Book of Enoch - Source for Bible Writers

The 7th generation from Adam, Enoch is one of only 3 people who never die; Melchizedek, Enoch and Elijah; father to Methuselah and a proven prophet approved by God.

Other notable connections to Biblical texts include: Enoch's prayer; The heavens are Your throne and the Earth Your footstool. You have created all things and nothing is too difficult for You....nothing is hidden from your sight. compare Isaiah 66:1-2a Thus says the Lord, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? “For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the Lord."

Also Acts 7"49-50 ‘Heaven is My throne, And earth is the footstool of My feet; What kind of house will you build for Me?’ says the Lord, ‘Or what place is there for My repose? ‘Was it not My hand which made all these things?’ Also Jeremiah 32:17 ‘Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You, 

Enoch's Prayer - "Hide not your face from me O Lord, hear the prayer of your servant. compare Psalms 13:1; 27:9; 44:24; 29:17; 88:14; 102:2; 143:7.

Enoch records ten thousand times then thousand worshippers around the throne of God. And that the names of the wicked will be blotted out from the book of Life. This suggests that every person born on the earth is recorded and destined for eternal life, but their persistence in wickedness causes their name to be removed from the book of eternal life.

Enoch records " And now, my son Methuselah, all these things I am recounting to you and writing down for you! and I have revealed to you everything, and given you books concerning all these: so preserve, my son Methuselah, the books from your fathers hand, and see that you deliver them to the generations of the world.  I have given wisdom to you and to your children and your children that shall be to you, that they may give it to their children for generations, this wisdom that passes their thought."

Knowledge of God would surely have been passed down from Adam to the seventh generation son Enoch. As a dedicated servant of God he is then chosen to receive powerful, accurate prophetic visions of God's future plans, was charged to meticulously write them down, and then to pass them on, with verbal teachings to his son Methuselah, and then to all his sons, to carefully pass these teachings down through generations that follow. Such writings, held back by God until the current time, deserve our attention.

Enoch also adds the revelation that man in his rebellion created sin on the earth.

Although the ideas of Enoch have pervaded Christian thought and tradition for two millennia, the book itself was considered to be “lost” until the 18th century, when European travellers to Africa discovered that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church had preserved a Ge’ez version in its biblical canon. Since then, copies of the book in its original Aramaic have been discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves of Qumran. Portions of the text in Greek and Latin have also survived.

Jude, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter

Jude and 2 Peter are written to address similar situations regarding teachers of false doctrine in the early church. Much of the content in Jude closely resembles 1 Enoch, including a direct quotation from the book. 1 Peter's letter addressed to various Greek churches, also draws upon teachings found in Enoch's book. 2 Peter, in turn, copies or paraphrases much of Jude and a small portion of 1 Peter, as well as incorporating Enoch's material directly.

Comparing the Texts

Looking at some of the more significant parallels between these texts. Jude starts off with a greeting (paralleled by 2 Peter 3:1–2) followed by an introduction about false teachers that is also adapted by 2 Peter.

Jude 4
For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ

.2 Peter 2:1b–2
…there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of them the way of truth will be maligned.

In addition to paraphrasing Jude’s general warning about the intrusion of false teachers, 2 Peter reuses some of Jude’s distinctive keywords — “denying the Master” and engaging in “licentiousness”. Then Jude proceeds with some historical examples of destructive teachings and their consequences. First, there is an allusion to Korah’s rebellion:

Jude 5
Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, that the Lord, who once for all saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.2 Peter 2:1a, 3b
But false prophets also arose among the people…Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

2 Peter’s allusion is worded more vaguely, but is unmistakeable when compared with Jude. Then we come to Enoch’s fallen angels and their imprisonment as they await the day of judgment:

Jude 6
And the angels who did not keep their own position, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great day. 

