The Book of Enoch

The works

• 1 Enoch · 1–36

  The Book of the Watchers

  The oldest core of 1 Enoch. It opens with a theophany, tells the descent of the two hundred, the birth of the giants, the leaking of forbidden arts, Enoch’s intercession, the sentences on Shemihazah and Azazel, and Enoch’s tour of the ends of the earth.

  • Chs. 1–5: Enoch’s blessing and the coming judgment — a Sinai theophany rewritten for the last days.
  • Chs. 6–8: The descent on Hermon in the days of Jared; the twenty chiefs of tens; the arts of Azazel and the others; the earth laid waste.
  • Chs. 9–11: The four archangels carry the cry of men to the Most High. Sentences: Raphael binds Azazel in Dudael; Gabriel sends the giants against each other; Michael binds Shemihazah; the earth is healed.
  • Chs. 12–16: Enoch, still a scribe of righteousness, is sent to announce the sentence. The Watchers ask him to petition. The petition is refused. The spirits of the dead giants will remain as demons.
  • Chs. 17–36: Enoch is taken to the storehouses of wind and fire, the prison of the wandering stars, the tree of wisdom, the garden, the mountain of God, and the places of the dead.

• 1 Enoch · 37–71

  The Parables (Similitudes)

  Three parables of the coming judgment, the hidden Son of Man / Chosen One, the fountain of righteousness, and a second, more metaphysical account of the fallen angels and the cosmic oath.

  • The first parable: the coming congregation of the righteous, Sheol, and the secrets of lightning, thunder, and winds.
  • The second: the Son of Man named before the Lord of Spirits, the kings of the earth who do not worship him, the flood of wisdom.
  • The third: judgment of the kings, the resurrection of the righteous, and chapter 69’s list of fallen angels — Yeqon, Asbeel, Gadreel, Penemue, Kasdeja, Kasbeel — and the oath that founds the world.
  • Chs. 70–71: Enoch is lifted, shown the stars, and in a climactic scene identified with that Son of Man — a riddle later readers never finished fighting over.

• 1 Enoch · 72–82

  The Astronomical Book

  Uriel shows Enoch the lawful sky: six gates of the sun, the insubordinate moon, winds, and a 364-day year. It is dry on purpose. This is the authorized science against Shamsiel, Sariel, and Kokabiel’s stolen version.

  • Ch. 72: the sun’s gates and the 364-day year.
  • Chs. 73–74: the moon’s phases and its failure to keep solar time.
  • Chs. 75–79: intercalary days, winds, and the four quarters.
  • Chs. 80–82: in the days of sinners the luminaries will err; Enoch is told to pass the book to Methuselah.

• 1 Enoch · 83–90

  The Dream Visions

  Two dreams. The first is a vision of the earth swallowed. The second is the Animal Apocalypse: a coded history from Adam to the Maccabean age, in which stars fall, cattle mix with them, and elephants, camels, and asses (the giants) ravage the herd.

  • Chs. 83–84: the first dream and Enoch’s prayer that a remnant be left.
  • Chs. 85–90: white bulls, black bulls, stars falling from heaven, the mixing, the flood, seventy shepherds, and a final white bull — a messianic animal at the end of the allegory.

• 1 Enoch · 91–108

  The Epistle of Enoch

  Enoch’s last words to Methuselah and the children: the Apocalypse of Weeks, woes on the rich and the sinners, an exhortation to the righteous, and a short book of Noah. It reads like wisdom literature that has seen the Watchers.

  • The Apocalypse of Weeks: ten weeks of world-history, with the planting of righteousness in the seventh and a new heaven in the tenth.
  • Woes against oppression, false measures, and those who ‘write lying words.’
  • Ch. 108: a last vision of a cloud and a flame for the humble who were born in darkness.

• 2 Enoch · Slavonic Enoch, 1–73

  The Book of the Secrets of Enoch

  Enoch is taken through ten heavens — or seven, depending on the recension — shown angels of ice and fire, the storehouses, the paradise of Eden in the third heaven, and the grim places of the apostate. He is returned for thirty days to teach his children, then taken permanently.

  • Heavens of correspondence, ice, paradise and torment, solar and lunar armies, seven-banded angels, archons, and the throne.
  • The Watchers appear again as the Grigori in the fifth heaven, silent and miserable, their faces like those of men.
  • A creation account in which God explains the making of the world from the lowest things, and Adoil and Arkhas as primordial depths.
  • Ethical instruction: give to the poor, keep a pure heart — a wisdom ending after a merkabah ascent.

• 3 Enoch · Sefer Hekhalot

  The Hebrew Book of Enoch

  Rabbi Ishmael ascends and is met by Metatron, who is Enoch translated: a prince of the presence with seventy names, height of the world, and a cautionary tale burned into him. When he sat on a throne, Elisha ben Abuyah said ‘there are two powers,’ and Metatron was struck with lashes of fire.

  • Enoch’s translation as the repair of a world emptied by the flood and the departed Shekhinah.
  • The letters by which heaven and earth were created — a permitted, fenced version of Bezaliel’s grammar.
  • The watchers and holy ones as a still-functioning court, with the fallen as a solved problem and a remaining threat.
  • A map of angelic princes over nations, hours, and the treasuries of souls.

• Book of Giants · Aramaic fragments from Qumran (and later Manichaean versions)

  The Book of Giants

  A companion to the Book of Watchers from the same Aramaic library. It names giants — Ohyah, Hahyah, Mahaway, Gilgamesh, Hobabish — and gives them dreams of a tablet washed and a garden of two hundred trees. They send Mahaway to Enoch. The interpretation is the flood.

  • The giants as persons with names, an assembly, and a political life — not only as a plague.
  • Three dreams of erasure: a tablet washed of all but three names; a garden burned to three roots; a throne with books opened for all flesh.
  • Mahaway flies to Enoch, the noted scribe. Enoch sends a second tablet to Shemihazah: the land is crying out.
  • Nine Qumran copies, and later Mani’s Kawān. A reminder that the Watchers’ children had an inner life, and that it did not save them.
  Open the reconstruction