Weird Stuff in the Bible

Did Jesus Quote from the Book of Enoch?
Matthew 22

Introduction
There is a lot of controversy around this Book of Enoch: Should Christians read it or not? Some get confused about whether it should be considered scripture- and if it isn’t, whether Christians are allowed to read it.
So on the past few episodes, I’ve established that even though it’s not canonical scripture, the authors of the Bible did indeed read it and believe it. Peter did. Jude did. John did.
There’s actually a few places in Scripture where Jesus also might actually quote from Enoch as well. Seriously.
I was actually at a prayer meeting a few weeks ago when someone was talking to me- and totally out of the blue- says “Did you know Jesus quoted from the Book of Enoch? I was like, “no. But I’d find that very interesting.” This woman didn’t even know what I’ve been studying here on this podcast or anything like that. But I listened to her tell me why she thought that.
I found it to be weird, and I’d like to explore whether Jesus actually quotes from the Book of Enoch in the Bible.
Turn to Matthew 22, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

A youthful question
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about whether Jesus actually quoted from the book of Enoch.
One of my former youth kids contacted me about a week ago asking if it was OK for someone to remarry if their spouse died. He said he thought it might be disloyal to someone’s marital vows if they ever got married again. I told him it was totally fine, because our marriage vows are “til death do us part,” they are not eternal. So from a husband’s perspective, as long as you are loyal to your wife until she dies, you have fulfilled your vows. It’s fine to get married again.
He said that made sense, but he had been puzzling over the question because he was thinking about how if you did get remarried after your first spouse died, then whenever you finally got to heaven, wouldn’t you have a handful of wives when you got there.
I told him it was funny he mentioned that, because Jesus was actually asked that exact same question one day by the Sadducees.
Matthew 22:23-33
23 The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection,
Now, that’s a key phrase, and you have to understand the context behind this phrase to understand Jesus’ response to them and how wise it was. Let’s talk about who the Sadducees are and what they specifically believed.
Some people think that scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, they’re all the same: a bunch of religious people with funny hats who didn’t like Jesus. But they actually have some distinctions. The Pharisees were very conservative and devoted to the law. The Sadducees had a much different theology; they tended to disbelieve in miracles and the supernatural. They would be what we might call theological liberals in modern terms.
I remember one day in the past when I used to host a radio show where I frequently interviewed authors; I was once sent a book request from an author who described himself on the back of the book as a liberal Christian. His book was an explanation of the miracles in the Gospel of John and how they were really more like magic tricks, not anything supernatural.
Needless to say, I did not conduct the interview. But that is a popular viewpoint with many scholars and seminaries around the country, and that’s why you have to be careful when you see too many degrees listed after someone’s name when you’re buying a christian book. Sometimes the most intellectual people on the Christian bookshelves have the emptiest spiritual insight.
And that is the problem that the Sadducees had. They say there is no resurrection. That means, they don’t believe in life after death. And they come to Jesus with a question, but it’s more of a taunt.
and they asked him a question, 24 saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. 26 So too the second and third, down to the seventh. 27 After them all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”
So they have constructed this question to try and trip Jesus up. And it’s such a stupid question, they think that they are poking holes in Jesus’ worldview. They think it’s laughable to believe in life after death, and their question is basically this: if you marry more than one person while on this earth, you’re going to have multiple wives in heaven. If you get married seven times, you’ll have seven wives.
To them, this just makes the idea of heaven sound silly. Now think about it: if that were true, that wouldn’t be an argument against heaven. It just means you’re gonna have a lot more anniversaries to keep track of for the rest of eternity. But it’s not actually a logical argument against heaven. They’re just trying to make heaven sound silly. They are mockers. The Sadducees think they’ve outsmarted Jesus. They think that by concocting this scenario, they’ve shown the foolishness of Jesus’ belief system.
So Jesus is going to shut this down, and He’s going to point out to them that their argument is wrong because their premise is wrong.
29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
So first of all, His answer is that in heaven, there is no marriage. Your marriage vows end when your life on earth ends. When you get to heaven, I’m sure you’ll run into your spouse up there, but you aren’t bound to each other for the rest of eternity. There is no marriage in heaven.
And Jesus uses this interesting phrase: "they are like the angels in heaven." And we’ll come back to that phrase, but let me go ahead and finish up these verses first because I want you to see the wisdom of Jesus’ response here.
31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.
Now I love this because Jesus hasn’t just answered their silly question; his answer actually shows- from scripture- how their entire liberal philosophy is wrong.
He points to when God says, “I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.”
QUESTION: When someone says, “I am,” is that present tense or past tense?
ANSWER: “Am” is present tense. If it was past tense, God might’ve said, “I was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.” But God says “I am the God of Abraham, even though Abraham has been dead for hundreds of years, I am still the God of Abraham.”
QUESTION: Why is God still, presently, the God of Abraham even when Abraham has been dead for a long time?
ANSWER: Because Abraham still exists, even if he’s not on earth. he still exists in another place (heaven, or technically “paradise” as they may have referred to it in the OT). So Jesus is telling them that if you knew the Scriptures and paid close attention to what you read, you’d see that God is still presently the God of Abraham, even after Abraham died.
So I love this; recall the opening line of this story: “There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection…” Just an offhand comment about their philosophy, but Jesus not only answers their question; he undermines their entire philosophy.
Using the Bible. Their highest authority was not God. Their highest authority is man. That’s what’s wrong with theological liberalism. It tries to take God out of the equation and makes man the final authority. And when you do that, you get everything else out of whack. And you won’t know the Scriptures or the power of God.

