The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch)

Summary

The Book of Enoch, usually called 1 Enoch, is a collection of five Jewish apocalyptic books gathered under the name of Enoch, the patriarch of Genesis 5 who walked with God and was not, for God took him. Written in stages during the Second Temple period, it presents Enoch as a righteous scribe who is shown the secrets of heaven, earth and the coming judgment and writes them down for his son Methuselah and for a remote generation. The first part, the Book of the Watchers (chapters 1–36), opens with a prophecy of God coming down on Mount Sinai with ten thousands of holy ones, a passage quoted in the Epistle of Jude. It then expands Genesis 6:1–4: two hundred angels, the Watchers, led by Semjaza, swear an oath on Mount Hermon, take human wives and father giants who devour the earth. Azazel teaches the making of weapons and ornaments, and others teach charms, root-cutting and astrology. Michael, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel bring the cry of the earth before God; Raphael is sent to bind Azazel in the desert and heal the earth, Noah is warned of the Flood, and the Watchers are condemned. When they ask Enoch to intercede, he ascends in a vision to a house of fire where the Great Glory sits enthroned, and then journeys with angelic guides to the ends of the earth, the prison of the fallen stars, the place of the dead, the mountain of God and the tree of life. The second part, the Similitudes or Parables (37–71), describes a heavenly figure called the Elect One, the Righteous One and that Son of Man, hidden before creation, who sits on the throne of glory beside the Head of Days to judge the kings and the mighty. The third, the Astronomical Book (72–82), sets out the courses of sun, moon and stars as revealed by Uriel and defends a year of 364 days. The fourth, the Dream Visions (83–90), contains a vision of the Flood and the Animal Apocalypse, which retells Israel's history from Adam to the Maccabean age as a story of bulls, sheep and seventy shepherds, ending with a new house and a white bull. The fifth, the Epistle of Enoch (91–105), includes the Apocalypse of Weeks and a long series of woes against the rich and those who wrong the poor, with exhortations to the righteous to walk in uprightness. The book closes with the miraculous birth of Noah (106–107) and a short appendix (108). Aramaic fragments of every part except the Similitudes were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The full text survives in Ge'ez, and 1 Enoch is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, though not in Jewish, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or Protestant canons. The library text is R. H. Charles's 1917 translation, with his editorial brackets retained.

Top Lessons

• Knowledge without righteousness

  In the Watchers story the fallen angels corrupt the earth partly by teaching: weapons, cosmetics, charms, root-cutting and astrology. The book does not condemn knowledge as such, since Enoch himself receives the true laws of the heavens from Uriel, but it asks what happens when skill is given apart from obedience.

• Judgment as hope for the oppressed

  The repeated scenes of judgment, from Chapter I to the woes of the Epistle, are written for people who see the powerful prosper. The promise that the Lord will judge the kings and the mighty is meant to steady the righteous, not to make them fearful.

• Reading the order of creation

  Chapters II–V and the Astronomical Book present the regular motions of sun, moon, stars and seasons as obedience to God, a standard against which human disorder is measured. Calendar and conduct belong together in this way of thinking.

• Canon and its edges

  1 Enoch was treasured at Qumran, quoted in Jude, discussed by early Christian writers, and preserved as Scripture in Ethiopia, while other churches did not receive it into their canons. Studying it shows students how the Bible's neighbours were read and why communities drew their boundaries where they did.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

1 Enoch is an important witness to how Second Temple Judaism thought about the origin of disease and of medical and magical knowledge. In the Watchers story the fallen angels teach charms, enchantments and the cutting of roots, so that herbal lore is placed alongside sorcery as illicit heavenly knowledge; later tradition (the Book of Jubilees) answers this by having an angel teach Noah healing herbs. Raphael, whose name means God heals, is commissioned to heal the earth and is named the angel set over diseases and wounds, a root of his later role as the angel of healing in Tobit and Christian devotion. The Similitudes describe hot healing waters that serve the kings for the healing of the body, and list among the secrets taught by the Watcher Kasdeja the smiting of the embryo in the womb, read by commentators as a reference to procuring abortion. Spirits of the dead giants are presented as the source of afflictions on earth, an early form of the demonological explanation of illness. These are theological categories, not clinical descriptions, and should be read as such.

• Chapters VII–VIII

  The Watchers teach charms, enchantments, root-cutting and the knowledge of plants, alongside weapons, cosmetics and astrology.

• Chapter X

  Raphael is sent to bind Azazel and to heal the earth that the angels have corrupted.

• Chapter XV

  The spirits that come forth from the giants are described as evil spirits that afflict and oppress on the earth.

• Chapter XL.9

  Raphael named as the presence set over all diseases and wounds.

• Chapters LXVII and LXIX

  The waters that heal the body of the kings while punishing the spirit, and the Watcher Kasdeja's teaching of smitings of spirits and of the embryo in the womb.