Weird Stuff in the Bible

The Book of Enoch is Legit (even if it’s not Scripture)
Jude 1 & Enoch 1

Introduction
Why should you study the book of Enoch? Does it hold any value to our faith walk? Is it ill-advised to read any collection of prophetic writings when it’s not part of the biblical canon?
Well, let’s answer that question with an observation: the book of Jude directly quotes from the book of Enoch.
Jude 14-15 say
14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their 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.”
Perhaps you say, well, Enoch WAS in the Old Testament. And that’s correct. However, that quotation from him was not in the Old Testament. It’s only found in the ancient Book of Enoch.
So why is Jude quoting from prophetic writings that aren’t part of Scripture? And if the prophetic writings are true, then why not include them in Scripture?
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why this prophecy of Enoch’s is in the Bible and why the rest of his book isn’t.
Turn to Jude, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

Did Jude actually quote Enoch?
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 beginning a series that explores where the Book of Enoch intersects with the Bible itself.
And for today, I want to establish the Book of Enoch’s legitimacy. Not as Scripture, but as a reliable account of history. And I want to do that upfront because I don’t want to have to keep doing this week after week. But I do want to explain why we’ll be in this for a few months.
So for today, you’ll learn why we can trust Enoch, then why Enoch is not part of the Biblical canon- nor should it be- and then I’ll give you a brief history of this book, and then talk about what’s to come as we explore it.
So for our first question? Why can you trust the Book of Enoch? Three reasons:
1- Jude, a biblical author, quotes it
2- Peter, another biblical author, references it
3- Jesus, who is not a biblical author but He is God who kinda wrote the Bible, used it as his history book
So let’s get into it. Jude quotes Enoch directly, and I’ll read how he sets it up:
Jude 14
14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied
Now let me stop you right there. Note a few things about this prophecy: one, he doesn’t say, “The scriptures say…” He is not citing the Book of Enoch as Scripture. He’s simply citing this as simply a prophecy.
Two, the prophecy came from Enoch, who we read about in Genesis 5. How do I know this? Because it said “seventh from Adam.” Some have wondered if this was some other Enoch that we just didn’t have record of, but the way Jude specifically cites him proves that it couldn’t have been some random guy with the same name. This was Enoch who lived before the flood. He wrote down a prophecy. It was taken on the Ark. It was preserved for thousands of years. And Jude knew of this prophecy and used it to talk about the end times in his short little letter. So the second point I’d make about Jude 14 is that it was genuinely from Enoch himself.
Three, the prophecy is true. If it were not true, Jude wouldn’t have included it. All scripture is God-breathed- that means it comes from God- and God doesn’t lie. So if Jude is including this prophecy, then the prophecy is true.
Does that mean every word of the book of Enoch is true? No. Not necessarily. But every word of this prophecy is true. Let me quote the whole prophecy:
Jude 14-15
“Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their 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.”
That is the text included in Jude’s letters in which he is warning the church about false teachers. That’s why verse 14 started with these words: “It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied…” Who are the “these”? It’s the false teachers and fake Christians who infiltrate the church for their own selfish or misguided reasons.
Jude continues in verse 16 with
These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.
So Jude is making the point that apostates in the church remind him of the people Enoch prophesied about.
But wait- who were the people Enoch prophesied about? Let’s turn to the Book of Enoch and learn about that.
And throughout this study, I’m going to use a translation of the Book of Enoch called the RH Charles translation, because it’s part of the public domain. It’s very old. There are some more modern translations you can find, but I don’t want to get into any copyright issues by quoting too much from them, so we’ll stick with the RH Charles.
Enoch 1:1-2a
Fascinatingly, this is a prophecy about the end times. The day of tribulation. Enoch lived in the earliest time of human history. Adam was still alive while Enoch was alive. They lived simultaneously. And in those earliest days of human history, Enoch gave a prophetic word about the final days of planet earth, days we haven’t even experienced yet.
Enoch 1:2b-7
Enoch prophesies that there will be a judgment day in which God Himself descends to this planet. Does that correlate with the rest of the Bible? Uh, yeah.
