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What is the Book of Enoch?

Q: I have hit a small difficulty in understanding a part of the Bible. Enoch is mentioned in Genesis 5:21-24, Hebrews 11:5, and Jude 14. It’s the Jude reference that gets me.I understand that Enoch lived 65 years, walked with God for 300 more years and then ceased (as in God took him up). What I don’t understand is the reference in Jude when he talks about Enoch’s Judgment Day revelation (in verse 14). In my Life Application Study Bible, the footnotes refer to a “Book of Enoch”… what’s with that?

After doing a little more scouring, I found that this book exists in the Douay version of the Bible, and that it’s a book of the Bible that was removed in the King James Version. Is this true?

If so, how does that affect us, since John’s quotation in Revelation 22:18-19 says we should add nothing to the Bible or take nothing away? Did the King James Version remove books? Also, what more can you tell us about the Douay version of the Bible?

A: Great questions!! The Book of Enoch is a book written between the Old and New Testaments. Probable date of writing was between 150-80 B.C. Copies of the Book of Enoch have been found among the Dead Sea scrolls. If this date is accurate, obviously the Book of Enoch was not written by the real Enoch who lived before the flood.

Your question raises the whole issue of what books are inspired by God and what books are not. There are many other Jewish writings from this time period which are like the book of Enoch, such as the books of Maccabees, The Wisdom of Solomon, Judith, Tobit, etc. These books give supposed prophesies, visions, and history of the Jewish people between the Testaments. Protestants usually call these books the Apocrypha (Greek, apokruphos = “hidden”) and do not consider them inspired writings. (For more on this see Who decided what books got into the Bible?)

However, it’s not just Protestants that think the book of Enoch is suspect. The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t consider the book inspired either. The Roman church does include books in their Bible that Protestants don’t, but Enoch is not one of them. So this is not an issue that divides Roman Catholics and Protestants.

Through the years some translations of the Bible have included the Book of Enoch and other Jewish works; other translations have not. The Douay version of the Bible was one of those translations that included parts of the Apocrypha and also in this case, the Book of Enoch.

Now back to Jude’s quotation from the Book of Enoch. Jude’s quotation of the book of Enoch does not mean that Jude considered it inspired. The book of Enoch was a well respected writing among some of the Jews in New Testament times. Even though it was not inspired, it contains some truth (and some falsehood – like angels marrying humans) like most books. Jude simply uses a passage from the book of Enoch to prove his point about the coming judgment of wicked men. It would be similar to me appealing to a book by some famous author: “Even Tim LaHaye in the Left Behind series talks about the judgment of wicked men when he says…”.

Other New Testament quotations from, or allusions to, non-Biblical works include Paul’s quotations of Aratus (Acts 17:28), Menander (1 Corinthians 15:33) and Epimenides (Titus 1:12). Such usage in no way suggest that the quotations, or the books from which they were taken, are divinely inspired. It only means that the Biblical author found the quotations to be helpful confirmation, clarification, or illustration.