Few ancient texts are as popular today as the Book of Enoch. It is cited in discussions of fallen angels, giants, forbidden knowledge and a world before the Flood. Precisely this fame calls for caution. Before asking what it “reveals”, it is worth knowing what this book is, how it reached us, who regards it as Scripture, and what the various readings, academic and alternative, have to say about it.
Who Enoch is in the Bible
The figure appears in only a few verses of Genesis. In the genealogy of Genesis 5:18-24, Enoch (in Hebrew Ḥănôk) is the seventh patriarch counting from Adam and the father of Methuselah. Two details set him apart. His life lasts 365 years, a number that recalls the days of the solar year. And, unlike the others, he is not said to have died. The text states that he “walked with God” and “was no more, because God took him” (Gen 5:24).
The Hebrew expression deserves attention: Enoch walked et-hā-ʾĕlōhîm, that is, “with the elohim”, with the definite article. ʾĔlōhîm is a grammatically plural word. In the Hebrew Bible it normally denotes the God of Israel, but in some contexts it refers to divine beings in the plural. Some scholars note that the form with the article might allude to a company of heavenly beings. This interpretation is already found in antiquity: the Book of Jubilees (4:21) says that Enoch “was with the angels of God”. Jewish and Christian tradition, on the other hand, have read the verse above all as the sign of an extraordinary intimacy with God. It is from this very brief notice, and from its enigmatic character, that a vast literature attributed to the patriarch arose.
What the First Book of Enoch is
Several works bear the name of Enoch, and it is worth telling them apart:
- 1 Enoch, also called Ethiopic Enoch, is the subject of this article;
- 2 Enoch, called Slavonic Enoch, is a different work, preserved in Old Church Slavonic;
- 3 Enoch, or Hebrew Enoch, is a text of late-antique Jewish mysticism in which Enoch becomes the angel Metatron.
The First Book of Enoch is not a single unified work. It is a collection of five writings, composed at different times and later brought together. Scholars call them:
- Book of the Watchers (chs. 1-36). It tells of the descent of two hundred angels, the “Watchers” (in Aramaic ʿîrîn, “those who keep watch”), onto Mount Hermon (6:6). These angels unite with women, beget the giants and teach humans forbidden arts (ch. 8). Enoch is then charged with interceding and makes a heavenly journey, with the vision of the divine throne (ch. 14).
- Book of Parables or Similitudes (chs. 37-71). Here a heavenly figure called the “Son of Man” appears, important for the study of Christian origins.
- Astronomical Book or Book of the Heavenly Luminaries (chs. 72-82). It is a treatise on the 364-day solar calendar and the movement of the heavenly bodies.
- Book of Dreams (chs. 83-90). It includes the so-called Animal Apocalypse, which retraces the history of Israel in symbolic form.
- Epistle of Enoch (chs. 91-108). It contains moral exhortations and the short Apocalypse of Weeks (93:1-10 and 91:11-17).
The story of the Watchers develops an enigmatic passage of Genesis (6:1-4). There the bĕnê hā-ʾĕlōhîm, the “sons of the elohim”, unite with the daughters of men, and the nĕfilîm are mentioned, a term traditionally rendered as “giants”. Compared with Genesis, Enoch expands enormously: it gives names to the leaders of the Watchers, such as Šemiḥazah and ʿAsaʾel, describes their teachings and makes their sin the cause of the corruption that leads to the Flood.
A complex textual history
Many superficial readings overlook a decisive point: the text we read today is the end point of a long and layered transmission.
Aramaic origins and the Qumran fragments
The oldest parts were most probably composed in Aramaic, in a Jewish setting. The Astronomical Book and the Book of the Watchers perhaps date to the 3rd century BC, the Book of Dreams to the 2nd century BC. Confirmation came from the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. In Cave 4, Aramaic fragments of several Enochic manuscripts were found, published by Józef T. Milik in 1976. All the sections are represented except one: the Parables. For this reason many scholars date them later, between the end of the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, although their absence from Qumran alone is not enough to establish their date.
These fragments are precious but limited. They cover only a small part of the text, often in tiny pieces, and do not allow the whole book to be reconstructed in its original language.
The Greek translation
From Aramaic the text passed into Greek. Significant portions survive: a codex found at Akhmim, in Egypt, at the end of the nineteenth century, containing much of chapters 1-32; extracts preserved by the Byzantine chronographer George Syncellus; and a papyrus with part of the Epistle. The Greek, too, is fragmentary.
The Ge'ez manuscripts
The only complete version is the one in Ge'ez (gəʿəz), the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopia. It was probably translated from Greek between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. In Ethiopia the book is called Maṣḥafa Henok, “Book of Enoch”. Europe came to know it only in 1773, when the Scottish explorer James Bruce brought several manuscripts back from Ethiopia. Richard Laurence's English translation (1821) and August Dillmann's critical edition (1851) followed.
Here lies the difficulty: the oldest surviving Ethiopic manuscripts generally date from the 15th century. Some two thousand years therefore separate the original composition from the complete copies we possess, through at least two translations (from Aramaic into Greek, from Greek into Ge'ez) and countless hand copyings. Scholars point out transcription errors, variants between manuscripts, Greek words misunderstood by the translator, garbled names and obscure passages that require conjecture. The same verse may be rendered differently in modern translations depending on the manuscript or the correction adopted.
