Book of Enoch

Hi again Ed,
you mentioned here that the quote from Jude 14, on Enoch came from the Apocrypha, I cant find a book of Enoch in my Catholic edition of the Apochrypha, could you tell me were it is please, Doug

Book of Enoch

The Book of Enoch is a work that is included in the category of “pseudepigrapha” (not the “apocrypha,” my mistake, though parallels are often drawn between the Old-Testament pseudepigrapha and the apocrypha, and the pseudepigrapha are studied along with the apocrypha since many pseudepigraphic works were composed during the same intertestamental period as the apocryphal works):
Source: http://wesley.nnu.edu/noncanon/ot/pseudo/enoch.htm


“The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha are a grab-bag of ancient works that imitate books of the Hebrew Bible, draw their inspiration from these books, or in some cases (such as parts of the Book of Enoch) narrowly missed being included in the biblical canon. The imaginary visions and adventures of the antediluvian patriarch Enoch and other biblical characters including Moses, Ezra, and Ezekiel, fill the pages of this motley corpus, alongside books and oracles attributed to pagan sages such as Ahiqar and the Sibyl. I cannot help thinking that some of the composers, who often wrote elaborate narratives describing otherworldly journeys and tours of celestial realms, would be pleased to know that their prophecies and proverbs now have a place in that strange, multidimensional hyperspace we call the Internet.”
— Enoch in Cyberspace: The Internet Meets the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha by Dr James Davila, University of St. Andrews


Jewish Encyclopedia entry
From Genesis 5:24 (“Enoch walked with God” and “God took him”) a cycle of Jewish legends about Enoch was derived, which, together with apocalyptic speculations naturally ascribed to such a man, credited with superhuman knowledge, found their literary expression in the Books of Enoch


The Book Of Enoch In The New Testament

The above website features passages in the New Testament that parallel passages in the Book of Enoch — However, one must keep in mind that the book of Enoch was not written all at once, but is a composite work, written by different authors, beginning at a time about 200 years before Jesusʼ day, the authors used “Enoch” as their pseudonym and each kept adding to the “Enochian” literature for over 200 years. Some sections of the Book of Enoch, like the “Similitudes,” parallel Jesusʼ “Beatitudes,” and were most probably written near Jesusʼ own day, though the question of who influenced whom, or whether such sayings were more common than suspected and both Jesus and that particular Enoch author were dipping into a pool of sayings, is unknown.

Though there are a number of Enoch/New Testament parallels listed at the above website, one passage in the Book of Jude in the New Testament is of special interest since it mentions “Enoch” by name, along with a “prophecy” from The Book of Enoch, thus placing a high value on its content:

  1. Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones
  2. to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
  3. These men are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage. [The Book of Jude]

The Book of Jude treated that passages as a “prophecy,” and it even named the person who allegedly spoke that “prophecy,” “Enoch, the seventh from Adam.”


Irenaeus (one of the earliest of all the Church Fathers) draws heavily on 1 Enoch 6-9 when he writes the following:
And wickedness very long-continued and widespread pervaded all the races of men, until very little seed of justice was in them. For unlawful unions came about on earth, as angels linked themselves with offspring of the daughters of men, who bore to them sons, who on account of their exceeding great were called Giants. The angels, then, brought to their wives as gifts teachings of evil, for they taught them the virtues of roots and herbs, and dyeing and cosmetics and discoveries of precious materials, love-philtes, hatreds, amours, passions, constraints of love, the bonds of witchcraft, every sorcery and idolatry, hateful to God; and when this was come into the world, the affairs of wickedness were propagated to overflowing, and those of justice dwindled to very little. Tatian, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian all echo Irenaeusʼ statements and his use of 1 Enoch in attributing to the fallen angels the origin of the magic arts and cosmetics. It is not difficult to account for the influence of 1 Enoch on the early church writers. After all it was the only (what we now call) apocryphal book explicitly cited in the New Testament (Jude 14, cf. 1 Enoch 1:9). The Ethiopian church accepted the book into its canon and the writer of the Epistle of Barnabas approved of it,as did Tertullian, even though the majority rejected it. Interestingly some of the later Fathers doubted the canonicity of Jude precisely because it cited apocryphal books such as Enoch. The influence of the Book of Enoch and the popularity of the Septuagint (which translated “sons of God” as “angels”) in the early church may explain why no Christian writer challenged the view that the Sons of God were angels until the third century AD. With the rejection of the canonicity of Enoch there was a corresponding decline in the ‘angel’ interpretation of the ‘sons of God’. In a similar way the idea of a fall (or second fall) of the angels prior to the Flood drops out of theological history after the time of Lactantius. From that point on the view that the Sons of God were purely human - the descendants of Seth - began to dominate. As can be seen from Table 5.2 the other early references to the Sethite theory were found in Jewish sources that few of the early Christian would have had access to. It was not until after the middle of the second century that a Christian writer (Julius Africanus) suggested that the ‘sons of God’ were Sethites.