Zechariah 14:3-4
Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward.
So yeah, there’s an extremely similar mention from Zechariah. Let me go back to what Enoch says. Enoch says that there’s going to be a judgment day. The good guys will receive mercy- some take this as a reference to the rapture- and the bad guys will get terminated.
Enoch 1:8
So the good guys are made at peace with God. Go read the prophecy of the sheep and the goats. Jesus will say one thing to those on His left and another thing to those on his right.
Matthew 25:31-33
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.
To those on his right, it’s good things. “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” To those on his left, it’s “depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
That’s exactly what Enoch talks about in this chapter. Let me go back to Enoch 1.
Enoch 1:9
Does that sound familiar? Well you bet it does, because Jude quoted those exact words right here in his own book. So why can you trust Enoch? Well reason number one: Jude quotes it. Directly.
Reason number two: Peter references it. The Book of Enoch is going to give us a lot of information about the sins of the Watchers, or Sons of God, who descended to earth and mated with human women. I’ve talked about that enough times on this podcast that I’ll assume you’re familiar with it. Peter talks about when that happened in both of his letters. Interestingly, some of the details Peter refers to about this don’t come from the Bible, but from Enoch’s book. For example,
II Peter 2:4 talks about the Watchers being chained up:
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;
Now hold up right there. When did Scripture tell us that the angels who sinned- talking about the Watchers or Sons of God- getting chained up in gloomy darkness? Scripture did NOT tell us that. However, it’s a major plot point of the Book of Enoch.
Second, the word he uses for “hell” here is the Greek word Tartarus, the deepest dungeon of hell. That word is not used anywhere else in Scripture. If not for II Peter, we would probably think that the concept of Tartarus is just a Greek myth. However, this is the same Greek word that Enoch’s book uses to talk about where the fallen angels are chained up. Tartarus.
These details are not found in pages of Scripture. They come from the Book of Enoch, because it’s reliable history.
And then three- a third reason you can rely on it: The Book of Enoch was Jesus’ history book. Jesus read and believed and relied upon the Book of Enoch. Now, how do I know that? Because like some of the other Bible writers I already mentioned: Jesus at times quoted ideas that are not found in the Old Testament, but they are found in the Book of Enoch.
For example, there was one that I already gave you up above:
Mathew 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.’"
From that verse, we can conclude that the fire it’s talking about- which you could say is hell, or even the Lake of Fire- was not created as a place to hold man. It was created as a place for the devil and those who align themselves with the devil.
And that would be accurate. But let me ask you: where does the Old Testament say that? It doesn’t say that anywhere. So most Bible interpreters just conclude that Jesus- since He’s God- since He heard a lot of things from the Holy Spirit- was just dropping some new information on us, as He’s been known to do. And I’m not saying that’s impossible, but there’s another explanation as well: Jesus read this fact in the Book of Enoch.
Enoch 10 says: In those days they [the fallen angels] shall be led off to the abyss of fire: and 14 to the torment and the prison in which they shall be confined for ever. And whosoever shall be condemned and destroyed will from thenceforth be bound together with them to the end of all 15 generations.
So Enoch lays out this idea that the fires of hell were created for the Watchers to punish them, and that anyone who is condemned will end up in the same place they’re going. Which is exactly what Jesus says here.
So I believe Jesus got that from Enoch’s book. And as we move forward in this exploration, we’ll see more places where Jesus not outright quoted but made undeniable reference to the Book of Enoch. Even if it wasn’t the Bible, He considered it part of world (and spiritual) history.

Why Isn’t Enoch Part of Canon?
Wait a second, though- if Enoch is so reliable, why isn’t it part of our Bibles? That question gets a little complicated, and not all of the early church was in agreement on this point. I’ll explain a little bit of the history later, but I’ll also give a few reasons why we should NOT take the Book of Enoch as scripture itself.
