Israel

1 Enoch

Mashafa Henok (Ge'ez); fragments at Qumran in Aramaic

Anonymous / tradition (a composite of at least five originally separate works, attributed to the antediluvian patriarch Enoch) · a composite text assembled from sections composed c. 3rd century BC to the turn of the era; the latest section, the Similitudes (chs 37-71), may run as late as the 1st century AD and is conspicuously absent from Qumran · Jerusalem (Israel) · scripture

The disorder of the world traces back to a primordial rebellion of heavenly beings who bred with human women and taught forbidden arts, and that hidden history, revealed to Enoch alone, explains evil and guarantees final judgment far more than any account confined to human choice alone.

fallen angels as the origin of evil and forbidden knowledge
one of the earliest identifiable Jewish apocalyptic texts
composite work of separately authored sections
canonical only in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition

A composite apocalyptic work of five originally independent sections woven together under the name of Enoch, the antediluvian patriarch said in Genesis to have "walked with God." Its oldest section, the Book of the Watchers, expands a brief notice in Genesis 6 about "sons of God" taking human wives into a myth of rebel angels corrupting humanity; Aramaic fragments at Qumran, the oldest paleographically dated to the early 2nd century BC, cap its composition no later than that point, supporting the usual 3rd-century dating, among the earliest identifiable Jewish apocalyptic writing. Its place of composition is unsettled: Judea is the conventional guess, though some argue for Galilee. Never admitted to the Hebrew or standard Christian canons, it survives complete only in Ethiopic translation, canonical for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, though quoted in Jude and formative for later Jewish and Christian angelology and apocalyptic imagery.

Read the text

The Book of Enoch, tr. Charles (sacred-texts.com)

Descends from

Torah · composed c. 9th-5th century BC
Ezekiel · c. 593-570 BC, composed among the Judean exiles in Babylonia
MUL.APIN · c. 10th century BC (compiled from older material; the earliest surviving dated copy is from 686 BC, found at Assur)

Fed into

Jude · c. AD 90-110; must predate 2 Peter, which reuses and expands most of its content

Commentary

Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.

Loading commentary…