Like the Angels in Heaven
Now some of you are not here to listen to a mini-sermon about theological liberalism. But I couldn’t speak on these verses without just highlighting the wisdom of Jesus right there. If you pay close attention to how Jesus answers questions, you’ll see that He often gives an answer that doesn’t directly answer what someone is asking. Jesus often gives answers that point to a problem behind the premise of your question. Jesus is very wise and I just can’t help but point that out in this story.
I also wanted to read through this story because this phrase “like the angels in heaven” is really interesting when we dig into it. I want to say two things about this phrase. First let me read it again:
Matthew 22:30
For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
This is a common rebuttal to when you’re explaining the Nephilim to someone. The view that I have, and as I have discussed on this podcast before, is that the Sons of God in Genesis 6 are spiritual beings. They came down and married human women and had children with them. This is one of the weirdest things in all of the Bible. And one of the objections you often hear to this view is this verse, Matthew 22:30. And I actually think this verse makes my case about the Nephilim angels stronger. This verse doesn’t negate my view specifically because it says “like the angels in heaven.” So that qualifier “in heaven” is a key distinctive. The Sons of God in Genesis 6 had left their heavenly realm to cohabitate with humans, so they are no longer “in heaven.” But I bring up that story about the Nephilim because it is very important to the second point I want to get to about this passage today.
2) Where did Jesus get this aspect of His theology? “They neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Where did Jesus get this idea that the angels do not or cannot or should not marry? If the angels in heaven do not marry, are there other angels who did? Well, other than Genesis 6, there isn’t really anything else about this in the Bible, and even Genesis 6 is pretty light on the details. Genesis 6 gives us that information about the pre-flood world, and the pre-flood world had these creatures called the Nephilim, which were the children of the union between the Sons of God and the human women. These were violent beings, and their bloodline quickly spread and corrupted the bloodline and DNA of all humanity.
This is the story briefly told in Genesis 6, but it is gone into a lot more depth in the Book of Enoch. Listen to my previous episode if you’d like to learn why I believe the Book of Enoch is generally reliable, even if I don’t consider it scripture. Jude believed it. Peter believed it. John believed it. And it seems here that even Jesus believes it, because he references the book of Enoch, chapter 15. I’ll read a few verses from that chapter.
The Book of Enoch is separated into chapters and verses just like a Bible book. But the chapters in the Book of Enoch are usually pretty short, oftentimes rendered as just one paragraph.
We will look at Enoch 15 verses 5 through 7. This is a message, supposedly, from God to the Sons of God, and God is explaining to them why marrying humans was going to be bad for both them and the people. It says: “Therefore have I given them wives also” (this is saying that God gave human wives to human men) “that they might impregnate them, and beget children by them, that thus nothing might be wanting to them on the earth.” So God’s intention was for human men to marry human women.
Verse 6: "But you (speaking to the Sons of God) were formerly spiritual, living the eternal life, and immortal for all generations of the world.” God is telling the Sons of God, if you had just stayed in your spiritual domain, you could have stayed there forever. But since you left your spiritual domain, now you’re going to be chained away into a dungeon in hell. Jude and II Peter 2 speak of this, and you can go back to episodes 6 and 7 if you want more information on that. We’ll stay in Enoch for now.
Verse 7: “And therefore have I not appointed wives for you; for as for the spiritual ones of the heaven, the heaven is their dwelling.” So God is saying in verse 7 that the angels in heaven did not lust after women and give up their heavenly domain to come and marry the women, so they can stay there.
And this seems to be what Jesus is referencing to when He tells the Sadducees, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” That qualifier “in heaven” is doing a lot of work right there, just like the word “am” was doing a lot of work when God said “I am the God of Abraham."; that two-word phrase “in heaven” is key. The angels who came down and married humans in Genesis 6 had left heaven. This is why
Jude 6 says
And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—
The angels who stayed in heaven do not marry. The ones who married are the ones who left heaven. So when you place Genesis 6, the Book of Enoch, and Jesus’ words in Matthew 22 all side by side, they all make sense. It’s a consistent witness.
So when Jesus makes that comment, He seems to be commenting on Enoch chapter 15 verse 7: “And therefore have I not appointed wives for you; for as for the spiritual ones of the heaven, the heaven is their dwelling.”
So did Jesus quote from the book of Enoch? Well, it’s not a word-for-word quote, but it is a direct reference, and there’s nowhere else in the Old Testament Bible that this idea is presented. So that leads to the question of where this idea came from, and it had to have come from the Book of Enoch.
Which tells us that Jesus was familiar with the ideas in this book, believed them, and relied on them for His own theology. And I think that means it’s safe for us to do that, too.
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Housekeeping/Mailbag
Next time on this podcast, I know a lot of people get weirded out when we talk about spiritual beings having sexual relations with human women. It’s OK to get weirded out by that. I sure think it’s weird. And some people wonder how that could be even possible.
So I would like to do an episode next time talking about the capabilities of angels. What does the Bible testify that angels are capable of, especially when it comes to manifesting human-like bodies and interacting with the world? We’ll cover it next week. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
What weird stuff in the Bible do you want to know more about? weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com
I have a couple of mailbag thoughts that I want to share right here.
Weston says: Enoch is all over the Bible if you look. His words are used in the Old and New Testaments. To understand this you will have to read and study the Book of Enoch.
Thank you Weston. That is part of what I’m doing today, so I wanted to go ahead and share that comment this time.
And then we have another one from someone I’ll leave anonymous who informed me that the Book of Enoch is NOT Canon and warned me that by talking about Enoch I was violating Revelation where it says not to add or take away from God’s Word. So, I went back and re-listened to the previous episode and I said no less than EIGHT times that Enoch is not a part of Scripture, not a part of the Bible, not a part of the canon. Eight times. And yet I was still accused of trying to tell people that Enoch was part of the Bible and add to God’s Word. So, I guess I should have said it nine times. That was my fault, sorry guys.

