Readers' Questions: Why Wasn't The Book Of Enoch Included In The Bible?

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Readers’ question: Why wasn’t the Book of Enoch included in the Bible?

I don’t know if you caught it in the sentence above, but several of you have asked me to answer this question. It seems that lately the Book of Enoch, otherwise known as Enoch 1, has been getting a lot of attention. I cannot begin to count the number of YouTube videos and articles that have flooded the internet either praising this book as prophecy or condemning it as blasphemy, and the controversy over it seems to be heating up as experts on all sides are chiming.  And since this is the internet, a lot of non-experts have been happy to join in too!

The question, as most of you presented it to me, is easy to answer. “Why wasn’t the Book of Enoch included in the Bible?”  One of the Jewish tests for canonicity (read that worthy of being included in the Bible) is that a book had to be written to all generations. Now if, we read the first two verses of Enoch, we will find:

The words of the blessing of Enoch according to which he blessed the chosen and the righteous who must be present on the day of distress which is appointed for the removal of all the wicked and impious. And Enoch answered and said, “There was a righteous man whose eyes were opened by the Lord and he saw a holy vision in the heavens which the angels showed me. And I heard everything from them and I understood what I saw, but not for this generation, but for a distant generation which will come.”

So pretty much, the Book of Enoch excludes itself as it was not written for all generation, “but for a distant generation which will come.” But I don’t think that this is really what y’all wanted to know, so I am going to answer the question I think you meant to ask: Should we, as Bible believing Christians, be reading the Book of Enoch?

Hold on to your seats, this is where it starts to get a little more complex.

We know from other writings that the Book of Enoch was a pretty big deal. Ancient writers often referred to it in their work, and when I say ancient writers I am talking about some pretty big names in Church history. Names like: Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement, and Ambrose. However, times were changing, and not unlike today, the main attack centered on the supernatural elements within the Bible. “Why were grown men reciting fairy tales, and believing in ghost stories? Hadn’t they figured out that this was modern age and that we needed to be rational and stop putting credence in such outdated texts?” If any of that sounds familiar, it is because it is the same arguments running around the internet today. It seems that in over 2000 years of existence, the opposition to the Christian faith has yet to come up with any better arguments either, but moving on.

So in an effort to tone down the more fantastical elements of the Bible certain stories were explained away, and the main one is found in Genesis 6.

When man had begun to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men of old, the men of renown.

If you continue reading, you will see that we are looking the events leading up to the flood. When we study this passage in the church, we often skim by it and talk about how evil people were being at this time and that is why God had to flood the earth, or you are told that the “sons of God” were the sons of Seth and the “daughters of men” were the daughters of that wretched murderer Cain.

Well, uh, yeah, about that? That isn’t what the text says.

A rule that every serious student of the Bible should follow is “Scripture interprets Scripture.” This simply means that when a word or phrase is used in one passage and it has an ambiguous meaning, you should look at other passages where the same word or phrase is used to determine what it means. When we encounter the phrase “sons of God” in other parts of the Bible, we find that is always refers to angels. Now, go back and reread that passage, but this time use the word “angel” instead of “sons of God”. See why it is so disturbing? And why some might want to tone it down?

Cut back to Enoch. The book of Enoch contains what is essentially a retelling of the Flood narrative with greater detail, and he doesn’t pull any punches. He plainly states that the “sons of God” were angels. He recounts conversations that he had with both angels who remained in service to God and with the fallen angels. He records the fallen angels’ punishment, and how he relayed messages between them and God. To be honest, it’s some pretty out there stuff that will blow your mind if you believe that the “sons of God” were really the sons of Seth.

Accepting what was then a new view of Scripture, and the flood in particular, people stopped reading the Book of Enoch, reading it was eventually banned by the church, and for awhile, it seemed to have been lost altogether. Enter James Bruce, and explorer in Africa, who made his way into Ethiopia. The history of the Ethiopian church is fascinating, but for now all we need to know is that they developed essentially without any outside influences after the fifth century AD. This meant they didn’t get the memo that they should do away with the Book of Enoch. During his time there, Bruce managed to secure three copies of the Book of Enoch. All of this went down in 1773, but it would take almost fifty years for the first translation to be made.

Since that time there have been many who claim that the Book of Enoch must have been written by Christian due to all the typically Christian references that are in the book. Others claim that it was, in fact, originally a Hebrew text but that Christians had inserted various passages in order to make it appear more Christian and less Jewish. However, some of this controversy is dying down as at least ten fragments from the Book of Enoch were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls verifying those passages as authentic to the original text.

I know, great history lesson, but that still doesn’t answer the question: Should we, as Bible believing Christians, be reading the Book of Enoch?

My answer is yes, but with caution. Here is why.

If you read the book of Jude, that single page book right before you get to Revelation, you will find this:

It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes down with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgement on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds and ungodliness that they have committed, in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

Nowhere else in the Bible to learn that Enoch prophesied. In fact if you read his story in Genesis 5:21-23, you are going to find one of the shortest and most amazing stories recorded of man. He lived, had a son, walked with God, and then “he was not for God took him.” What crazy, but utterly fascinating way to be remembered!

But here in Jude, we do see that he prophesied, and we have reason to believe that his prophesies were credible and respected. If that is not enough for you flip back a few pages 2 Peter 2:4, 5:

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them down into Tartarus and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until judgement, if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;

Nowhere else in the Bible do you find anything close to this, but you do find it in the Book of Enoch. Some scholars believe that these verses are just the tip of the iceberg that proves that the Book of Enoch is a valid record of a supernatural revelation given to Enoch.

But before we jump to that conclusion, let’s consider a few things. Throughout this piece I have used various expressions common to our time and culture. You skimmed right by them because you are familiar with these expression, because they are everywhere, and they did not signify any type of connection to another writing. Why would we suppose that every time an ancient writer used the same words as his contemporaries he was doing more than I? So I think we should use restraint when using similar words to prove a connection between Enoch and the Bible. That being said, neither should we dismiss almost exact quotes of any significant length. It’s called balance, and that is always a good thing.

The second thing we should consider is the fact that the Book of Enoch did not enjoy the same protection that the canonical books of the Bible did. The text may well have been tampered with. For if the original story was an actual account of what Enoch said, then his account is thousands upon thousands of years old, and even our oldest manuscripts do not come close to the time of authorship.

The third thing to consider, if knowing Enoch was necessary for the practices of faith and salvation, it would have been included in the Bible. So in reality, it has little bearing on Christianity today.

So back to the question: Should we, as Bible believing Christians, be reading the Book of Enoch?
Yes, but with caution.

My personal beliefs are that the text we have today is based on an earlier work. I believe that Enoch did prophesy, and I think his words carried weight and authority as attested to by Jude. I believe that by studying this book we learn much about the culture preceding and during the time of Christ’s life. I think it shows how willing the ancient audience was to accept the supernatural and divine intervention in this life, and I think we can learn from that. After all, our God is supernatural, our salvation is supernatural, and our entry into his eternal presence will be amazingly supernatural, why would we deny that it can be seen in this world?

I urge caution because, honestly, I haven’t taken the time to pick the book apart or to thoroughly examine it for ideas or beliefs counter to the teachings within the Bible – the book that we have been commanded to honor and obey as God’s holy word. I urge caution because we should never put an extra-biblical text above the Bible. I also urge caution because most of you need to dive deeper into the Book you can trust before you start tampering with something that may not be fully trustworthy – for how will you know a lie if you don’t first know the truth?