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Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 1 - Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments #1
1 Enoch [Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch]
The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch) is an ancient Jewish religious work, ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, although modern scholars estimate the older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) to date from about 300 BC, and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably to the end of the first century BC.
It is not part of the biblical canon as used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel. Most Christian denominations and traditions may accept the Books of Enoch as having some historical or theological interest or significance, but they generally regard the Books of Enoch as non-canonical or non-inspired.[ It is regarded as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, but not by any other Christian group.
It is wholly extant only in the Ge'ez language, with Aramaic fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few Greek and Latin fragments. For this and other reasons, the traditional Ethiopian belief is that the original language of the work was Ge'ez, whereas non-Ethiopian scholars tend to assert that it was first written in either Aramaic or Hebrew; E. Isaac suggests that the Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew. No Hebrew version is known to have survived. The book itself claims to be written by Enoch himself before the Biblical Flood.
The authors of the New Testament were familiar with the content of the story and influenced by it: a short section of 1 Enoch (1 En 1:9 or 1 En 2:1 depending on the translation) is quoted in the New Testament (Letter of Jude 1:14–15), and is attributed there to "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" (1 En 60:8). The text was also utilised by the community that originally collected the Dead Sea Scrolls.
It is not part of the biblical canon as used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel. Most Christian denominations and traditions may accept the Books of Enoch as having some historical or theological interest or significance, but they generally regard the Books of Enoch as non-canonical or non-inspired.[ It is regarded as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, but not by any other Christian group.
It is wholly extant only in the Ge'ez language, with Aramaic fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few Greek and Latin fragments. For this and other reasons, the traditional Ethiopian belief is that the original language of the work was Ge'ez, whereas non-Ethiopian scholars tend to assert that it was first written in either Aramaic or Hebrew; E. Isaac suggests that the Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew. No Hebrew version is known to have survived. The book itself claims to be written by Enoch himself before the Biblical Flood.
The authors of the New Testament were familiar with the content of the story and influenced by it: a short section of 1 Enoch (1 En 1:9 or 1 En 2:1 depending on the translation) is quoted in the New Testament (Letter of Jude 1:14–15), and is attributed there to "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" (1 En 60:8). The text was also utilised by the community that originally collected the Dead Sea Scrolls.
85 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1983
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March 11, 2026
*BACKGROUND:
I started properly making my own way through The Bible back just about 4 years ago, in March 2022. Over the course of about 2 years (with a couple of long breaks in that time), I managed to make it through the Torah (or Pentateuch), and the book of Joshua. It has now been approaching 2 years since then, and I have finally opted to restart and take a more studious approach to my personal Bible reading and study.
As of 25 February, 2026, I have indeed restarted The Bible, and I have been reading it alongside other miscellaneous study materials and commentaries, plus other works of similar writing - which will include all of the major Deuterocanon of other Christian traditions (Catholic, various Orthodox, & LDS, mainly). I may one day include additional Pseudepigripha and the like with my readings, but for now, the primary canon(s) are mainly what I want to focus on. Anyway: as I am LDS, one of my main resources for working through my study is the "Come, Follow Me" program, and that incorporates parts of The Pearl of Great Price (PoGP) with early "Genesis" - which makes sense, because the books of "Moses" and "Abraham" in part play in concordance/expansion with said early portion of The Bible. So I started the PoGP and "Genesis" around the same time.
*WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH 1 ENOCH?
Well, one thing that really struck me about reading "Moses" in particular (and a couple bits of Joseph Smith Translation for particular verses in Genesis (which are incorporated into my edition of The Bible as footnotes; they notably do NOT replace the text, as some believe)) is how much more of an emphasis the LDS put on the character of Enoch. I found this incredibly fascinating, because Enoch isn't really focused on in “Genesis” at all. He gets a somewhat random 1-line callout that stands out from the rest of the contextual genealogy that is really intriguing, but otherwise there's not really a ton there.