The Book of Enoch had a lot of questions around its authorship. Despite claiming to be an ancient book authored by Enoch himself, it has a lot of characteristics of being written later during the time of Second Temple literature. (The Second Temple era was between the time of the Book of Daniel and the time of Jesus). What are some of those characteristics? Well, for one, some of our earliest, copies are in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic. Now, later on this year I’ll give some evidence for why I believe Enoch was originally written in Hebrew- and modern scholars believe that, too- but our modern basis is on a Greek text because no Hebrew or Aramaic versions have ever been discovered. Second, the prevalence of named angels. More ancient spiritual texts don’t tend to give names to angels; in the Bible, you don’t see a named angel until you get to the book of Daniel, which was a Second Temple literature book. The the Book of Enoch will have many named angels, good and bad. And then third, this book refers to the Sons of God as “Watchers,” which seems to have been a common name for them during the Second Temple period. Therefore, Enoch has characteristics of a later era, so Enoch’s book has been classified as pseudepigrapha for much of church history, which means a book that was not actually written by the person who it claims to have wrote it.
As I said, Jude affirms that the prophecy in Enoch chapter 1 is truly from Enoch himself. But I guess there were too many questions about the rest of it. And many of those questions are fair. For example, the first 36 chapters of the Book of Enoch seem to be the most legitimate part. And then the next 35 chapters after that also seem to have some legitimacy. But beyond that, there are dozens more chapters that have a lot more questions around them; they seem to have been written after Jesus’ resurrection.
So even if someone wants to accept Enoch as legit, then the question becomes, how much of Enoch is legit? Just the first 71 chapters? The first 108? The other 73 which are often called II Enoch? It opens a whole new tricky issue once you get past those first 36 of where you draw the line and say it stops being legitimate. For our purposes on this podcast, we will only look at the first 36- and really mainly focus on the first 16- as those have the greatest intersection with the Bible.
Here’s a couple reasons that Enoch cannot be scripture. Jesus said this in:
Matthew 24:35
35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
Here’s something else He said in
Matthew 5:18
For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
The King Jimmy Version says “no jot or tittle.” It means: God knows how to preserve His Word. He won’t let a single piece of punctuation be lost to history. God’s Word will be perfectly preserved.
But when it comes to the Book of Enoch, it certainly has not been perfectly preserved. It has gaps. It actually has some words and sentences missing here and there.
Not only that, the Book of Enoch has at least one factual error. It claims in one chapter that the giants, or Nephilim, were 3000 ells tall. An ell is around 45 inches, so this would mean that one verse in one of the chapters claims the giants were thousands of feet in height. That doesn’t jive with the rest of the book; that’s just ridiculous. It was obviously an ancient typo. So at the end of the day, it’s a mistake, which means we much approach the Book of Enoch with an awareness that it can have errors, which is not a consideration we have to worry about with the rest of Scripture.
So I’ll say this, if you’re saying, “why do you think Enoch is reliable if it has mistakes and wasn’t perfectly preserved?” Think of it like this: I consider a phone book reliable. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s immaculate. It might have mistakes. I wouldn’t say the phone book is scripture. But I can still trust it. (For those of you listening who are a bit younger than me, you might be wondering, what’s a phone book? Like, I don’t even know what the modern equivalent is anymore. Kids, seriously, we used to have like everybody’s numbers in a book and everybody got one of these books in the mail each year. And we don’t do that anymore, now if you want to call someone but you don’t have their number, you can’t just go look it up. You have to find someone who knows them and get their number. But you used to be able to just look up whoever you wanted and ask them if their refrigerator is running. It was different times. The 90s were wild.)
And one more thing on why we shouldn’t call Enoch Scripture- the Book of Enoch tells us that it’s not Scripture. It actually does tell us that by talking about the actual books of Scripture that are yet to come. Now, this comes up in chapter 104. And this is one of the “sketchy” parts of Enoch that we don’t have as much confidence in its origins, so I won’t push this too far. But it has a very fascinating quote.
Enoch 104, verses 12 and 13, say this: I know another mystery, that books will be given to the righteous [what are these books? I believe it’s talking about the books of the Bible] and the 13 wise to become a cause of joy and uprightness and much wisdom. And to them shall the books be given, and they shall believe in them and rejoice over them, and then shall all the righteous who have learnt therefrom all the paths of uprightness be recompensed.'
