Lesson Eight

We continued the discussion of the meaning of the stars in Jesus hands as it pertains to understanding the middle world between God and humans. This middle world consists of Angels and Demons. We study Gen 6 to give us more insight on it. Today we looked at extra-biblical literature, The Book of Enoch.

a) Who is Enoch? A brief survey of Scriptures that mention Enoch are: Gen 5:24 (He walked with God) ; Heb 11:5 (He did not see death); Jude 14-15 (He prophesied against evil blasphemers). Jude scripture is not mentioned no where in the Bible. It comes from 1 Enoch 1:9.

b) What is the Book of Enoch? It is an ancient text written in Ethiopia around the intertestamental period. All together there are 3 books that were written. But the 2 and 3 books of Enoch are questionable as they were written after the time of Christ and have Gnostic teachings it. But 1 Enoch is authentic as it goes back to older tradition. This book is an expansion of Genesis 6 and its explanations from the side of the middle world. It is written in 5 parts at different times before Christ. Section 1 is called "Book of the Watchers, chapters 1-36 (3rd Century B.C.) Section 2 is called The Book of Parables, chapters 37-71 (1st Century BC). Section 3 is called the Book of Heavenly Luminaries, chapters 72-82 (2nd Century BC). Section 4 is called the Book of Dreams Visions, chapters 83-90 (2nd Century BC). Section 5 is called the Book of the Epistles of Enoch, chapters 91-107.

c) Is this book inspired? No. The book is historical, but it is not inspired. It not written as inspired by God, but written by human means. It would be considered like the academic books we have in our library that are not inspired by God. It is an historical apocalyptic book. Here is why this book should not be understood as inspired or why it was rejected to be in the bible.

Reason 1: Among the Old testament Scriptures (Laws, Prophets, Psalms), the book of Enoch was not found among them. It was found among other written materials.

Reason 2: Among the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Jews that was written 400-300 B.C., the Book of Enoch was not found among it. Reason

Reason 3: Among the Septuagint (Greek Bible/Torah) that was written 100-200 B.C. The Apostles and Jesus quoted from this translation of the Torah, making it significant.

Reason 4: Among the Masoretic Text (Hebrew Bible) that was found 500-900 A.D., the book of Enoch was not included in these writings. The only time the book of Enoch shows up is 1200 A.D. in the Ethiopian Canon. Many are skeptical about its canonization as it has political motives influence by the Muslims during this time.

d) Should we read extra-biblical literature? Yes. This is because the bible makes many references to them. Jude is not the only one in Scripture that uses extrabiblical scripture. There are other non-canonical sources in Scripture:

- Book of the Wars of Yahweh (Numbers 21:14)

- Book of Jasher (Josh 10:13; 2 Sam 1:18

- Book of Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 14:19)

- Book of Annals of Kings of Israel (1 Kings 14:19)

- Book of Annals of Kings of Judah (1 Kings 14:29; 15:7)

- The History of Nathan the prophet (2 Chr 9:29)

- The Annals of Samuel the Seer (1 Chr 29:29)

- The Annals of Shemaiah the prophet and Iddo the seer (2 Chr 12:15).

- The Annals of Jehu (2 Chr 20:34)

- The Annals of Horzai (2 Chr 33:18)

- The unknown lament for Josiah by Jeremiah (2 Chr. 35:25)

All these extrabiblical accounts can be found and read today. And 1 Enoch is among the list. The books may have some theological mistakes within it. This is because it his written from a human perspective. That's why it is not inspired. It can help us understand Scripture, but we are not to allow any of these sources to veto Scripture.

e) Book of Enoch in other parts of Scripture:

- Jude 14-15 is from 1 En 1:9; 60:8

- 1 Peter 3:18-20 is from 1 En 18:13; 19:1-2.

1 Peter has similarities to 1 Enoch 108

f) Message of Enoch. It basically supports the idea that the sons of God are angels or Watchers who came down and raped the daughters of men and produce half angelic and human offspring. It talks about how these Watchers broke their boundaries of authority over creation and received a judgment from Gods. Something so terrifying that it causes the rest of host never to do that again. As this book writes extensively on this subject, there are a number of other things that it makes refers to in terms of cosmology as astrology that goes beyond Scripture.

g) Correction to what I said at bible study. Enoch was not alive to the time of Noah as I was postulating. Bro Owen caught this in Gen 5:21-29. There was a period of 69 years between Enoch translation to Noah birth. The question is how did Enoch know about pending flood that Noah was to build the Arc for? Seeing that Enoch was translated and not dead, the book of Enoch shows that he knew about it even before Noah, where he came from heaven to interacted with Noah's father after his translation (Enoch 196:12-17). Keep in mind, that all this is speculative info. The key thing is what Gen 6 says about the event. We are not to use extra-biblical materials to read into Scripture. The Scripture must speak on its own for itself. And then extra-biblical scripture can be use to support. So far, while it is not explicitly stated in Scripture, it still stands of the three views surround Gen 6 (Line of Seth, Royal Kings, or Watchers), the Watcher view is both exegetically and traditionally the strongest. I believe this is helpful in getting a better picture of John mind and how people thought about the middle world, when writing the book of Revelation.