Catholic Encyclopedia entry
The Book of Enoch enjoyed a high esteem among the [church fathers], mainly owing to the quotation in Jude. The so-called Epistle of Barnabas twice cites Henoch as Scripture. Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and even St. Augustine suppose the work to be a genuine one of the patriarch. But in the fourth century the Henoch writings lost credit and ceased to be quoted. After an allusion by an author of the beginning of the ninth century, they disappear from view.


Tertullian wrote a fairly long passge in which he argued in favor of the Book of Enoch being historical:
On The Apparel Of Women, Book One, Chapter III.
Concerning the Genuineness of “The Prophecy of Enoch.” I am aware that the Scripture of Enoch, which has assigned this order (of action) to angels, is not received by some, because it is not admitted into the Jewish canon either. I suppose they did not think that, having been published before the deluge, it could have safely survived that world-wide calamity, the abolisher of all things. If that is the reason (for rejecting it), let them recall to their memory that Noah, the survivor of the deluge, was the great-grandson of Enoch himself; and he, of course, had heard and remembered, from domestic renown and hereditary tradition, concerning his own great-grandfatherʼs “grace in the sight of God,” and concerning all his preachings; since Enoch had given no other charge to Methuselah than that he should hand on the knowledge of them to his posterity. Noah therefore, no doubt, might have succeeded in the trusteeship of (his) preaching; or, had the case been otherwise, he would not have been silent alike concerning the disposition (of things) made by God, his Preserver, and concerning the particular glory of his own house. If (Noah) had not had this (conservative power) by so short a route, there would (still) be this (consideration) to warrant our assertion of (the genuineness of) this Scripture: he could equally have renewed it, under the Spiritʼs inspiration,after it had been destroyed by the violence of the deluge, as, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian storming of it, every document of the Jewish literature is generally agreed to have been restored through Ezra. “But since Enoch in the same Scripture has preached likewise concerning the Lord [i.e., “The Son of Man” figure in the Book of Enoch who comes in judgment according to that book. — E.T.B.], nothing at all must be rejected by us which pertains to us; and we read that “every Scripture suitable for edification is divinely inspired.” [See 2 Tim. iii. 16 — Interesting citation of 2 Tim, donʼt you think? Iʼve read elsewhere that this is one way of interpreting 2 Tim. — E.T.B.] By the Jews it may now seem to have been rejected for that (very) reason, just like all the other (portions) nearly which tell of Christ. Nor, of course, is this fact wonderful, that they did not receive some Scriptures which spake of Him whom even in person, speaking in their presence, they were not to receive. To these considerations is added the fact that Enoch possesses a testimony in the Apostle Jude.


Origin cited the book of Enoch as a truthful endorsement of certain Christian beliefs in his De Principiis
“And in the book of Enoch also we have similar descriptions.”


The Epistle of Jude (another Pseudepigraphic work, like “The Book of Enoch?”)

Kummel presents the reasons that most scholars suspect Jude to be a pseudepigraph (Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 428):
The author was presumably a Jewish Christian, since he knows such Jewish-apocalyptic writings as the Ascension of Moses (9) and the Enoch Apocalypse (14), and the Jewish legends (9, 11). But the author “speaks of the apostles like a pupil from a time long afterward” (17). Not only does he assume a concept of “a faith once for all delivered to the saints” (3), but against the statements of the false teachers of the End-tim, he adduces in similar manner Jewish and early Christian predictions (14 f, 17). All this points to a late phase of primitive Christianity, and the cultivated Greek language as well as the citations from a Greek translation of the Enoch Apocalypse do not well suit a Galilean. The supposition repeatedly presented that Jude really does come from a brother of the Lord is accordingly extremely improbable, and Jude must be considered a pseudonymous writing. That is all the more fitting if Jude 1 contains a reference to a pseudonymous James (see 27.4). Norman Perrin writes the following on Jude (The New Testament: An Introduction, p. 260):
The letter is pseudonymous, as is all the literature of emergent Catholicism in the New Testament.
The most interesting features of this letter are the characteristics of emergent Catholicism it exhibits. The letter speaks of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints”; faith is the acceptance of authoritative tradition, and the writer denounces the heretics and admonishes the faithful on the authority of that tradition. There is also evidence of a developing Christian liturgy. In verses 20-21, “pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” testifies to the liturgical development of a trinitarian formula. The closing benediction is a magnificent piece of liturgical language, so different in style and tone from the remainder of the letter that the writer has probably taken it from the liturgy of his church.
Jude is dependent on James, and II Peter is dependent on Jude, setting the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem for this epistle. It would be fair to date it to the turn of the second century.


Bible Review, April 2003, featured three interesting and informative articles on The Book Of Enoch
“Enoch and Jesus” (Describes the fact that there were supernatural mediators in Jewish thought prior to Jesusʼ day, including “Enoch.”) “Enochʼs Vision of the Next World” (Apocalyptic/eschatological teachings found in the Book of Enoch)
“Thatʼs No Gospel!” (Fascinating story about the detective work done on some Dead Sea Scroll papyrus fragments that one conservative scholar contended were from the “Gospel of Matthew,” but it turns out, they were from the Book of Enoch instead)

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