A collection of five Jewish works · oldest parts c. 3rd century BC or earlier
1 Enoch
The book Jude quotes by name, the oldest full account of the Watchers, and still not Scripture.
- 108Chapters
- 1,063Verses
Written: Composite work c. 300 BCE - 100 CE; oldest sections (Astronomical Book and Book of Watchers) likely third century BCE · Original language: Aramaic (with possible Hebrew sections)
R. H. Charles translation (1917) · public domain
Read 1 Enoch
R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (1917, SPCK) — public domain. Charles's critical marks are removed for reading; his parenthetical supplied words and square-bracket interpolations are kept. Lettered sub-verses (as at 91:14) are merged into their verse; where Charles prints parallel recensions, the Ethiopic text is given.
Plain answers first
What this book is
1 Enoch is not one book. It is a collection of five separate Jewish writings gathered under the name of Enoch, the man who walked with God and was taken (Genesis 5:24). No one thinks Enoch wrote them; writing in the name of a great figure of the past was a normal and recognized practice in this period.
The five parts are the Book of the Watchers (chapters 1-36), the Parables or Similitudes (37-71), the Astronomical Book (72-82), the Book of Dreams (83-90), and the Epistle of Enoch (91-108). They were written at different times by different hands. Dating is hedged, but the Watchers and the Astronomical Book are usually placed in the third century BC or earlier, which makes parts of this collection older than Daniel. Aramaic copies of most of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. The Parables are the exception: no copy of them turned up at Qumran, and most scholars date that section around the turn of the era.
The Book of the Watchers is the part most readers come for. Two hundred angels descend on Mount Hermon, bind themselves by a mutual oath, and take human wives. Their offspring are giants who devour everything. One of their leaders teaches men to make swords and armor, and women to make cosmetics; another teaches sorcery and the cutting of roots. The earth cries out, the archangels bring the cry before God, and judgment falls. Enoch is sent to the fallen angels with a sentence they cannot appeal, and his intercession for them is refused.
Chapter 15 carries the piece with the longest reach: when the giants die, their spirits do not go where human spirits go. They remain on the earth as evil spirits. That is the demonology that stands behind a great deal of Second Temple Jewish thought, and it is worth knowing when you read the exorcisms in the Gospels.
The complete text survives only in Ge'ez, the ancient language of Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is the one church in the world that receives 1 Enoch as Scripture. This site serves the R. H. Charles translation of 1917, which is in the public domain.
The canon question, honestly
Why it stands outside the 66
1 Enoch was never in the Hebrew Bible, and Jewish tradition did not receive it as Scripture, though clearly many Jews read it. The wider Christian church did not receive it either. Tertullian defended it in the early third century and lost the argument; Augustine wrote that the church rightly excluded books circulating under the names of the ancient patriarchs, precisely because their antiquity could not be verified. The book then dropped almost entirely out of Western view until James Bruce brought Ethiopic copies back to Europe in the 1770s. Only the Ethiopian church has held it as canonical throughout. And there is a plain reason to keep the line firm: this is a collection assembled over centuries and written under a borrowed name, which is a different thing from what the church means when it says Scripture.
Why a student of the 66 should still open it
Why read it — and how
Take the two truths in order, because both are true and neither cancels the other. First: the New Testament touched this book. Jude 14-15 quotes it directly and by name, saying Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints. That is 1 Enoch 1:9, quoted almost word for word. Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 then speak of angels who did not keep their first estate, kept in chains under darkness for judgment, which is the sentence pronounced in 1 Enoch 10 and is not narrated that way anywhere in the Old Testament. Second: quoting a book does not make it Scripture. Paul quotes the Greek poets Aratus, Epimenides, and Menander in Acts 17:28, Titus 1:12, and 1 Corinthians 15:33, and no one has ever proposed adding them to the Bible. Jude used a text his readers knew, and the Spirit made Jude's letter Scripture; the source stayed what it was. That is the honest position: a valued witness the New Testament itself touched, held outside the canon. And its value is real. MannaFest reads Genesis 6:1-4 the way Jude and Peter appear to read it, with the sons of God as heavenly beings, and 1 Enoch is the oldest surviving full account of that reading. It shows us how Jews in the centuries before Christ understood that passage, and it stands behind the angelology, the demonology, and the Son of Man language a first-century reader would have carried into the Gospels.
Start with chapters 1-16 and stop there on the first pass; that is the Watchers, and it is what everything else in the collection gets read against. Read Genesis 6:1-4, Jude 6 and 14-15, and 2 Peter 2:4-5 alongside it, in that order. Then read chapter 15 twice. Keep two habits the whole way. Read it as a witness to what Jews believed, never as a source of doctrine, and never settle a question of faith with a line from it that Scripture does not also say. And expect the collection to be uneven: the Astronomical Book is a long technical calendar, and it is fine to skim it on a first reading.
Doors into the text
Key moments
1 Enoch 1:9, the coming of the Lord with his holy myriads, quoted almost word for word in Jude 14-15.
Two hundred Watchers bind themselves by a curse together so no one can back out, then descend and take wives.
The archangels are dispatched; Azazel is bound in darkness until the day of judgment, language Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 echo.
The spirits of the dead giants remain on the earth and afflict it; the demonology behind much of Second Temple Judaism.
In the Parables a heavenly figure appears before the Ancient of Days; chapter 71 then seems to identify him with Enoch, and the debate over what the Gospels owe this section runs through chapters 37-71.
All of Israel's history retold with the nations as animals, ending in judgment and a new house for the flock.
The disagreement is old — here it is plainly
Where the traditions stand
| Tradition | Where this book stands |
|---|---|
| jewish | non-canonical; the Watchers tradition was actively suppressed in some rabbinic strands but preserved in others |
| anglican | non-canonical |
| catholic | non-canonical |
| protestant | non-canonical; widely studied for historical and theological background |
| eastern orthodox | non-canonical (with the exception of some Ethiopian and Eritrean traditions) |
| eritrean orthodox tewahedo | fully canonical |
| ethiopian orthodox tewahedo | fully canonical |