Book Of Enoch

[Christ-Follower]

Many of us know of Enoch as one of the few individuals within the Bible that never physically died. However, few know of the book that Enoch wrote and which was included in the Koran for centuries. What is written in the Book of Enoch that caused it to be banned by the Catholic church? Is the Book really written by Enoch himself?

[Adeodatus]

There are several "books of Enoch", none of them written by Enoch himself. An Ethiopian version (called 1 Enoch) and a Slavonic text (called 2 Enoch) both appear to be written by Jews between 200 BC and AD 100. They belong to a whole class of literature called "apocalyptic" which was widespread in those times. The book of Enoch most people mean is 1 Enoch, the Ethiopian one, and it has never been part of the Koran.

The Catholic Church does not "ban" such books. In the early history of the Church, the Church gathered the writings we now call the Old and New Testaments. These sacred texts are the Word of God, and we call them "canonical" i.e. part of the canon of the Scriptures. All the books of the Bible are canonical,; if they are not canonical, they aren't in the Bible and aren't regarded as inspired texts (no matter how inspirational they may be!). A useful way of looking at canonical books is to think of them as those sacred books which the Church has always prayed liturgically. If the Church doesn't use it in her liturgy, then it isn't canonical. This applies to ancient writings, the ones handed down to us from the Apostles.

So the book of Enoch hasn't been "banned". The Church has simply never read this particular book in prayer in her liturgy, and not handed it down in the tradition of the scriptures as a sacred and divinely-inspired book. It may be a very interesting book, and may give us an insight into what different Jews believed round about the time of Jesus, but Sacred Scripture it ain't.