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I have a high view of scripture. The science of Textual Criticism shows that what we have today is what was originally written down, and I believe that God inspired the words in the Holy Bible. I know God is infallible, but people are not. Even believers led by the Holy Spirit fail and fall.
With that said, I have faith in God's ability to give us the books He intends for us to have. He is not a God of confusion, yet many people who accept the Book of Enoch also accept other books as well, but in order to do that, they resort to casting doubts on the books that are accepted as Canon. Thanks to the Muratonian Canon, circa 180 AD, we know that 22 of the 27 books of the New Testament were already accepted as Canon by the end of the 2nd Century AD. (Apocryphal books were not added to the Catholic Canon until the Council of Trent in 1546 to rebut the reformation and Martin Luther.)
There are good reasons Apocryphal, Pseudepigraphal, and the various Deuterocanonical Books were not accepted as Canon. I'll save most of those reasons for another post. I'll say up front that no book was accepted as Canon that lied about its author. If it claimed to be written by someone other than the actual author, it was disqualified immediately and considered fraudulent.
Another issue is that these extra-biblical books contradict scripture. (They also contradict themselves and each other.) They lead people into doubt and confusion. Such fruit is not good, and Jesus warned us about bad fruit. These books lead people away from scripture. Many end up spending more time studying the Book of Enoch, or other pseudepigraphal works, than they do the Bible. Yet it is the books of the Bible that have been extensively copied, preserved, and long accepted. They are the accepted books that lead us to God.
The Book of Enoch is not part of the Jewish Canon -- no matter which textual tradition is used. There are only fragments of it in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and altogether they only include about 17% of what was discovered in the 17th century. Since the extant version is so recent, there is no way to determine its reliability. There were no safeguards in its transmission or extensive copies of it. It does not lend itself to textual criticism in the way the New Testament scriptures do. On top of that, the science in it is laughable. It contradicts itself all over the place. The planets are driven by the wind. The sun rises and sets in various gates. Such claims are as ludicrous as Muhammad's claim that the sun sets in a muddy pool, or 2 Enoch's claim that 4500-foot-tall giants mated with human women. If you think the Book of Enoch got those things wrong, what else did it get wrong? Even the 450 foot tall giants of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch is still too large to mate with a human woman. It would be easier to mate with Noah's Ark. Things it got right, it borrowed from Canon.
If I come across a religious book in a library, I am not going to immediately claim it belongs in the Canon. Even if the library is ancient and located in Qumran. Not that there really is a "book" of Enoch in the Dead Sea scrolls. There are merely fragments of different manuscript traditions, and those consist of just a few words, phrases, or incomplete sentences from the various books -- such as the Book of the Watchers, the Book
of the Parables, the Book of Astronomy, and other sections.
Only one third of the Dead Sea Scrolls contain "scripture," (though many are apocryphal or pseudepigraphal), the rest of the scrolls are equally divided between commentary and rules that governed the Essenes. As I've already said, if something is of dubious authorship, it is not acceptable as Canon. Some of Enoch was written around 200-150 BC, yet Enoch lived thousands of years earlier. (And, no, I do not believe it was handed down from the time of Enoch and miraculously preserved. There is no evidence to back up that claim, especially since the flood happened after God took Enoch, and the "book" covers events that happened after Enoch was no longer around to write the book, such as the return of the Jewish people from their exile in Babylon and the building of the second temple in Enoch 89:73. And by the way, I think Enoch 89:73 points to an Essene authorship. That verse condemns the second temple, and the Essenes did not approve of the temple or the religious leadership in Jerusalem.) Again, no book is considered Canon if it is pseudepigraphal. If something starts with lies, it will continue with lies, and the Book of "Enoch" certainly starts with lies by claiming to have been written by a man who couldn't have possibly written it, and also claiming that 450 to 4500-foot-tall giants (depending on which text is used) had sexual relations with human women.
Deuteronomy 18:21-22 says, "You may ask in your heart, 'How can we recognize a message that the LORD has not spoken?' When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and the message does not come to pass or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him." The Book of Enoch failed that test when it falsely prophesied about itself. We find that failed prophecy in 1 Enoch 104:9 where it claimed it would be copied faithfully and survive undiminished. That is not the case.
