10 Facts About the Book of Enoch (Plus What Christians Can Learn)
The Book of Enoch is one of the most talked-about books that isn't in the Bible. It claims to record the visions of Enoch, the man who "walked with God" in Genesis 5, and one of its lines is quoted in the New Testament. Yet almost every church in the world leaves it out.
Here are ten facts worth knowing about it, and what Christians can take from it.
1. Enoch didn't write it
Enoch lived before the Flood. The Book of Enoch was written thousands of years later, by Jewish authors, between roughly 300 BC and the first century AD. Writing under the name of a famous figure from the past was a common practice at the time. Scholars call books like this pseudepigrapha, meaning "falsely attributed writings".
2. It's really five books in one
The Book of Enoch most people mean, often called 1 Enoch, has 108 chapters, and it's a collection rather than a single work:
| Section | Chapters | What it's about |
|---|---|---|
| The Book of the Watchers | 1–36 | Fallen angels, the giants, and Enoch's journeys through heaven and earth |
| The Book of Parables | 37–71 | Visions of judgment and a heavenly "Son of Man" |
| The Astronomical Book | 72–82 | The movements of the sun, moon and stars, and a calendar |
| The Book of Dream Visions | 83–90 | Israel's history retold with animals as symbols |
| The Epistle of Enoch | 91–108 | Warnings to the wicked and comfort for the righteous |
The sections were written at different times. The Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book are the oldest, and the Book of Parables is the youngest.
3. There are three different "Books of Enoch"
1 Enoch is the famous one. 2 Enoch, also called the Secrets of Enoch, survives only in Old Church Slavonic. 3 Enoch is a Hebrew work written several centuries after Christ. They are separate books from different times and places, so it's worth checking which one someone means.
4. The New Testament quotes it
The Book of Jude, near the end of the Bible, quotes a prophecy of Enoch that closely matches 1 Enoch 1:9:
And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
— Jude 1:14-15 (KJV)
This is the strongest argument people make for the book. But quoting a book isn't the same as calling it Scripture. Paul quotes pagan Greek poets in Acts 17:28 and Titus 1:12, and no one thinks their poems belong in the Bible. Jude found a true word in the book and used it.
5. It expands the strange story in Genesis 6
Genesis 6:1-4 tells, very briefly, of "the sons of God" taking human wives and of "giants in the earth in those days". The Book of the Watchers turns those four verses into a long story. Two hundred angels, called Watchers, come down on Mount Hermon, take wives, and father a race of giants. Their leaders teach humanity forbidden arts: an angel named Azazel shows men how to make swords and armour, and women how to use cosmetics. Violence fills the earth, and God sends the Flood.
Some New Testament verses about fallen angels sound similar, such as these:
And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
— Jude 1:6 (KJV)
2 Peter 2:4 says something similar. Christians still disagree about who "the sons of God" in Genesis 6 were: fallen angels, or the godly line of Seth. The Book of Enoch is the oldest surviving source for the angel view.
6. Copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls
In the caves at Qumran, near the Dead Sea, archaeologists found Aramaic fragments of several copies of the Book of Enoch. They show that it was widely read by Jews in the centuries just before Jesus. Every section turned up except one: no trace of the Book of Parables has been found there.
7. The full text survives only in Ethiopia
For more than a thousand years the book was lost to most of the world. It survived complete only in Ge'ez, the ancient language of Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church still counts it as part of its Bible, as does the Eritrean Orthodox Church. Only fragments survive in Greek and Aramaic.
The book returned to Europe in 1773, when the Scottish explorer James Bruce brought Ethiopian copies home. Richard Laurence published the first English translation in 1821.
8. It promotes a 364-day calendar
The Astronomical Book describes a year of exactly 364 days, made of 52 weeks, so that every feast falls on the same day of the week each year. The community behind the Dead Sea Scrolls followed a calendar like this, which put them at odds with the calendar used at the Temple in Jerusalem.
9. It speaks of a heavenly "Son of Man"
The Book of Parables describes a figure called the "Son of Man" and the "Elect One", who sits on a throne of glory and judges the world. "Son of Man" was the title Jesus used for Himself more than any other, drawing on Daniel 7:13. Because no copy of the Parables has been found at Qumran, scholars still debate whether this section was written before or after Jesus' ministry.
10. The early church was divided over it
Some early Christian writers valued the book highly. The Epistle of Barnabas, written around the early second century, quotes it as Scripture, and Tertullian argued that it should be accepted. But most leaders disagreed. Augustine said the book was too old and too uncertain to be trusted, and Jerome noted that many rejected Jude's letter precisely because it quoted Enoch. In the end only the Ethiopian church kept it. For more on how that happened, read why Enoch isn't in the Bible.
What Christians can learn from the Book of Enoch
It helps you read your Bible in context. The New Testament was written in a world where books like this were well known. Knowing the Watchers story makes passages like Jude 1:6 and 2 Peter 2:4 easier to understand.
It shows the hope of Jesus' day. The book is full of longing for God to judge evil and put the world right, the same longing you hear in the Gospels.
It's a lesson in discernment. The church didn't reject the book because it was dangerous, but because it couldn't be shown to come from God. You can read it the way you'd read any old Christian or Jewish writing: with interest, with care, and with the Bible as the final word.
It points back to the real Enoch. The Bible's own portrait of Enoch is tiny, but it may be the greater lesson: a man who "walked with God", who "pleased God", and whom God took home. Read every verse about Enoch in the Bible.