What is the Book of Enoch?

Have you heard about this book? I'm often surprised how many people have... though most of the people who've heard of it have heard a lot about the book that isn't entirely accurate.

 

If you prefer my more "devotional" e-mails, and don't like to get too deep into the weeds of complex issues, you won't hurt my feelings if you stop reading here, and pick up with our regularly scheduled devotions tomorrow.

 

Still, I've heard this book commented on so frequently in just the last few months, and usually with very little understanding about it, that I felt I should say a few things. At least, that way, you'll know something the next time you hear someone mention it.

 

First, usually what people mean by "Enoch" is a text known as 1 Enoch. It should be differentiated from a different text (known as 2 Enoch) which isn't usually what people are referring to. Neither text has great attestation in record of manuscripts, when compared to what we'd call the canonical New Testament for example, with pretty much all of the manuscripts we have from 2 Enoch dating to the late medieval period, and written in Slavonic.

 

However, 1 Enoch has garnered a lot more interest than 2 Enoch for two reasons. First, it appears that it's "quoted" in the book of Jude (which is a New Testament book) and second, because there were some fragments from 1 Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (the scrolls from the Qumran community unearthed by some Bedouin shepherds in the middle of the last century.

 

There are a few things to make note of, and why I'd urge caution about recognizing this text as "Scripture" in any sense.

 

First, though, it's worth noting what the book is about.

 

The Book of 1 Enoch is an ancient Jewish religious work, attributed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. However, it's certainly pseudepigraphal. In other words, Enoch definitely didn't write it. More on that, though, in a bit. That gets complicated, especially since Jude (which we recognize as a part of the New Testament) actually attributes the quote from this book to Enoch, himself.

 

1 Enoch is a collection of apocalyptic texts, meaning it contains visions and prophecies about the end times and divine judgment. It was a common semitic (Jewish) genre in the post-exilic (beginning from the time of Israel's exile in Babylon) through the early New Testament era. Generally, apocalypses (John's Revelation fits into this category, as do portions of the book of Daniel) are written primarily to offer comfort and an interpretation of events contemporary to the original readers, that put their current struggle (usually intense persecution) in the context of a broader, cosmic, narrative that promises hope.

 

So, for instance, in the book of Revelation, we're dealing with a community that's experiencing persecution by Rome. Much of the imagery in the immediate context clearly is a reference to the Roman authorities (e.g. the Beast = the Emperor). Modern-day interpretations need to take the original setting into account before trying to force the visions into today's headlines. I'm not saying these books don't have something to say about what's going on in the world today, but we need to understand the books first as they were originally received by the first readers/hearers.

 

Now, what about Enoch? Well, it's actually a collection of several different books, probably written in different eras beginning with the time immediately after the Babylonian Exile (appx. 538 B.C.) until as late as maybe the second century A.D. In other words, it's quite likely that portions of what we have now in the Book of Enoch were written after the last New Testament Book was completed. Though, as we'll see, the issue is pretty complicated.

 

1 Enoch delves into topics like the origin of demons, the fall of angels (the "Watchers"), the Nephilim (angel-human hybrids), and descriptions of heavenly realms. A lot of scholars believe the book was meant to "fill in some of the gaps" we have about these admittedly "strange" and difficult passages in Genesis.

 

Now, let me address the reliability of the text as we have it. To do that, let's first look at how well attested the New Testament is given the evidence we have from the manuscripts that have been preserved from the ancient world.

 

When it comes to the New Testament books, we have complete manuscripts and many reliable fragments of those manuscripts that go back very early. In fact, we have a couple complete copies of the New Testament (though there are some damaged spots in the manuscripts) that date to the fourth century A.D. (300s), namely Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. We have fragments that are largely consistent (very few variants, and none of significant note) that go back to the early second century, that's likely less than 100 years removed from the autographs, or original composition of these books.

 

By contrast, even the most renowned Roman Histories (e.g. Tacitus, Livy, Cassio Dio) have manuscripts that at the earliest date to 900 years after the composition. The New Testament is almost 800-years better attested to textually speaking than the best and most respected Roman histories.