Closing Thoughts
So some might say that Jesus referred to Enoch as Scripture right here, because He told the Sadducees that they do not know the Scriptures or the power of God, and then made a reference to the book of Enoch a moment later.
I don’t think Jesus was referring to Enoch right there as Scripture, because the idea that the angels in heaven don’t have wives is not the big idea that the Sadducees were missing. When Jesus said, “You do not know the Scriptures or the power of God,” He was referring to the fact that death is not the end, that there is life after death. The thing about the angels in heaven was a secondary point: the main point is that there is a life after death, and there is a resurrection, and there is eternity in heaven for a believer. This is what the Sadducees failed to understand, and this is what the Old Testament taught, and so this is what Jesus was referring to when He said “you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.”
The Book of Enoch is supplemental to our understanding of the Scriptures; it is not a part of Scripture. We ought to read it just as Jesus did; for background info.
So after learning that Jesus quoted from Enoch in Matthew 22, I wondered if there were any other places where he did that.
Turns out, there was! You probably recognize this quotation from Jesus:
Matthew 25:41
Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
I won’t get into the entire parable, but we learn an important detail about hell right there: that it was not created as a place for man. It was created for the devil and his angels: meaning, the fallen angels and demons and any kind of evil spirit.
But where is that idea presented in the Bible? It’s not in the Old Testament. Hell is spoken of as a place that the dead go, but we’re never told that spiritual beings are sent there as well. We aren’t told that it’s a place that the devil or demons are also going. That idea doesn’t come around Biblically until the New Testament. We aren’t told that it was originally created for the devil and the fallen angels until Jesus said so.
So where did that idea come from? Did Jesus just hear that from God? I mean, maybe. There’s always that possibility. Or maybe Jesus read it in the Book of Enoch, chapter 10, where God is telling Michael to grab Satan’s angels and send them there.
He says to bind those (here’s a quote) “who have united themselves with women so as to have defiled themselves with them in all their uncleanness. And when their sons have slain one another, and they have seen the destruction of their beloved ones, bind them fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgment and of their consummation. In those days they shall be led off to the abyss of fire: and to the torment and the prison in which they shall be confined forever.”
That is not a quotation from anywhere in your Old Testament Bible. But it lines up perfectly with what Jesus, Jude and Peter say in the New Testament. Jude quotes from it, and Peter, John and Jesus directly reference it.
Some will say that means we shouldn’t read the Book of Enoch because it’s too mysterious to rely upon, and therefore it’s not good enough.
But I say, If it’s good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for me. And if that’s weird, then I hope you’re a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time.