Enoch and the Cosmos

Annual UCL-KCL Biblical Studies Seminar

The annual UCL-KCL Seminar 2026 will focus on the Book of Enoch. Fragments of the original Aramaic text of this important apocryphon were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. A full text of the Book of Enoch is preserved in Ethiopic translation. This seminar features three acknowledged experts on Enochic traditions.

Programme

(each session includes presentation, comments and questions and answers)

2.00-3.15

Loren Stuckenbruck (Ludwig Maximillian University, Munich)

Editing the Ethiopic Book of Enoch: Contributions of Recent Study

3.15-4.30

Eshbal Ratzon (Tel Aviv University)

What opened the Book of Watchers?

4.30-5.45

Henryk Drawnel (Catholic University of Lublin)

How to Construct the 364-day Year: Literary and Thematic Notes on 1 Enoch 72:8-32

Correspondent: James VanderKam (Notre Dame University)

Presenters

Loren Stuckenbruck is well known for his critical editions of texts in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Ethiopic and has spent years carrying out fieldwork in Ethiopia, researching new sources for Ethiopic Enoch.

Eshbal Ratzon has published many studies on astronomy in Qumran and will address the Enochic Book of Watchers, which widely circulated in antiquity.

Henryk Drawnel has produced an authoritative edition of the astronomical fragments of Aramaic Enoch in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

James VanderKam is a world-famous authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Enoch and the Qumran 365-day calendar.

This Seminar is convened by Sacha Stern and Mark Geller (UCL) and by Paul Joyce and Annie Calderbank (KCL)