Canonical status: Scripture for some, apocryphal for others
The First Book of Enoch has a different status in the various religious communities.
- Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (Täwaḥədo, “unity”, referring to the nature of Christ), and with it the Eritrean Orthodox Church: Enoch is part of the biblical canon, which in this tradition is broader than that of the other Churches. Here it is Scripture in its own right, read and commented on.
- Rabbinic Judaism: the book did not enter the Hebrew Bible and was gradually neglected. Some rabbinic texts regard the very figure of Enoch with a certain reserve.
- Roman Catholic Church: it does not recognise it as canonical; the canon was defined in binding form by the Council of Trent in 1546. The same holds for the Protestant Churches and for the other Orthodox Churches.
Early Christianity, however, knew and valued the book. The Letter of Jude (vv. 14-15) quotes 1 Enoch 1:9 almost word for word, attributing the prophecy to “Enoch, the seventh from Adam”. Tertullian defended its authority (De cultu feminarum I,3). Augustine, by contrast, excluded it, judging its origin uncertain (De civitate Dei XV,23). In the West this second line prevailed, and the book almost entirely disappeared for centuries. For a Catholic reader, then, Enoch is an ancient text of great historical interest, not an inspired text.
The relationship with the elohim: readings compared
The First Book of Enoch describes a patriarch in close contact with the heavenly world. Enoch is taken on journeys, talks with guiding angels such as Uriel and Raphael, enters a palace of fire and sees the throne of the Great Glory (ch. 14), and acts as mediator between the Watchers and God. It is natural to wonder how these scenes should be understood.
The scholarly reading
Scholars of ancient Jewish literature place Enoch in the apocalyptic genre. This is a type of literature in which a seer receives revelations through visions and otherworldly journeys, often mediated by angels and rich in symbols. According to this interpretation, the myth of the Watchers serves to answer theological questions: where does evil in the world come from? Why does violence spread? Many also read in it a veiled critique of political powers or priestly groups of the time. It is not a chronicle, but religious reflection expressed in the language of myth and vision.
Alternative readings
Alongside the academic interpretation, alternative readings circulate. Mauro Biglino, a well-known translator and popular writer, proposes reading many biblical texts by “pretending” that they literally say what they write. He considers the elohim to be concrete individuals, rather than God or spiritual beings, and interprets in this key episodes such as that of the sons of the elohim or Enoch's relationship with them. This is a minority thesis, debated and rejected by the great majority of biblical scholars, philologists and historians of religion. The main objections concern the use of the plural ʾĕlōhîm and the literary genre of the texts.
Biglino himself, when speaking of Enoch, urges caution. He points out that the text reached us in Ge'ez through complex stages, that it contains errors and variants, and that it should not be taken as if it were clear and unambiguous. On this point his advice coincides with that of the specialists, even though the conclusions they reach remain very different.
How to read Enoch without falling into the traps
Here are some practical suggestions for anyone who wants to approach the text.
- Choose a good annotated translation. In Italian, a standard reference is the translation edited by Paolo Sacchi in Apocrifi dell'Antico Testamento. The notes flag variants and uncertain passages.
- Remember that it is an anthology. A sentence from the Parables and one from the Astronomical Book may be two or three centuries apart. They should not be combined as if they came from the same author.
- Distinguish the text from its interpretations. Many claims circulating online, about names, numbers or “technologies”, are not found in the text, or rest on a single manuscript or on a conjecture.
- Be wary of certainties. When a text is fragmentary and has been translated several times, anyone presenting a reading as definitive is probably simplifying.
- Respect those who hold it sacred. For millions of Ethiopian and Eritrean Christians, Enoch is the word of God. The historical reading and the reading of faith can coexist without mocking each other.
Enoch in other traditions, and what we can draw from it
The figure of a man “taken” into heaven and made privy to divine secrets is not exclusive to the First Book of Enoch. In the Qur'an we find Idrīs, described as “a man of truth and a prophet” and “raised to a lofty place” (sura 19:56-57; cf. 21:85). Islamic tradition has often identified him with Enoch and credits him with inventing writing and sewing. In Jewish mysticism the patriarch becomes Metatron, the prince of the angels (3 Enoch). In the New Testament the Letter to the Hebrews (11:5) remembers Enoch as a model of faith, “taken up so that he should not see death”, alongside the quotation in Jude. Elijah, too, carried up to heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11), belongs to the same family of images.
Other traditions know encounters between the human and the divine world, with forms and meanings of their own. In Hinduism the deva, the heavenly beings, interact with sages and kings. In Buddhism the deva dwell in higher realms but remain within the cycle of rebirth (saṃsāra). In the Yoruba religion the òrìṣà descend from ọ̀run, heaven, to ayé, the earth, to set the world in order. These parallels do not prove a common origin. Rather, they show that many cultures have used stories of descent and ascent to speak about the origin of knowledge, of evil and of the order of the world.
At least three lessons can be drawn from the First Book of Enoch. The first concerns history: Scriptures have different boundaries in different communities, and what is canon for one Church is ancient literature for another. The second concerns method: before interpreting a text one needs to know its language, its manuscripts and its uncertainties. The third is more personal: the great questions running through Enoch, namely where evil comes from, what it means to “walk with God” and what price is paid for knowledge cut off from wisdom, remain relevant. They can be approached with curiosity and respect, but without shortcuts.