 

Chew on that for a bit... could that really be a coincidence? Or, maybe the Holy Spirit had something to do with it. It's not a small miracle that the New Testament has been so well preserved.

 

Put another way, the New Testament books are quite plainly the best preserved, most authenticated, writings we have from the ancient world. The only possible rival, in fact, is the Old Testament. Beyond that, the manuscripts we have are in Koine Greek, the same language the New Testament was originally composed in. So, what we have in our English bibles is not a translation, of a translation, of a translation (which some people like to say). It's actually a direct translation from the original language, and the text we've based it on is remarkably coherent, consistent, and complete.

 

So saying all of that, what about 1 Enoch? Well, I mentioned before that we have some fragments of certain parts of the book from the Dead Sea scrolls... but less then 1/5th of the entire book of 1 Enoch (as we have it today) is attested to in the Qumran/Dead Sea Scroll fragments. We have some Greek fragments of 1 Enoch, but all of those together do not account for more than 1/4 of the current book of 1 Enoch. 

 

What we have are copies of 1 Enoch, in Ethiopic, and the only complete manuscripts of these we have date (at best) to the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries! Not to mention, the Ethiopic was likely translated from the Greek, which was a translation from Aramaic. While scholars believe the Ethiopic text was translated in the fifth or sixth century A.D., we don't have any manuscripts that really help us pin-point that.

 

Further, when compared to the fragmentary evidence found in Qumran, and the Greek fragments found elsewhere, there are far more disparities between the Ethiopic text and these fragments, even when we account for differences occasioned by translation, than we see when we do something comparable with the Greek New Testament and compare it to the earliest fragments.

 

In fact, the more we discover from the New Testament the more confidence we have that what we've been using as the New Testament is actually incredibly accurate, and practically identical (with virtually no variations that call into question the integrity of the text) to the Greek text that's used to produce the New Testament translation in your Bible.

 

I say all that to say this. The Book of 1 Enoch as we have it rests on very questionable textual foundations. There's really no way to find out what the original might have been when it was written (most of it probably in Aramaic) outside of the 1/5 of the book that's reflected in the Dead Sea scroll fragments.

 

So, why do we have it in Ethiopic? Well, that's because the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches were the only churches in the New Testament era that received this text as Scripture.

 

The Jewish people never regarded it as Scripture. The majority of Christians never accepted it as Scripture. So, you might ask, how do we know that the Ethiopian church wasn't right, and everyone else was wrong? Well, we know quite a bit about how canonization worked in the Early Church. The early Church communities were very busy communicating with each other, examining the authenticity of the texts they received in to their New Testament, to ensure they were apostolic. There was a remarkable consensus very early on (probably before the second century) about what was, and wasn't, considered canonical (Scripture) by the Christians.

 

We also know, historically, that the Ethiopians (in part because they were more removed geographically from the Pauline/Johannine churches) didn't participate in these discussions. They simply took the books they had, decided to consider them Scripture independently, and that was that. They weren't nearly as rigorous our concerned about the question of canonicity as compared to the other Christian churches.

 

Thus, if there are differences in the Ethiopian canon (and there are) it's not because they had some special insight that the other Christians didn't. It's because they weren't critically examining or deliberating the status of these texts the same way the Pauline, Johannine, and Petrine churches were.

 

So, then, here's the biggie. If it's not Scripture, why does Jude not only quote the book, but actually attribute the quote to Enoch, who he calls a prophet seven generations removed from Adam?

 

Well, first it's worth noting that even the book of Enoch indicates how it was supposedly written by Enoch. It describes the way these "sayings" or the "visions" of Enoch were supposed to be preserved. First, Enoch tells Methuselah about his "visions," and writes them down for him in "books" and urges Methuselah to pass it along to his sons (we see Methusela doing this with his brothers, later in the book) (1 Enoch 82:1-3).

