Enoch, THE BOOK OF, purports to be a series of revelations made to Enoch both in heaven and on earth. Its contents embrace an apocalyptic history of the kingdom of God, and of the secret origin of the laws of nature. The book is not all by one author, and its various parts are largely interspersed with interpolations. It has been divided by scholars into (1) an original writing, consisting of chapters i.-xxxvi. and lxxii.-cv., of which at least chapters lxxxv.-xc. date from the last third of the 2d century B.C.; (2) three allegories, which are probably pre-Christian writings, but not earlier than the time of Herod, embracing chapters xxxvii.-lxxi., with the exception of later chapters liv. 7-lv. 2, and lx. 65-lxix. 25, which are distinguished as (3) the Noachian portions, because they purport to have been written by Noah. To these last should be added chapters cvi. cvii., and the still later chapter cviii.
The Book of Enoch, which, according to Dillmann, is of Palestinian origin, forms one of the richest sources for the knowledge of Jewish theology and speculation in the last ages before Christ. It was much used in Jewish and Christian writings of the first five centuries of our era, and a passage from it is quoted in the Epistle of Jude (verses 14, 15). Yet from about 800 A.D. the book disappeared, and only a few fragments of a Greek version (probably from a Hebrew or Aramaic original) were known till the year 1773, when three MSS. of an Ethiopic translation made from the Greek were brought by the traveller Bruce from Abyssinia. An English translation by Archbishop Lawrence appeared in 1821; Ethiopic text. 1838. Dillmann's edition (with translation, 1851-53) was based on a collection of five MSS. The MS. found by French explorers at Gizeh in 1887, and published in 1893, contains thirty-two chapters in Greek.
See Drummond, The Jewish Messiah (1877); Bissell, The Apocrypha of the Old Testament (New York, 1880); Schodde, The Book of Enoch, a translation with introduction and notes (Andover, 1882); vol. iii. of Stanley's Jewish Church (new ed. 1883); and the account both of the book and of the recent literature relating to it in Schürer's History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ (Eng. trans. 2d div. vol. iii. Edin. 1886).