2 Peter 2:4a
For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartaros and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment;

Jude 6 is a summary of the extra-biblical tradition found in 1 Enoch:

And they were two hundred who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon. (1 Enoch 6:6)

Fetter him hand and foot and cast him into darkness… And on the day of the great judgment he will be led off to the blazing fire. (1 Enoch 10:4b, 6)

Bind them for seventy generations in valleys of the earth, until the great day of their judgment… (1 Enoch 11:12)

And I asked the angel of peace who went with me, “For whom are these chains being prepared?” And he said to me, “These are being prepared for the host of Azazel, that they might take them and throw them into the abyss of complete judgment, and with jagged rocks they will cover their jaws, as the Lord of Spirits commanded. (1 Enoch 54:4–5)

…an everlasting judgment and the time of the great judgment will be exacted from all the Watchers of heaven. (1 Enoch 91:15)

Tartaros, where the Titans were imprisoned in Greek mythology, is also mentioned in 1 Enoch 20:2.

Enoch directly links the activities of the fallen angels (Watchers) to the flood of Noah, which was needed in order to eliminate the Giants, the angelic offspring of the Watchers. 2 Peter includes this association between the imprisoned angels and the Flood, which Jude omits. In this case, however, the passage is a parallel of one we find in 1 Peter.

1 Peter 3:19–20
…he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. 

2 Peter 2:5
And if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; 

Jude proceeds to compare the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah with the actions of the fallen angels (and 2 Peter follows suit).

Jude 7
Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as [the angels], indulged in sexual immorality and went after other flesh, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

2 Peter 2:6
and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly;

This too is an indirect reference to 1 Enoch, since the canonical story in Genesis never associates Sodom and Gomorrah with the sexual immorality of fallen angels. Whereas the Old Testament tends to describe the sin of Sodom in terms of injustice and inhospitality, later apocryphal writings (notably Jubilees) emphasis sexual immorality. Jude adopts this latter approach, explicitly associating their wickedness with that of the fallen angels in Enoch. The whole notion of eternal fire as a means of punishment for judgement of the wicked is also a frequent theme in Enoch.

Then Jude charges the false teachers the curious sin of “slandering the Glorious Ones” — distinctive language copied by 2 Peter, but found nowhere else in the New Testament, however, similar phrases appear in Enoch and other apocrypha. The expression “glorious ones” also appears in 2 Enoch.

Jude 8–9
Yet in the same way these dreamers also defile the flesh, reject authority, and slander the Glorious Ones. But when the archangel Michael contended with the devil and disputed about the body of Moses, he did not dare to bring a condemnation of slander against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

2 Peter 2:10-11
…especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority. Bold and willful, they are not afraid to slander the Glorious Ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring against them a slanderous judgment from the Lord.

Jude’s reference to Michael and the devil is apparently based on another apocryphal work known as the Assumption of Moses. 2 Peter, for a number of possible reasons, drops the reference to Michael and speaks more generally of angels who are “greater in might and power” than the Glorious Ones, yet do not slander them. Jude 10–12a are closely paralleled by 2 Peter 2:12–16, including references to Balaam, derived from extra-biblical traditions. Numerous scholars have identified connections between the Balaam tradition and 1 Enoch.¹ Jude 12b–13 is another passage whose connections with 1 Enoch are usually overlooked.

Jude 12b–13
They [ignorant slanderers] are waterless clouds carried along by the winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the deepest darkness has been reserved forever.2 Peter 2:17a
These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for them the deepest darkness has been reserved.

Enoch 2 describes the orderly signs found in creation: the paths of the heavenly bodies, clouds of dew and rain in winter, trees that bear fruit in spring, and the sea and rivers. Jude describes his opponents as perversions of these signs: waterless clouds, fruitless trees, and wandering stars. Jude’s reference to wandering stars also recalls Enoch 18:15–16, which describes stars that have been imprisoned for disobedience. The “deepest darkness” that has been “reserved forever” again alludes to the eternal darkness where the leader of the angels is imprisoned in Enoch 10:4. The next two verses contain Jude’s famous quotation of Enoch 1:9:

Jude 14–15
It was also about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “See, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict everyone of all the deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”1 Enoch 1:9
Behold, he comes with ten thousand holy ones to execute judgment upon all, and he will destroy all the ungodly and convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, and of all the arrogant and hard words which sinners have uttered against him.

