Enoch is considered a legendary figure even in Islam [music] and the attribution to him is part of the pseudapigria.

Meaning the true authors used his name to [music] give an aura of ancient wisdom and authority to the book.

Just like how you would prefer to buy something from a company with lots of positive reviews than from a company with no reviews at all.

The book of Enoch was most likely written by multiple authors over several centuries with estimates ranging from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD during the second temple period in Jewish history.

Other examples of pseudapigria from the approximate same time are the testament [music] of Job, the apocalypse of Baroo and fourth Ezra among many others.

[music] Next, we have inconsistencies.

Theologically, the book of Enoch has a lot of interesting ideas, but some of them were thought to be at odds with other well-known Bible stories.

For instance, its detailed view of angels and some [music] end-of-the-world ideas did not always fit with the mainstream of Christian theology as it grew.

The devil, also known as Satan or Lucifer, was the only bad guy in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

Albeit different name, but one guy.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t other demons.

It’s just that they’re not named or even given as much attention as the devil was.

But in the book of Enoch, God says that everything bad in the world is because of a fallen angel named Aazil, which highly goes against what the Bible says about Satan being the source of all sin and evil.

The book also implies fallen angels [music] can’t talk to God.

This contradicts the book of Job where Satan came to a meeting.

also implies that angels were repentant but weren’t received back by God which is a very strange doctrine.

These differences raised quite an eyebrow and coupled with the fact that it was written by multiple people made it hard for scholars to really and truly know the intention behind the [music] writings which was another thing to consider.

Now in the Jewish community everyone had an idea of how they think God should be worshiped.

So for example, a particular sect might write a book reflecting a belief of let’s say God wants only men to worship him and another sect will write a book saying God wants both men and women to worship him.

So even though they are Jews worshiping God, the semantics is where problems usually arise.

You can see a perfect representation of this during Jesus’s time when they had two different groups, the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

And lastly, and one of the reasons the Book of Enoch wasn’t included in the Bible was because it simply didn’t pass the rules.

Before a writing could be added to the canon or list of holy works in the Bible, it had to meet three main requirements.

One, apostolicity from one of the apostles or one of their disciples.

Two, Catholicity/universality.

Many believers and leaders of believers read it and accepted [music] it as the inspired word of God.

Three, consistency consistent with all other books of the canon.

The book of Enoch, the Gospel credited to St.

Peter, and other books that aren’t in the canon seem to have parts that make them not canonical based on these three criteria.

Look, to be honest, it is kind of complicated [music] and also not complicated at the same time.

Here’s what I mean.

70 Jewish rabbis got together to translate the Torah, which is known as the law, the writings, [music] and the prophets into Greek.

This is what we now call the Old Testament.

The rabbis did this because many Jews were learning Greek as their first language, and they wanted the Bible to be easier for modern people to understand.

This is the main reason why translations are done.

These translations became the famous Septuagent which means the 70.

Now when they were interpreting there were a lot of writings out there from different authors [music] from different times.

But the 70 decided that only a few could be proven to have come from Yahweh or been inspired by him.

Then they compared all later works to the law.

Those that agreed with the law were accepted and those that [music] didn’t were, let’s say, thrown out.

Now, at first, and why the book of Enoch was in the Bible back then, is because these books were added as some sort of further reading, not necessarily banned.

They were put away as maybe true, maybe not, probably a mix, take it with a grain of salt, kind of books.

You might find it hard to believe that for a long time Enoch and the rest of the Apocrypha were added as extras to most Christian [music] Bibles.

That is until the 4th century when it was vilified.

Also, it’s important to note that the Apocrypha is not the same as the few fake New Testament books that are out there, such as the Gospel of Judas and others, which are intentionally false works meant to deceive people.

So, when you add all of these together, you start to understand where the problem comes from.

I mean, no matter how interesting and well-ritten a fanfiction is, it’s still fanfiction.

So, what do I think about the Book of Enoch? Personally, I think it’s a good read, and it is riveting and kind of eye opening, even if it’s a work of fiction.

That being said, I’ll sum up my reply with one of the comments I came across when researching the Book of Enoch, and it was about how Christians should actually focus on what’s in the Bible, as it has more than enough information to live a life that pleases God.

Basically, the person was attributing searching for the book of Enoch as having two fishes at hand [music] and still looking for a third one in the water when your hands are clearly full with the Bible.

And that kind of makes sense to me.

So, I’ll leave you with these words from Morpheus.

You take the blue pill, the story ends.

You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

 

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