So Enoch 104 claims that books will be given to the righteous- the books of the Bible- and that we will learn wisdom by these books, and that we will be recompensed- or judged- by how we lived according to these books.
And that’s true of Scripture. We will be judged someday by how we lived our lives in accordance with Scripture. The Scripture is our basis, our foundation for how to live, and it’s the word that God has revealed to us, and that’s why we will study the Book of Enoch but with a special interest in the areas where it intersects with God’s revealed Word- the books of the Bible. Because Enoch’s book is going to help us understand our Bibles better.

Next Time
I said I would give a brief history, but to keep me from blabbing too long on this episode, I think I’ll share that on the newsletter this weekend. Not everybody cares about a history lesson, but I’d like to share how the Book of Enoch kinda dropped off the radar for most of church history and then how it was rediscovered a few hundred years ago. It’s a neat little story.
For now, I’ll just mention where we’re going on this podcast: Next time we’ll discuss the question: why does hell have to last forever?
And other episodes I’m looking forward to sharing:
what were the Days of Noah like, according to Enoch
What is the significance of Mount Hermon and the region of Bashan that you read about in Scripture?
Who is Azazel, which is mentioned in Numbers as a desert deity who gets a goat given to him? What’s that ritual all about?
And as we near the end of our Book of Enoch exploration, we’ll be talking about portals once again, as a series of literal portals open up in chapters 33-36 of Enoch. It literally says the word “portal.” I’m not kidding. They are as real as the phonebooks I swear we used to have in the 90s.
All that’s ahead this year on Weird Stuff in the Bible. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it all.
And subscribe to the newsletter so you can get a brief history of the Book of Enoch in your email this weekend.

Closing Thoughts
But I do want to make a note on the opinions of the church fathers about this book. Not that I’m one of those guys who often quotes the “church fathers,” but I want to show that this book of Enoch was widely accepted by the early church. These include: Tertullian, Ireneaus, Clement and Barnabas- which were friends of Paul- Origen, Athenagorus, and Justin Martyr. Some of them, such as Tertullian, actually did think it was Scripture. For the others, even if they didn’t think it was Bible, they still thought it was legit.
Here is what some of the critics say about the book of Enoch. They believe it was a fable that was invented to match similar fables of the surrounding nations. The ancient peoples of many cultures had their stories/myths of when the gods descended and procreated with women, and how from this union, the giants or titans were born.
For example, in Mesopotamian literature, they had stories of the apkallus- their version of the Watchers. The apkallus were divine sages who had semi-divine offspring with human women, and then there was a massive flood that wiped them all out.
And so they say that the Book of Enoch was just the Jewish culture’s version that they made up to match the popular stories present in other cultures.
But to me, this criticism more proves that the story is accurate. Think about the flood: we have stories of the ancient flood all over the world. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Even the Aztecs of South America have a flood story. How a flood covered the land and only a boat with a small number of survivors restarted mankind. How can that be?
Because if the worldwide flood is true and everybody in the world descended from the same 8 survivors, then of course all the ancient cultures would have a story about it. They all came from that same event! So the fact that the Bible has a version of that story as well doesn’t mean I just place the Bible on a shelf with all the other ancient myths of the quote-unquote Great Deluge. No, I believe this flood story actually happened- and I happen to believe that the Bible has the most accurate version of it.
And likewise, it doesn’t bother me if there are other cultures who have stories of godlike beings who mated women and produced the giants before the flood. It would bother me if other cultures didn’t have those stories.
Because this story was part of world history. Whether you call them the Watchers or the Apkallus, it’s part of human history, because we can all trace our ancestry back to Noah. And interestingly, that means we can also trace our lineage back to Noah’s great grandad, Enoch.
And Enoch tells us the story of the Watchers, and what they did. And Jude quoted from it. And other New Testament authors referenced it. And Jesus even used it as His history book. Which means I think we can rely on it, too.
So if you think the Book of Enoch is legit, I hope you’re ready for a fun and unique study that we’ll undertake over the next few months. Until next time, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.