2 Peter 3 contains additional material with themes shared by 1 Enoch. References to a future judgment of fire and the earth melting (2 Peter 3:5–12) are reminiscent of a similar passage in Enoch 1:6–7 — “and the high hills shall be laid low and shall melt like wax in the flame”, which may find its source in Micah 1:4.  The idea of a new heaven and earth (2 Peter 3:13), which is also recorded in Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22, is a theme originating in 1 Enoch as well:

I will transform the heaven and make it an eternal blessing and light; and I will transform the earth and make it a blessing; and I will cause my elect ones to dwell upon it; but sinners and evildoers shall not set foot thereon. (1 Enoch 45:4b–5)

The first heaven shall pass away, and a new heaven shall appear. (1 Enoch 91:16a)

1 Peter and Enoch

The epistle of 1 Peter, contains numerous references to Enoch. One is the revelation of a prophet to whom heavenly secrets are revealed — secrets that the angels themselves wish to know. In Enoch 16:3, pursuing such secrets is one of the sins the Watchers are accused of.

1 Peter 1:10–12
Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry,  inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look!1 Enoch 16:3
You were in heaven, and no mystery was revealed to you; but a stolen mystery you learned; and this you made known to the women in your hardness of heart; and through this mystery the women and men are multiplying evils on the earth.

Much of 1 Peter’s material also draws from the section of 1 Enoch known as the Book of Parables. This messianic text refers frequently to the coming of the righteous Son of Man who will judge the world — a truth expounded throughout the New Testament. 1 Peter 1:20 and 4:5 provide some good examples:

1 Peter 1:20
He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.1 Enoch 48:6–7a
For this (reason) he was chosen and hidden in his presence, before the world was created and forever. And the wisdom of the Lord of Spirits has revealed him to the holy and the righteous; for he has preserved the lot of the righteous.

1 Peter 4:5
But they will have to give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead.1 Enoch 69:27
And he sat on the throne of his glory, and the whole judgment was given to the Son of Man, and he will make sinners vanish and perish from the face of the earth.

1 Peter 3:18–20 describes Christ as having “made a proclamation” to the disobedient spirits who were in prison during the days of Noah. Many commentaries on 1 Peter acknowledge that Christ is being described as a type of Enoch, since Enoch is given the task of delivering God’s proclamation to the imprisoned Watchers during the time of Noah in Enoch 11–13.

1 Peter 3:18–20
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Enoch 12:4–5, 13:3
Enoch, righteous scribe, go and say to the watchers of heaven—who forsook the highest heaven, the sanctuary of their eternal station, and defiled themselves with women. As the sons of earth do, so they did and took wives for themselves. And they worked great desolation on the earth— ‘You will have no peace or forgiveness.’ Then I went and spoke to all of them together. And they were all afraid, and trembling and fear seized them.

Although there have been other interpretations of this passage in 1 Peter, it should not be overlooked that the corresponding reference to the saving of Noah in 2 Peter occurs directly after the reference to the angels imprisoned in Tartaros. This certainly has implications for how the author of 2 Peter understood this passage.

1 Peter 3:19–20 — An American Translation (AAT), 1939

In it Enoch went and preached even to those spirits that were in prison, who had once been disobedient, when in Noah’s time God in his patience waited for the ark to be made ready, in which a few people, eight in all, were brought safely through the water.

1 Peter 3:19–20 — Moffatt, New Translation (MNT), 1922

It was in the Spirit that Enoch also went and preached to the imprisoned spirits who had disobeyed at the time when God’s patience held out during the construction of the ark in the days of Noah — the ark by which only a few, souls, eight in all, were brought safely through the water.

The Impact of Enoch

It is remarkable that a book so influential on Christianity and so widely read by early church fathers could have been completely forgotten by most of Christianity during the Reformation. It's apocalyptic revelations of the Spiritual battles, the seriousness of the end of days judgement are vital to the message of the Gospel. Even today, Christians who have never heard of the book know the revelation of the fallen angels without knowing their source. Christian truths and revelations like the Son of Man, Paradise, fallen angels, and the day of Judgment all owe a great deal to the book of Enoch. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has done us a great service by preserving this book in their Bible.