Pseudo-what?
I’ll be honest with you—until this week, I had never read the book of First Enoch. Never wanted to. I certainly never thought I’d write a 1 Enoch book review. I’d always filed it under “pseudepigrapha” and moved on. (For those unfamiliar, “pseudepigrapha,” from the Greek, meaning “false title,” refers to ancient religious texts that claim or imply they were written by a famous biblical figure but almost certainly were not.
Much of 1 Enoch tells us about Enoch, the pre-flood patriarch who “walked with God, then was no more because God took him away” (Genesis 5:24). But in some sections, it sounds like Enoch himself writing (“I, Enoch…”).
I’ve always thought of such books as fake Scripture written by people misrepresenting themselves. Why bother?
Then I started teaching through 2 Peter.
Why I Finally Read It
Peter and Jude both draw from 1 Enoch. Jude 14–15 is an outright quotation. If I’m going to teach 2 Peter faithfully, I realized I should probably understand the source material these apostles were working with. So I gave the audio version a listen. I was surprised. It wasn’t at all what I expected.
How Did 1 Enoch Come to Be?
1 Enoch wasn’t written by some yahoo who got a pen out one day and decided to write a forgery. Scholars believe the text was composed over several centuries between the Old and New Testaments (roughly 300–100 BC for the older parts, with the “Parables” section possibly around 100 BC or later) and compiled by Jewish writers who had a rich understanding of the Scriptures and a deep reverence for God. It stood the test of theological scrutiny of the people of God for a very long time prior to Jesus.
The book is a collection of at least five distinct sections that were eventually compiled and preserved primarily through the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which actually considers it canonical Scripture to this day.
Fragments of 1 Enoch were also found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. That, and the influence on the New Testament and other Jewish literature both in and outside of Israel, confirm that it was widely read and highly regarded by believers in the world Jesus and the apostles inhabited.
My First Surprise: This Book Is Enjoyable
I found the book surprisingly engaging. I expected an obscure, tedious, hard to follow, ancient-sounding text. But it’s really an intriguing story, well-written, full of vivid imagery, cosmic drama, and theological depth. It held my attention from start to finish (which is rare for any book).
It begins with the famous Genesis 6 episode: the sons of God (Enoch calls them the Watchers, which is taken from Daniel 4:13,17,23) who descended to earth, cohabited with human women, and produced a race of giants called the Nephilim. That’s all the Genesis account tells us. 1 Enoch expands that brief account with an enormous amount of narrative detail, including the names of each of the Watchers.
Enoch describes their conspiracy to come to earth and marry human women. It details their discussion the risks of judgment ahead of time as well as their strategy to teach various disciplines to humanity. They taught all about metallurgy, mining, cosmetics, and other areas of knowledge designed to divert human attention away from God onto earthly things.
1 Enoch sounds like historical fiction—filling in dramatic details around a brief biblical account. But is it all fiction? We know 1 Enoch got some of those details right, because they are quoted in the New Testament as true. Could it be that Jewish authors, writing hundreds of years before Jesus, were drawing on genuine ancient traditions, perhaps passed down from Enoch himself? I’m not sure we could rule that out. It’s not Scripture, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
My Bigger Surprise: How Much of the NT Seems to Draw from It
We know that Jude quotes 1 Enoch directly. But as I listened, I kept encountering ideas, images, and phrases that sounded strikingly familiar.
Consider a few examples:
The imprisonment of fallen angels. The images in 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 of angels being held in chains of darkness, reserved for judgment. That’s not just a vague reference to Genesis. It maps directly onto detailed passages in 1 Enoch about the Watchers being bound and imprisoned pending final judgment. Jude’s phrase “Lord coming with thousands of holy ones” is a direct quotation from 1 Enoch.
The Final Form of the Kingdom of God. 1 Enoch describes a holy mountain in terms that have a great deal of overlap with the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21. If you read Revelation 21, then go back and read 1 Enoch 24-27, it’s hard to imagine John isn’t influenced by 1 Enoch to some degree.
The Sheep and the Goats. The famous division in Matthew 25, where Jesus describes Judgment Day as a division of sheep and goats sounds remarkably similar to the judgment scene in 1 Enoch. (These images appear in other literature of the time as well, so Jesus may not be alluding directly to Enoch.)
The Son of Man. When you read 1 Enoch and the glorious Son of Man figure arrives and executes divine judgment, it’s actually a little startling. It sounds like a Christian describing Jesus. It’s almost hard to believe it was written before Jesus was born. The same goes for the good shepherd figure.
Reconsidering How to Think About It
All of this forced me to reconsider my dismissive “fake Scripture” attitude.
That’s not how Jesus and the apostles appear to have treated it. The New Testament writers quote and allude to 1 Enoch favorably, as if drawing on a trustworthy source. Some early Christian communities did consider it Scripture. But it was never accepted into the Hebrew canon, and the broader NT church never received it as canonical Scripture either.
Perhaps the closest analogy for today is the way we think of the great Christian classics. A modern pastor might quote Scripture and in the very next breath quote Pilgrim’s Progress, Mere Christianity, Augustine’s Confessions, or the Westminster Catechism. Not as equivalent to Scripture, but as faithful, sound, historically tested works that illuminate and reflect biblical truth.
Books like 1 Enoch were the “classics” of Jesus’ time. But it goes further than that. They seemed to have had a category we don’t have—literature that is revered as something less than Scripture, but more than even a really good human book. New Testament writers use those books to support facts about Old Testament events that are not revealed in the Old Testament. When NT authors affirm what 1 Enoch says about the sin of the Watchers, the judgment of the fallen angels, and the coming of the Son of Man, they are, in effect, vouching for it. 1 Enoch got some big things very right.
One Notable Miss
There is one significant place where the book goes wrong, and it’s worth noting.
After presenting what are some of the most accurate pre-Christian descriptions of the Messiah I have encountered—the Son of Man, the Righteous One, the Good Shepherd who cares for his flock and will reign in glory—the book identifies this figure as Enoch himself.
Is the author suggesting the Enoch of Scripture was the Messiah (we would say a pre-incarnate Christ)? Or that he was a normal, created man who becomes the Messiah? Either way, it’s a miss. The Son of Man described in Daniel 7 is Jesus, not Enoch. That title was Jesus’ favorite way of describing himself.
Verdict
Overall, I would recommend reading 1 Enoch. Aside from the value of showing the theological air Jesus and the apostles breathed, it’s also an interesting, enjoyable, and edifying read.
If you’d rather listen than read, Alexander Scourby does a masterful job narrating the audio version. Here’s a link. The whole book clocks in at about 3.5 hours.
Click here for more of my book reviews. And for free downloads of all my sermons, visit TreasuringGod.com.
For a lecture by scholar Michael Heiser on 1 Enoch, click here.
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