Well, long story short, Enoch gets a LOT more coverage in the PoGP. I wondered at that. And I decided that because I already own a big binding with all the major Apocrypha, and because I was already considering incorporating it into my Old Testament this year, "1 Enoch" would make a fine dive into the apocryphal deep-end! So, after getting through the tale of the flood, I spent a few days working through this, just to see for myself what it's all about, and to see what similarities there are - if any - to the LDS depiction of Enoch. (Side-note: yes, I know that cutting "1 Enoch" into my reading as early as I did puts it out of order with the rest of the books of The Bible, a practice I don't plan to make with any of the other books, but that's okay. After all, the reason I read this now was specifically because of the extra emphasis put on him in "Moses" that I may well have already forgotten about by the time I got the mid-way point of the Old Testament to read this. I made the decision for timely relevance and comparison.)
*SO, WAS 1 ENOCH WORTH IT?
Honestly, I found this book to be very interesting and broadly quite enjoyable, all in all! Commonly into 5 different "sections", so to speak, everybody knows about the 1st section of it - about the Watchers and Nephilim and all - and getting to actually read that firsthand for myself was really cool. There are definitely lots of cool ideas on display here that get the mind turning.
And not only are there lots of cool ideas as a general point, there are also plenty of interesting dynamics that the material has with canonical Christian material - particularly in "Revelation" - on account of sections 2 (and 5 a bit) depicting a lot of very Christ-coded imagery, language, and calls to the forsaking of sin and of active repentance. The amount of parallels between "1 Enoch" and different portions of New Testament literature is actually really intriguing!
Furthermore, there WERE indeed some really thought-provoking parallels to the Enoch found in "Moses", to bring up what I was saying about The Pearl of Great Price. I wouldn't necessarily say there's *a ton* of overlap here, but there are enough similarities to call some things into question! Hell, the same can certainly be said for the text in content of the other versions of Biblical text as well: that there are an absurd amount of really interesting questions to ask and explore answers to based on what "1 Enoch" provides, both on a theological and a historic level. After all, there are no small number of Christians who do believe in "1 Enoch"'s canonicity, and it seems very obvious that many influential people in early Christian history, probably including Paul himself, were familiarity with the book, no matter that it is not usually considered canon today.
And really, the dynamic of comparing and contrasting some of the widely-accepted Christian canon with the different segments of deuterocanon, alongside the (to me) familiar LDS canon, is one of the things about properly reading and studying The Bible for myself that excites me the most. Just the explorative nature of that process, I suppose.
Anyway, there is a lot that still went over my head while reading "1 Enoch", and not all of it was always so engaging. Section 3, for example, is just the laying out of the Enochic calendar. It is somewhat interesting insofar as mild insight about how ancient cultures managed to get so close to what we know to be accurate is kind of inherently so, but otherwise doesn't really do much. There are also several themes and types of vision content that sort of reoccur a time or two throughout that gets tedious in typical biblical (notice I did not capitalize that this time) fashion.
There are also some fragments of other material that seems to been edited in during compiling at one point in time or another, fragments typically called "The Book of Noah", basically, which don't necessarily make up their own segment of "1 Enoch" at large, but which appear in part at the end of 2nd section and in some capacity as addendum to the 5th section. (I believe the portion in section 2 is always included in renditions of the text, but the last few chapters of the section 5 - the end of the entire book - are sometimes not included, or merely included as appendix, depending on the version.) These sections definitely come off pretty random and break the overall flow of most of the rest of the book for me. I somewhat "objectively" have to dock a personal rating of the material on account of some of these seemingly extraneous moments as well as the 3rd section in general.
Yet, there's so much really cool stuff. We already mentioned briefly the famous part of "1 Enoch" being about the Watchers and Nephilim, in part, and I also mentioned other portions that involve a messianic figure, which were all really absorbing and fascinating to me, but there are some other neat moments as well. For example: Section 1 includes a journey through the cosmos which is very reminiscent of Dante's "The Divine Comedy"; Section 4 deals *very heavily* in allegory that depicts no small amount of the Old Testament in ways that took a lot of brain-power to put together. There are certainly other things that I'm already forgetting in the midst of what I experience on the whole here, but I definitely found this be a very engaging, thought-provoking experience.
