Biblexika

Book of Enoch (1 Enoch)

abrahamicgeez~300 BCE - 100 CE

Translation: R.H. Charles (1917) (public-domain)

Overview

The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) is one of the most important Jewish texts outside the Hebrew Bible and one of the most significant documents for understanding the New Testament. Named for Enoch, the seventh from Adam in Genesis (5:21–24), who 'walked with God and was taken by God,' it is a collection of five distinct apocalyptic works composed between roughly 300 BCE and 100 CE and surviving complete only in the Ethiopic (Ge'ez) language, though Aramaic fragments were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. 1 Enoch is part of the canonical Bible in Ethiopian Christianity and is quoted as scripture in the New Testament Letter of Jude (14–15).

The text's significance for New Testament scholarship is difficult to overstate. It provides the most developed background for Jesus's use of 'Son of Man' as a self-designation — a title the Gospels preserve as his most common and distinctive self-reference. It explains the specific language Peter and Jude use about fallen angels. It illuminates the throne room imagery of Revelation. And Jude's direct quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9 as prophecy demonstrates that at least some early Christians regarded 1 Enoch as authoritative prophetic scripture.

As a composite text spanning three centuries of Jewish apocalyptic writing, 1 Enoch also functions as a window into the extraordinary creativity and diversity of Second Temple Judaism. Its five sections — the Book of the Watchers, the Book of Similitudes, the Astronomical Book, the Book of Dream Visions, and the Epistle of Enoch — preserve traditions about the origins of evil, the structure of the cosmos, the periodization of history, the nature of the afterlife, and the coming judgment that together constitute one of the richest bodies of pre-rabbinic Jewish theology outside the Hebrew Bible itself.

Bible connections
  • Jude 6, 14-15 (direct quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9; fallen Watchers)
  • 2 Peter 2:4 (angels imprisoned awaiting judgment)
  • Matthew 26:64 (Son of Man at the right hand of Power)
  • Daniel 7:13-14 (Son of Man coming with the clouds)
  • Genesis 6:1-4 (sons of God and human women)
  • Revelation 4-5 (heavenly throne room with the Lamb)
Key terms
Watchers– divine beings (Aramaic: Irin) who descended from heaven, married human women, and corrupted the earth; the mythology behind 'sons of God' in Genesis 6
Son of Man– a pre-existent heavenly figure in the Book of Similitudes who sits on the throne of glory and will judge all humanity; essential background for Jesus's self-designation
Nephilim– the violent giant offspring of the Watchers and human women, whose corruption of the earth precipitates the divine judgment of the flood
Pseudepigrapha– texts attributed to ancient biblical figures (here Enoch) as a literary device to claim prophetic authority
Did you know?

1 Enoch is the only non-Hebrew-Bible book quoted as prophecy in the New Testament. Jude 14-15 explicitly cites it as a prophecy of Enoch 'the seventh from Adam,' making it essential for understanding what texts New Testament authors considered authoritative. The complete text was unknown to Western scholars until 1773, when the explorer James Bruce brought Ethiopic manuscripts back from Ethiopia.