Description

The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch) is an ancient Jewish religious work, ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah.

It is not regarded as scripture by Jews or any Christian group, apart from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which to this day regards it to be canonical. Western scholars currently assert that its older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) date from about 300 BC and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably was composed at the end of the 1st century BC.

However, Ethiopian scholars generally hold that Ge’ez is the language of the original from which the Greek and Aramaic copies were made, pointing out that it is the only language in which the complete text has yet been found. 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. There is no consensus among Western scholars about the original language: some propose Aramaic, others Hebrew, while the probable thesis according to E. Isaac is that 1 Enoch, as Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew.

A short section of 1 Enoch (1En1:9) is quoted in the New Testament (Letter of Jude 1:14-15), and there apparently attributed to “Enoch the Seventh from Adam” (1En60:8). It is argued that all the writers of the New Testament were familiar with it and were influenced by it in thought and diction.

The first part of Book of Enoch describes the fall of the Watchers, the angels who fathered the Nephilim.

The remainder of the book describes Enoch’s visits to Heaven in the form of travels, visions and dreams, and his revelations.