*CONCLUSION:
I honestly had a very enjoyable time reading "1 Enoch", and I fully intend to read it more in the future, continuing to explore it alongside as a nifty extra-Biblical resource for myself moving forward. There's so much that I missed, so much I enjoyed, and so much more I want to dig into that I can't imagine never reading this again. It was definitely worth the little detour, and I believe it will continue to be worth the detour multiples times as I continue to experience and re-experience scripture and other related writings in the future.
In my opinion, whether or not "1 Enoch" should or shouldn't be in the canon is irrelevant; if you go in knowing what it is and how it fits in historically with scripture, I think it can actually open up some enlightening avenues of further/alternate study study and thought that may help unlock understanding elsewhere. I don't say that to subvert widely-canonical scripture. I say that as somebody interested in the pursuit of spiritual truth, because indeed "truth" can be found nearly anywhere - including in straight-up fiction. (Albert Camus and Stephen King have both made similar comments about fiction being a lie through which real truth emerges, for example. (Paraphrasing.))
Anyway, all I mean to say is that if you are morbidly curious about "1 Enoch", like I was, I can honestly say that I recommend it.
I started properly making my own way through The Bible back just about 4 years ago, in March 2022. Over the course of about 2 years (with a couple of long breaks in that time), I managed to make it through the Torah (or Pentateuch), and the book of Joshua. It has now been approaching 2 years since then, and I have finally opted to restart and take a more studious approach to my personal Bible reading and study.
As of 25 February, 2026, I have indeed restarted The Bible, and I have been reading it alongside other miscellaneous study materials and commentaries, plus other works of similar writing - which will include all of the major Deuterocanon of other Christian traditions (Catholic, various Orthodox, & LDS, mainly). I may one day include additional Pseudepigripha and the like with my readings, but for now, the primary canon(s) are mainly what I want to focus on. Anyway: as I am LDS, one of my main resources for working through my study is the "Come, Follow Me" program, and that incorporates parts of The Pearl of Great Price (PoGP) with early "Genesis" - which makes sense, because the books of "Moses" and "Abraham" in part play in concordance/expansion with said early portion of The Bible. So I started the PoGP and "Genesis" around the same time.
*WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH 1 ENOCH?
Well, one thing that really struck me about reading "Moses" in particular (and a couple bits of Joseph Smith Translation for particular verses in Genesis (which are incorporated into my edition of The Bible as footnotes; they notably do NOT replace the text, as some believe)) is how much more of an emphasis the LDS put on the character of Enoch. I found this incredibly fascinating, because Enoch isn't really focused on in “Genesis” at all. He gets a somewhat random 1-line callout that stands out from the rest of the contextual genealogy that is really intriguing, but otherwise there's not really a ton there.
Well, long story short, Enoch gets a LOT more coverage in the PoGP. I wondered at that. And I decided that because I already own a big binding with all the major Apocrypha, and because I was already considering incorporating it into my Old Testament this year, "1 Enoch" would make a fine dive into the apocryphal deep-end! So, after getting through the tale of the flood, I spent a few days working through this, just to see for myself what it's all about, and to see what similarities there are - if any - to the LDS depiction of Enoch. (Side-note: yes, I know that cutting "1 Enoch" into my reading as early as I did puts it out of order with the rest of the books of The Bible, a practice I don't plan to make with any of the other books, but that's okay. After all, the reason I read this now was specifically because of the extra emphasis put on him in "Moses" that I may well have already forgotten about by the time I got the mid-way point of the Old Testament to read this. I made the decision for timely relevance and comparison.)
*SO, WAS 1 ENOCH WORTH IT?
Honestly, I found this book to be very interesting and broadly quite enjoyable, all in all! Commonly into 5 different "sections", so to speak, everybody knows about the 1st section of it - about the Watchers and Nephilim and all - and getting to actually read that firsthand for myself was really cool. There are definitely lots of cool ideas on display here that get the mind turning.
