There has been a resurgence of interest in the Book of Enoch or I Enoch, especially its account of angels called Watchers coming down from Heaven and having sex with human women, resulting in giant hybrid offspring. It is popular among supporters of the ancient aliens theory who argue that the Watchers were really aliens and some Christians, which I call Nephilim researchers, who are somewhat obsessed with the Nephilim or giants.
On the surface, the Book of Enoch appears to expand on Genesis 6: 1-4 which says that the “sons of God” took the “daughters of men” as wives and their children were the Nephilim which the King James Version translates as giants.
In other Old Testament passages, the “sons of God” meant angels (Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7). The traditional Jewish interpretation of this passage was that the “sons of God” were fallen angels or demons who had sex with human women and their offspring, the Nephilim were human/angel hybrids. “Nephilim” appears to be derived from the Hebrew “naphal”, meaning “to fall” and means “fallen ones” .
Just because many Jews at the time of Jesus believed the “sons of God” were fallen angels does not necessarily mean this is the correct view. After all, they rejected their prophesied Messiah so their understanding of the Bible was far from perfect.
The early Christians also subscribed to the fallen angel interpretation of Genesis 6, until it was replaced by the Sethite interpretation. This argued that the sons of God were not angels, but the godly descendants of Adam’s son Seth who had previously called upon the name of the Lord (Genesis 4:26). The daughters of men were descendants of Cain. The Sethites married the immoral Cainite women and were corrupted by them, similar to what later happened with the Israelites and the Midianite women (Numbers 25). For most of Christian history the Sethite theory has been the dominant Christian interpretation, but there has been a revival of interest in the Watchers, Nephilim and Enoch among some conservative Christians.
However, even if the fallen angels interpretation of the sons of God is still correct, there are still problems with the Book of Enoch.
In his book Archon Invasion, The Rise, Fall and Return of the Nephilim Rob Skiba refers to the Book of Enoch and other apocryphal texts, such as the Books of Jasher and Jubilees as “synchronized, biblically endorsed, extra-biblical texts” (Rob Skiba, Archon Invasion, The Rise, Fall and Return of the Nephilim, King’s Gate Media, Texas, 2012, p 5). The Book of Enoch is supposed to supplement Genesis which Skiba refers to as the “Cliff notes version” (Archon Invasion, p 126). Such a comment should be a red flag to Christians who believe the Bible is their source of authority.
However, Genesis and I Enoch are not compatible. I Enoch does not expand on and supplement Genesis. I Enoch contradicts Genesis. Genesis says that sin and suffering came into the world as a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience (Genesis 3). The Flood was sent to wipe out all life on Earth because of the extent of human sin (Genesis 6:5-8). Noah and his family were spared because Noah was morally righteous and blameless (Genesis 6:9). One would not know this from reading only Enoch which says that sin and suffering were not the result of human disobedience. It was the fault of the Watchers and their offspring, the giants. Humans were the victims of the violence of the giants and cried out to God to rescue them. The Flood was sent to save them by destroying the giants (I Enoch 7-10). While Genesis says that Noah built the Ark (Genesis 6:13-22), Enoch says angels built it (I Enoch 67:1-3). Most conservative Christians believe that demons are angels who sided with Satan, Enoch says they are the spirits of the giants who died in the Flood (I Enoch 15-16). There is nothing to support this in the Bible. Genesis says that Enoch was taken by God when he was 365 years old (Genesis 5:23-24), but the Book of Enoch says he lived to be over 500 years old (I Enoch 59:1). The Book of Enoch says that Lamech suspected that his new-born son Noah might really be the offspring of a Watcher, so he told his father Methuselah who asked his father Enoch. Enoch said that Noah was Lamech’s son (I Enoch 105:1-20). However, according to Genesis, Enoch was taken by God 69 years before Noah was born (Genesis 5:21-28).
What are these Christians going to believe, the Bible or the Book of Enoch? They cannot believe both.
I Enoch purports to have been written before the Flood. Christians, who believe there was a universal Flood, believe that it radically altered the world’s geography. However, the Book of Enoch mentions Mount Sinai (I Enoch 1:4), Mount Hermon on the Lebanon-Syria border (7:7), Dan (13:7), Lebanon (13:9), the Red Sea (32:3), the Great Sea (Mediterranean) (77:5, 7) and the Erythraean Sea, which used to refer to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and part of the Indian Ocean (77:6-7). Its authors knew the geography of the post-Flood world.
The Jewish Bible or Christian Old Testament mentions other ancient books which were not included in the Bible, such as the Book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13, 2 Samuel 1:18). There is no mention of the Book of Enoch. This is because it had not been written yet.
Scholars do not believe the book of Enoch was written by one person. I Enoch is a compilation of 5 books and 2 appendices which were written in Aramaic and maybe Hebrew between 400 BC and 100 AD (George Nickelsburg, I Enoch I, A Commentary of the Book of I Enoch, Chapters 1-36, 81-108, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2001, p 1-2, Michael Heiser, A Companion to the Book of Enoch, Defender Press, Missouri, 2019, p 3,8). Chapters 1 to 36, or the Book of the Watchers, which is the focus of most of the attention, is believed to have been written and edited by several authors over a period of time (Annette Yoshiko Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity, The Reception of Enochic Literature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, p 16, 24).
There are a lot of claims that the Emperor Constantine or the Roman Catholic Church censored the Book of Enoch and removed it from the Bible. It sounds like they have been reading The Da Vinci Code. I Enoch was not removed from the Bible because it was never in it. I Enoch is a Jewish text. Constantine and the Catholic Church did not tell the Jews what they could put in their Bible, the Christian Old Testament. The canon of the Jewish Bible could have decided as early as 300 BC (Paul Wegner, The Journey from Texts to Translation, Baker, Michigan, 1999, p 104). The Book of Enoch was not included because most of it had not been written yet.
Sometime in the 4th to 6th centuries the Book of Enoch was incorporated into the Ethiopic Bible, along with over apocryphal texts which are rejected by Protestants. It was brought back to the West in the late 18th century and was translated into English by Richard Laurence in 1838. Fragments have been found in Egypt and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Richard Laurence’s translation can be found here. Three more recent translations of the Book of Enoch can be found here and here and here.
Finally, there are the claims that Enoch built the Great Pyramid. For example in his book The Return of the Gods Erich von Daniken writes, “The ancient Egyptians regarded Enoch as the builder of the pyramids.” (Erich von Daniken, The Return of the Gods, Element, Dorset, 1998, p 184) This would be news to an Egyptologist. Von Daniken also claims that Enoch wrote the Book of Enoch (The Return of the Gods, p 62-63). As I have discussed in my post Giorgio Tsoukalos tells porky pies about Herodotus and the Great Pyramid in Ancient Aliens The Official Companion Handbook, the ancient Egyptians told the Greek historian Herodotus that the Pharaoh Cheops (Khufu) (2589-2566 BC) built the Great Pyramid in 20 years using 100,000 labourers (Herodotus, The Histories, 2:124-125). The Egyptians did not say Enoch, the Nephilim or aliens built it. They built it all by themselves.
The Book of Enoch does not say anything about Enoch building the Great Pyramid. This is a medieval Arab myth with no historical value. You can read how this myth developed here.
Malcolm Nicholson 