During our
last broadcast, Michael wondered about the Book of Enoch. “Since it was quoted in the Bible”, he asked,
“why isn’t this book included in Scripture?”
Enoch, of
course, was the Old Testament hero who was the great-grandfather of Noah. Genesis Chapter 5 tells us that he walked
with God and that he did not die, but that God simply “took him.”
Does the
Bible really quote this book? Michael
might have been thinking about Jude 1:14, 15 which says, “Now Enoch, the
seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, "Behold, the
Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all, to
convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they
have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly
sinners have spoken against Him."
Clearly, Jude is quoting Enoch himself.
Yes, there is a very similar passage in the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 60:8),
but that does not mean that Jude received the prophecy from that book. There are portions of the book of Enoch that
may be dated as early as 300 B.C., but that particular prophecy comes from the
latest part of the book (The Book of Parables) that dates to after the Epistle
of Jude was written. In fact it seems
more likely to me that this part of the book was taken from Jude than vice
versa.
What about Mike’s question concerning Scripture? The Book of Enoch has never been included in
the canon, but have we missed something? I don’t think so.
Psalm 119:160 tells us, “The
entirety of Your word is truth,” One of the characteristics of Scripture is that it is always
consistent with the rest of the Bible.
That is not true of the book of Enoch.
It teaches, for example, that fallen angels fathered a race of giants,
called the Nephilim (Genesis 6:4). This
is a clear conflict with the teaching of Jesus that angels don’t procreate
(Matthew 22:30). It also creates a
conflict when we read Numbers 13:33 and find that long after the Flood, the
Nephilim were there in the land of Canaan.
That tells me that the term doesn’t refer to a race of people, but is
most likely a type of people (violent criminals). The
Book of Enoch also teaches that it was angels who built the ark, not Noah. It might have been easier for Noah to simply
pick up the keys to the boat after angels finished it, but that’s not the way
the Bible teaches the story. (See
Genesis 6:14, where Noah is told, “Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood.”)
There are other examples of error, but we need
only one to conclude that this book does not belong in our Bibles.
