Ask An Evangelical: The Book of Enoch
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What do you think about the book of Enoch? Do you believe it was removed from the bible?
Prior to receiving this Ask an Evangelical question, I had no recollection of ever hearing about the Book of Enoch, so I needed to do some research to find out what it contained and if it had ever been a part of the Bible. Thinking it might be a quick read, I searched online and found a site where each chapter could be perused. Looking further, I learned the book was an estimated 47,840 words long. More investigation showed me that was nearly equal to the minimum of a novel and significantly greater than any other book in the Bible; so, it was onto step two.
Skipping a reading of the book and doing a pretty thorough online investigation, the bulk of the evidence I found indicated that the Book of Enoch was never removed from the Bible because it wasn’t part of the original Scripture, as we know it. There are a lot of opinions about why it wasn’t included, but mostly focused on issues within the text that didn’t align with the rest of the Bible.
To confuse the issue, there are religious groups that have placed it in their biblical canon. For instance, I found that the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church consider the Book of Enoch as canonical.
Other Christian groups regard it as non-canonical or non-inspired, but may accept it as having historical or theological interest. However, based on the information I found, from places like this site, it spelled out several reasons for Enoch not making it into God’s Word. In conclusion, I don’t think reading Enoch would be worth my time.
