The Book of Enoch deserves special attention for the unique material it contains, such as the origins of demons and supernatural giants, why some angels fell from heaven, details explaining why the Great Flood was morally necessary, and the prophetic exposition of the thousand-year reign of the Messiah.
It is not part of the biblical canon used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel. Most Christian denominations and traditions can accept that the Books of Enoch have some historical or theological interest, but generally consider the Books of Enoch to be non-canonical or uninspired. It is considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, but not by any other Christian group.
It exists only in the Ge’ez language, with Aramaic fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and some Greek and Latin fragments. For this and other reasons, the traditional belief in Ethiopia is that the original language of the work was Ge’ez, while modern scholars argue that it was first written in Aramaic or Hebrew; Ephraim Isaac suggests that the Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was composed partly in Aramaic and partly in Hebrew. No Hebrew version is known to have survived. The book itself claims that its author was Enoch, before the biblical flood.
Some of the authors of the New Testament were familiar with part of the story’s content. A short section of the Book of Enoch is quoted in the New Testament, Epistle of Jude, and is attributed to “Enoch the seventh from Adam,” although this section of 1 Enoch is a midrash on Deuteronomy 33:2. Several copies of the earlier sections of 1 Enoch were preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The book consists of five main sections:
- The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36)
- The Book of the Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37–71) (also called the Similitudes of Enoch)
- The Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72–82) (also called the Book of the Heavenly Luminaries or Book of Luminaries)
- The Book of Dream Visions (1 Enoch 83–90) (also called the Book of Dreams)
- The Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 91–108)
Most scholars believe that these five sections were originally independent works (with different dates of composition), themselves the product of many editorial arrangements, and only later reduced to what is now called 1 Enoch.
1. Canonicity
The canonicity attributed to it by scholars of different religions has varied throughout the world; some consider it divine, while others consider it apocryphal.
Judaism
Although it was clearly widely known during the development of the Hebrew Bible canon, 1 Enoch was excluded from both the formal canon of the Tanakh and the typical canon of the Septuagint, and therefore also from the writings known today as the Deuterocanon. One possible reason for the Jews’ rejection of the book could be the textual nature of several early sections of the book that make use of material from the Torah; for example, 1 En 1 is a midrash on Deuteronomy 33.
The content, particularly the detailed descriptions of fallen angels, would also be a reason for rejection from the Hebrew canon in this period, as illustrated by the comments of Trypho the Jew when he debated with Justin Martyr on this subject: “The statements of God are holy. but your explanations are mere contrivances, as is clear from what you have explained, no, even blasphemies, since you claim that angels sinned and rebelled against God.”
Today, the Beta Israel community of Ethiopian Jews is the only Jewish group that accepts the Book of Enoch as canonical and still preserves it in its liturgical language of Ge’ez, where it plays a central role in worship and liturgy.
Christianity
By the fourth century, the Book of Enoch was mostly excluded from the Christian canons, and is now considered a scripture only by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Compare this with Enoch 1:9, translated from Ethiopian. Compare this also with what may be the original source; in Deuteronomy Chapter 33 verse 2 it says: The Lord came from Sinai and dawned upon us from Seir; he shone upon us from Mount Paran; he came with ten thousand saints, with fire from his right hand.
Under the heading of canonicity, it is not sufficient to simply demonstrate that something is quoted. Instead, it is necessary to demonstrate the nature of the quotation. In the case of the quotation from Jude 1:14 from 1 Enoch 1:9, it would be difficult to argue that Jude is not quoting Enoch as a historical prophet, since he quotes Enoch by name. However, a question remains as to whether the author of Jude attributed the quotation he considers to be the source to the historical Enoch before the flood or to a midrash of Deut 33:2-3.
The Greek text may seem unusual in stating that “Enoch the seventh from Adam” prophesied “to” (dative case) not “of” (genitive case) men, however, this could indicate the Greek meaning “against them” the dative τούτοις as dativus incommodi (dative of disadvantage).
Peter H. Davids points to evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls but leaves open the possibility of whether Jude viewed 1 Enoch as canonical, deuterocanonical, or otherwise: “Jude, then, considered this writing to be like Genesis or Isaiah. Certainly, he considered it authoritative, a true word of God.
We cannot say whether he classified it alongside other prophetic books such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. What we do know is, first, that other Jewish groups, especially those living at Qumran near the Dead Sea, also used and valued 1 Enoch, but we do not find it grouped with the scrolls of the scriptures.”
The attribution “Enoch the Seventh from Adam” is apparently a section heading taken from the first epistle of the book of Enoch (1 Enoch 60:8, Jude 1:14a) and not from Genesis. Furthermore, it has been claimed that 1 Peter (in 1 Peter 3:19-20) and 2 Peter (in 2 Peter 2:4-5) refer to some Enochian material.
2. Reception
The Book of Enoch was considered a scripture in the Epistle of Barnabas (16:4) and by many of the early Church Fathers, such as Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, who wrote c. 200 that the Book of Enoch had been rejected by the Jews because it contained prophecies concerning Christ. However, later Fathers denied the canonicity of the Book of Enoch, and some even considered the Epistle of Jude to be non-canonical because it refers to an “apocryphal” work.
Ethiopian Orthodox Church
This subsection contains Ethiopian text. Without the proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols in place of Ethiopian characters. The traditional belief of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which views 1 Enoch as an inspired document, is that the Ethiopian text is the original, written by Enoch himself. They believe that the following opening sentence of Enoch is the first and oldest written sentence in any human language, since Enoch was the first to write letters:
“Blessed be Henok, with whom he blessed the chosen and righteous who would be alive on the day of tribulation for the removal of all evildoers and backsliders.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest denomination within the Latter-day Saint movement, does not consider the Book of Enoch to be part of its standard canon, although it believes that a supposed “original” Book of Enoch was an inspired book. The Book of Moses, which is found within the canon of the Church’s scriptures, has a section that claims to contain excerpts from the “original” Book of Enoch.
This section has similarities to 1 Enoch and other Enoch texts, including Second Enoch, Third Enoch, and The Book of Giants. The Church believes that the Enoch section of the Book of Moses contains excerpts from “the ministry, teachings, and visions of Enoch,” although it is not believed to contain the entire Book of Enoch. Therefore, the Church would consider the parts of the other texts that match its excerpts from Enoch to be inspired, while rejecting or withholding judgment on the rest.
3. Greek and Latin
The eighth-century work Chronographia Universalis, by the Byzantine historian George Syncellus, preserved some passages from the Book of Enoch in Greek (6:1–9:4, 15:8–16:1). Other known Greek fragments are:
Codex Panopolitanus (Cairo Papyrus 10759), also called Codex Gizeh or Akhmim fragments, consists of fragments of two sixth-century papyri containing parts of chapters 1–32 recovered by a French archaeological team in Akhmim in Egypt and published five years later, in 1892.
- Vatican Codex, f. 216v (11th century): including 89: 42–49
- Chester Beatty Papyri XII: includes 97: 6–107: 3 (minus chapter 105)
- Oxyrhynchus Papyri 2069: includes only a few letters, making identification uncertain, from 77: 7–78: 1, 78: 1–3, 78: 8, 85: 10–86: 2, 87: 1–3
It has been claimed that several additional small fragments in Greek have been found, dating from 100 BC, ranging from 98:11 to 103:15 and written on papyrus with grid lines, but this identification is highly disputed. From the Latin translation, only 1:9 and 106:1–18 are known. The first passage appears in Pseudo-Cyprian and Pseudo-Vigilius; the second was discovered in 1893 by M. R. James in an eighth-century manuscript in the British Museum and published in the same year.
4. Early influence
Classical rabbinic literature is characterized by near silence regarding Enoch. It seems plausible that rabbinic polemics against apocryphal texts and traditions could have led to the loss of these books to rabbinic Judaism.
The Book of Enoch plays an important role in the history of Jewish mysticism: scholar Gershom Scholem wrote, “The main themes of later Merkabah mysticism already occupy a central place in the oldest esoteric literature, best represented by the Book of Enoch.” Special attention is given to the detailed description of God’s throne included in chapter 14 of 1 Enoch.
5. Description
The introduction to the Book of Enoch tells us that Enoch is “a righteous man, whose eyes were opened by God to see a vision of the Holy One in heaven, which the sons of God showed me, and from them I heard everything, and I knew what I saw, but not for this generation, but for a generation yet to come.”
It discusses that God comes to Earth on Mount Sinai with His hosts to judge mankind. It also tells us about the luminaries that rise and set in order and in their own time and never change:
“Look and see how (in winter) all the trees seem to have withered and cast off all their leaves, except fourteen trees, which do not lose their foliage but retain the old foliage for two to three years until the new comes.”
How all things are ordered by God and take place in their own time. The sinners will perish, and the great and the good will live in light, joy, and peace. And all their works continue thus year after year forever, and all the tasks they perform for him, and their tasks do not change, but according to what God has ordained, so it is done.
The first section of the book describes the interaction of the fallen angels with humanity; Sêmîazâz compels the other 199 fallen angels to take human wives to “beget children.”
And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said to them, “I fear that we will not agree to do this, and I alone will have to pay the penalty for a great sin.” And they all answered him and said, “Let us make an oath, and let us all commit ourselves with mutual imprecations, not to abandon this plan but to do this.”
Then swear that you will all come together and bind yourselves by mutual imprecations. And they were two hundred in all; who descended in the days of Jared upon the top of Mount Hermon, and called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves with mutual imprecations there.
The names of the leaders are given as “Samyaza (Shemyazaz), their leader, Araqiel, Râmêêl, Kokabiel, Tamiel, Ramiel, Dânêl, Chazaqiel, Baraqiel, Asael, Armaros, Batariel, Bezaliel, Ananiel, Zaqiel, Shamsiel, Satarieliel, Azrael, Yomiel, Sariel.”Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel ask God to judge the inhabitants of the world and the fallen angels. [Citation needed] Uriel is sent by God to tell Noah about the coming cataclysm and what he must do.