And not only are there lots of cool ideas as a general point, there are also plenty of interesting dynamics that the material has with canonical Christian material - particularly in "Revelation" - on account of sections 2 (and 5 a bit) depicting a lot of very Christ-coded imagery, language, and calls to the forsaking of sin and of active repentance. The amount of parallels between "1 Enoch" and different portions of New Testament literature is actually really intriguing!
Furthermore, there WERE indeed some really thought-provoking parallels to the Enoch found in "Moses", to bring up what I was saying about The Pearl of Great Price. I wouldn't necessarily say there's *a ton* of overlap here, but there are enough similarities to call some things into question! Hell, the same can certainly be said for the text in content of the other versions of Biblical text as well: that there are an absurd amount of really interesting questions to ask and explore answers to based on what "1 Enoch" provides, both on a theological and a historic level. After all, there are no small number of Christians who do believe in "1 Enoch"'s canonicity, and it seems very obvious that many influential people in early Christian history, probably including Paul himself, were familiarity with the book, no matter that it is not usually considered canon today.
And really, the dynamic of comparing and contrasting some of the widely-accepted Christian canon with the different segments of deuterocanon, alongside the (to me) familiar LDS canon, is one of the things about properly reading and studying The Bible for myself that excites me the most. Just the explorative nature of that process, I suppose.
Anyway, there is a lot that still went over my head while reading "1 Enoch", and not all of it was always so engaging. Section 3, for example, is just the laying out of the Enochic calendar. It is somewhat interesting insofar as mild insight about how ancient cultures managed to get so close to what we know to be accurate is kind of inherently so, but otherwise doesn't really do much. There are also several themes and types of vision content that sort of reoccur a time or two throughout that gets tedious in typical biblical (notice I did not capitalize that this time) fashion.
There are also some fragments of other material that seems to been edited in during compiling at one point in time or another, fragments typically called "The Book of Noah", basically, which don't necessarily make up their own segment of "1 Enoch" at large, but which appear in part at the end of 2nd section and in some capacity as addendum to the 5th section. (I believe the portion in section 2 is always included in renditions of the text, but the last few chapters of the section 5 - the end of the entire book - are sometimes not included, or merely included as appendix, depending on the version.) These sections definitely come off pretty random and break the overall flow of most of the rest of the book for me. I somewhat "objectively" have to dock a personal rating of the material on account of some of these seemingly extraneous moments as well as the 3rd section in general.
Yet, there's so much really cool stuff. We already mentioned briefly the famous part of "1 Enoch" being about the Watchers and Nephilim, in part, and I also mentioned other portions that involve a messianic figure, which were all really absorbing and fascinating to me, but there are some other neat moments as well. For example: Section 1 includes a journey through the cosmos which is very reminiscent of Dante's "The Divine Comedy"; Section 4 deals *very heavily* in allegory that depicts no small amount of the Old Testament in ways that took a lot of brain-power to put together. There are certainly other things that I'm already forgetting in the midst of what I experience on the whole here, but I definitely found this be a very engaging, thought-provoking experience.
*CONCLUSION:
I honestly had a very enjoyable time reading "1 Enoch", and I fully intend to read it more in the future, continuing to explore it alongside as a nifty extra-Biblical resource for myself moving forward. There's so much that I missed, so much I enjoyed, and so much more I want to dig into that I can't imagine never reading this again. It was definitely worth the little detour, and I believe it will continue to be worth the detour multiples times as I continue to experience and re-experience scripture and other related writings in the future.
In my opinion, whether or not "1 Enoch" should or shouldn't be in the canon is irrelevant; if you go in knowing what it is and how it fits in historically with scripture, I think it can actually open up some enlightening avenues of further/alternate study study and thought that may help unlock understanding elsewhere. I don't say that to subvert widely-canonical scripture. I say that as somebody interested in the pursuit of spiritual truth, because indeed "truth" can be found nearly anywhere - including in straight-up fiction. (Albert Camus and Stephen King have both made similar comments about fiction being a lie through which real truth emerges, for example. (Paraphrasing.))
Anyway, all I mean to say is that if you are morbidly curious about "1 Enoch", like I was, I can honestly say that I recommend it.
May 24, 2017
Important reading in Second Temple Jewish literature.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews