published in Amsterdam, around fifty years after Scaliger's death).

The text came from a 11th century ms. of Syncellus' Chronography, located in 1601 in the library of Catherine de Medici in Paris. Scaliger's friend, Isaac Casaubon, made a copy of the excerpts from the book of Enoch and sent it to Leiden by mid-June 1602. Scaliger was not impressed by the contents of the Book of Enoch and made it explicit in the publication:

"So much for the forged first book of Enoch. I cannot decide whether it took the Jews more spare time to write all of this, or me more patience to copy it out. It contains so many loathsome and shameful things that I would not think it worth reading if I did not know that Jews make a habit of lying, and that even now they cannot stop producing such rubbish. But because it is translated from the Hebrew ... and the book is very old, and Tertullian cites from it ... I preferred to swallow the tedium of copying it out rather than bear the blame for continuing to deprive my kind readers of it" (pp. 244-245).

Editions

Published in Lugduni Batauorum (=Leiden, Netherlands): Excudebat Thomas Basson, sumptibus Commelinorum, 1606 / 2nd ed. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Joannis Janssen, 1658.

Online editions

• Internet Archives (full text; 1658 ed.)