The Book of Enoch

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

What's something you learned in history class that you feel like wasn't the whole truth? Better yet, what's something you didn't learn at all that was omitted completely? That's what I like to call Redacted History. My name is Andre White, the host of the Redacted History Podcast, the place where history's forgotten events, heroes and villains get their story told, one episode at a time. The Redacted History Podcast, real history never dies.

Stream the Redacted History Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Dan Beecher (0:36)

If you feel inclined to start conspiracy theories based on this book, get on with your bad self. You're just giving Dan fodder for his TikToks.

Dan McClellan (0:45)

It's just job security at this point.

Dan Beecher (0:46)

That's right, that's right.

You should be embracing this, Dan. I don't know why you're fighting it.

Dan McClellan (0:52)

I don't know why you did this to me. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:00)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:02)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

Dan Beecher (1:13)

Sure do.

Dan McClellan (1:13)

Sure do. Indeed, we do.

And how goes the thing?

Dan Beecher (1:19)

Stuff's good, man. I'm stoked.

This week, you and I, Dan, are going to be talking about a thing that you have mentioned many times on this show. You even maybe explained to me what it is, and it's never really sunk in. I don't get it. I don't know why. Yeah, so I am very excited to have all of this cleared up. We're going to be talking about a book that has been shunted aside, that has been left out of the canon, and we're going to call this segment Left Behind.

Dan McClellan (2:01)

Not to be confused with the book series that has been probably, I think, like one of the most successful book series of the history of books.

No, this is a series all about texts that were considered authoritative, historical, important at some time or another, but for whatever reason were left out of the canon. And today, it's a big one. It's First Enoch, The First Book of Enoch, The Book of Enoch, if you will. And something...

Dan Beecher (2:34)

You do, it's funny that The First Book of Enoch and Enoch can be used interchangeably, because you would think that if there's multiple books of Enoch, you have to say the first thing, but you kind of don't, right?

Dan McClellan (2:52)

So it's not like first and second Corinthians or first and second Samuel, where they're written by the same authors and they are consecutive, the one follows after the other. You do have a first, a second, and a third Enoch, and then other pretenders, but they're written in vastly different time periods. And really when people are talking about The Book of Enoch, they're talking about first Enoch. When somebody wants to refer to second Enoch or third Enoch, they're going to say second or third Enoch, if they know what they're talking about.

But this is a phenomenally influential piece of pseudepigrapha, which means writing, which means it's something that was attributed to some towering figure from Jewish or Christian history that was very clearly not written by that person.

Dan Beecher (3:39)

Which is funny because I think a lot of people might consider that reason enough to dismiss it from the canon of the Bible. But plenty of Bible books that are part of the canon are pseudepigrapha as well.

Dan McClellan (3:54)

Exactly. And additionally, some of the texts that are in the Bible considered Enoch to be authoritative and historical.

For instance, the Epistle of Jude that we find in the New Testament directly quotes from 1st Enoch. And it says, Enoch, the seventh from Adam, said... And then directly quotes a passage from 1st Enoch. And so at least the author of the Epistle of Jude considered it to be authoritative, considered it to be historical, but it fell out of favor a couple centuries after that. And we're gonna talk about how that happened, I think toward the end of the show. But I wanted to start by talking about where this text comes from, and then go through a brief outline of the text, and then we'll talk about how we came about discovering it and all that kind of stuff.

Dan Beecher (4:50)

So by where it comes from, you mean it comes from the seventh descendant of Adam, right?

Dan McClellan (4:57)

Well, this was one of the concerns with some of the early Christians who were as a concern for what was canonical and what was not, began to grow. This book purports to come from before the flood. And so actual manuscripts of this book would have to come, have been preserved since before the flood. But Enoch is mentioned.