The Jewish Canon has been set for a long time, and you will not find the BOE in any modern Hebrew Bibles. It is a book of Hebrew literature of cloudy origins, and that is all. While the Dead Sea Scrolls contain fragmented portions of different
textual traditions of the Book of Enoch, none of them contain an entire book. No one knows who the authors were, but it appears to have had several authors over an unknown period of time. It should not be considered Canon, not even the most accepted Ethiopic version.
As for the New Testament, to be considered New Testament Canon, the book had to have been written by an Apostle or someone who knew one of the Apostles. It also had to be in agreement with what God had already revealed. In other words, it had to have been written by a companion of Jesus or one of those who knew those companions -- those eyewitnesses -- such as Luke. It also had to be considered inspired by God; and therefore consistent with what had already been revealed by God, and it had to have been widely used and quoted by the early church. All late-comers were rejected because they were written after the last eyewitness, or those who knew eye-witnesses, had died. Many were rejected because they were pseudepigraphal, and all pseudepigraphal books were immediately rejected. And there are a lot of them. Unbelievers, and even many Christians, love to claim there has been some vast conspiracy to keep them out of the Bible; but the truth is, they were fraudulent, and that's why they were kept out of the Bible.
I find it interesting that New Agers and UFO cults love the Book of Enoch and are willing to accept it, even though they reject the authority of the New Testament. Sadly, many Christians today have a lot in common with New Agers, Wiccans, atheists, and gnostics. All of those groups love to bring the books of the Bible and Biblical inspiration into question too. One of the heroes of this group is the late Michael Heiser, but I considered him a dangerous and arrogant heretic and still do. The Book of Enoch is creative fiction. That's not a popular view, but, like everyone else, I am entitled to my opinion.
For more about Michael Heiser, I recommend this website: https://truthwatchers.com/?s=michael+heiser
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Update: 3/19/24. I was asked at YouTube about the Book of Enoch and the quote in Jude 1:14-15. I have decided to post the answer here so I don't lose track of it -- even though most of it is covered in my post.
Hi, sorry I didn't see this sooner. I didn't get a notification. I don't dispute that Jude quoted the Book of Enoch, but Paul quoted Greek philosophers. That's not an endorsement of Greek philosophy. The writers of Enoch, probably the Essenes, knew the Hebrew scriptures, and I think Old Testament verses were probably coalesced into that quote in Jude. (Such as Deuteronomy 33:2, Isaiah 26:21, Daniel 7:10.) Perhaps Jude also had Essene connections. There were a lot of Pseudepigraphal books being written during the intertestamental period - or the deuterocanonical period - and the names of well-known biblical characters were used to give authority to books that didn't deserve it. The BOE is one of those books. It is Pseudepigrapha, and any book that claims to have been written by someone who didn't write it cannot be considered canon. I doubt Jude considered the BOE canon -- though it was important to the Essenes and maybe Jude respected the Essenes enough to quote their literature. Jude must have known the strict requirements for something to be considered canon though.
If something starts with lies, it will continue with lies. Claiming to have been written by someone who lived long before events transpired is a problem. The "book" covers events that happened after Enoch was no longer around to write it, such as the return of the Jewish people from their exile in Babylon and the building of the second temple in Enoch 89:73. And I do think Enoch 89:73 points to an Essene authorship. That verse condemns the second temple by saying its bread was polluted and not pure, and the Essenes did not approve of the temple or the religious leadership in Jerusalem. The Book of "Enoch" starts with lies by claiming to have been written by a man who couldn't have written it, and it continues with lies by making ludicrous scientific claims about the cosmos and claiming that 450 to 4500-foot-tall giants (depending on which text is used) had sexual relations with human women.
Update: 9/17/24.
I do not follow Doreen Virtue, but I am familiar with a recent video she did about Michael Heiser. I agree with the comments of her first guest, Dr. Wave Nunnally. Here is that video:
