The Book of Enoch

by Gavin Jackson

The book of Enoch is a collection of texts written 100-300 years before Jesus' birth and attributed to the Biblical Enoch.

The book is a "pseudepigraphic" work which means that it falsely used Enoch's name. Enoch lived more than 3,000 years before the book was written. "Pseudepigrapha" literally means "falsely ascribed writings," and refers to works that falsely claim to be written by a specific author.

This book bearing Enoch's name is a collection of pseudepigraphic texts and there were many other pseudepigraphic texts circulating between 200 BC and 200 AD, including the Apocryphal writings.

There are those who claim that two verses in the Book of Jude quoting from the book of Enoch, shows that this book is "missing" from the Bible:

14. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
15. 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 14-15

Jude did not mention the "book of Enoch". He didn't write "the book of Enoch says", he quoted Enoch's prophecy. Jude's quote was genuinely something that Enoch prophesied, or the Bible would not attribute it to him.

This quote in Jude is not the only quote in the Bible, that is not from the canon of Scripture. The Apostle Paul quotes Epimenides in Titus 1:12, but that does not mean we should give any additional authority to Epimenides' writings.

It is interesting to note that no scholars believe the book of Enoch to have truly been written by the Enoch in the Bible.

Romans 3:1-2 says that God entrusted the Hebrew Scriptures to the Jews, and according to them, the book of Enoch is not a part of those inspired Scriptures, which they call the Tanakh (Ps 78:5-6).

We should treat the book of Enoch in the same way we do the other Apocryphal writings. Some of what the Apocrypha says is true and correct, but much of it is false and historically inaccurate.

Desiring to seek after hidden knowledge from ancient manuscripts like the book of Enoch is not the Spirit of God, because it just adds and takes away from the Truth of God's Word (Deut. 4:2, Prov. 30:6, Rev. 22:18-19).

Don't be deceived, the very title "The Book of Enoch" is a lie.