 

However, in this text, it happens long before the birth of Noah, and well before the flood. If such books were ever written, they weren't likely preserved or taken on the Ark. Not to mention, these weren't likely "books" at all, but scrolls, and there's some question as to whether scrolls like this were available at this time in history (and it's just as unlikely that they had a complex written language back then capable of recording this kind of detail).

 

Nonetheless, suppose these books did exist. If such texts were taken by Noah on the Ark, and passed on to his sons, it's remarkable that nothing is mentioned or quoted from these texts in the Old Testament. If there was an authoritative text dating back this far, wouldn't we expect to see it quoted, or at least mentioned in the Old Testament books?

 

That said, is it possible that these books (1 Enoch is a collection of books, not a single cohesive work) actually reflect an oral tradition that was passed on from the time of Enoch? For sure, but the language and themes of the book itself are more akin to what we'd expect from post-Exilic Jewish people, not a pre-diluvian ancestor of Noah.

 

It's also likely that Enoch is chosen as the "voice" for these texts because (1) he did not die, and was taken up into heaven) and he's writing in advance of a time when God was soon to judge the earth, connecting Enoch (in proximity to the judgment that followed) in parallel with the Jewish people at the time who were anticipating a new judgment, and apocalypse, in the future where they'd see their oppressors meet God's wrath.

 

However, because there may still be some truth that some of what was included in 1 Enoch was based on oral tradition, it's possible that certain elements of the book do have origins in the actual, Biblical, Enoch. It would be remarkable, for sure, considering the generations of godlessness that sometimes separated Noah, from Abraham, and the sons of Abraham from the Jews of the post-Exilic era... but oral tradition, in an oral society, is a remarkable thing.

 

In that respect, even if Jude might have known that 1 Enoch wasn't actually written by Enoch as a pious Jew (Jude is the brother of James, brother of Jesus) he likely recognized oral tradition as valid, and saw the book if 1 Enoch as a record of oral tradition, later composed by Jews who were simply preserving those traditions in writing.

 

All that said, it's clear that 1 Enoch should not be considered Scripture simply because Jude quotes it. Paul quotes from Greek Philosophers, but merely quoting them doesn't make them Scripture. A pastor might quote C.S. Lewis in a sermon, but that doesn't mean he's elevating C.S. Lewis' writings to the level of Scripture. The New Testament writers, likewise, quote things that were known at the time, and circulating in their communities. This doesn't automatically elevate those texts to the status of Scripture (except for the specific quote used, since that NT book that quotes it is Scripture).

 

The truth is, we can't be totally sure how much the Ethiopic text was altered through the years. The Ethiopic text tradition isn't known for being as careful or rigorous in their preservation of texts as most of the New Testament copyists and scribes were. It's wholly possible that some sections in 1 Enoch (as we have it) weren't written until much, much, later... even into the early medieval period. We just don't have enough of a textual tradition to do the same kind of analysis of 1 Enoch that we can do with the New Testament books.

 

I realize this was a pretty dense e-mail. I also wrote most of this from memory (I glanced at a few of my sources) so feel free to double-check what I'm saying with your own research. If you want to go deeper into the issues/text I'd suggest George W. E. Nickelsburg's commentary on 1 Enoch, published in the Hermenia commentary series, 2001.

 

What I wouldn't do, though, is pay too much attention to what someone said about it on your Facebook feed, or what you saw on the History Channel.

 

1 Enoch is an incredibly interesting book, especially when it comes to angels and demons (and I'm consulting it for some fodder for The Unfallen series) but at the same time, we need to exercise some caution when examining these texts. I certainly won't consider it Scripture, and we probably shouldn't base our hope (or views of the end-times) on what we see here. It is nonetheless interesting to read, particularly to get an idea of the kind of "apocalyptic fervor" at the time, and it can shed some light on other books of a similar genre (e.g. Revelations).

 

I know this wasn't the most devotional e-mail I've sent out, but I hope you found it interesting. It seems like I've heard a lot more about this book lately (in just the last few years) than ever before. It helps to have a little bit of an understanding what it is, so when someone mentions it, we know what they're taking about :)

 

God Bless,

Judah