Non-Canonical
Not received as Scripture by the Jewish canon or by the major Christian churches, apart from local exceptions such as the Ethiopian Orthodox canon, which includes 1 Enoch and Jubilees. This is not the Apocrypha.
The Apocrypha is a different collection: Catholic and Orthodox churches receive those books as deuterocanonical, and Protestant confessions say the church may read them without using them to establish doctrine.
A verse of 1 Enoch such as 1 Enoch 1:9 is /non-canonical/book-of-enoch/1/9.
The Bible on this site is the 66-book King James Version.
Books on This Shelf
- Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) 108 chapters
- Secrets of Enoch (2 Enoch, Slavonic Enoch) 68 chapters
- 3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch) Explainer
Which Enoch?
| Book | Also Called | Surviving Text | On This Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) | Ethiopic Enoch | Ge’ez, with Aramaic copies from Qumran and a Greek copy of chapters 1–32 | Full text, R. H. Charles, 1917 |
| Secrets of Enoch (2 Enoch) | Slavonic Enoch | Slavonic manuscripts, translated by W. R. Morfill and edited by R. H. Charles, 1896 | 68 chapter pages. Verses are not reconstructed from the scan. |
| 3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch) | Hebrew Book of Enoch | Hebrew. The Jewish Encyclopedia describes R. Ishmael’s ascent and Metatron, who is Enoch. | Explainer. No full text. |
Jubilees is named in the Ethiopian Orthodox lists with 1 Enoch. This shelf does not yet print a Jubilees text.
When Were These Written?
Each row is the date the named source gives. A book with more than one reported date keeps those dates. The Bible index places 1 Enoch with Jubilees. Secrets of Enoch and 3 Enoch stay on this shelf.
| Book | Approximate Date | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Old Testament | Josephus, Against Apion 1.8, counts five books of Moses, thirteen of the prophets, and four of hymns and precepts. History written after Artaxerxes “hath not been esteemed of the like authority,” because there has not been an exact succession of prophets. This row does not assign one year to all 39 books. | Josephus, Against Apion |
| Apocrypha | Not one date. The Catholic Encyclopedia reads Sirach’s grandson as 132 BC, and the grandfather as about 190–170 BC or about 280 BC. It dates the Maccabean revolt from 174 BC through Simon’s death in 135 BC. | EcclesiasticusThe Machabees |
| Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) | Fitzmyer reports Milik: the Book of the Watchers in its final form in the 3rd century BC, the Book of Dreams about 164 BC, and the Astronomical Book in the Persian period. The Parables are absent from the Qumran copies he reports. He also reports Milik’s date for the Parables, a Christian composition not before the 5th century AD. This site does not add a later consensus date. | Fitzmyer, Theological Studies 38 |
| Secrets of Enoch (2 Enoch) | The Jewish Encyclopedia gives about 50 BC–AD 70, because the book uses 1 Enoch, Ecclesiasticus, and Wisdom and does not mention the Temple’s destruction. earlyjewishwritings.com reports that J. T. Milik wanted a ninth-century date and has had little following. No church canon on this site includes this book, so it is not a card on the Bible index. | Jewish Encyclopedia, Slavonic Enochearlyjewishwritings.com, 2 Enoch |
| 3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch) | The Jewish Encyclopedia dates the book no later than the completion of the Babylonian Talmud. earlyjewishwritings.com reports P. Alexander: a final redaction in the fifth or sixth century cannot be far from the truth. Those reports stay side by side. | Jewish Encyclopedia, Hebrew Enochearlyjewishwritings.com, 3 Enoch |
Jubilees is named with 1 Enoch in the Ethiopian Orthodox lists. This page does not give Jubilees a composition year.
The Book of Enoch
What 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch are, how Jude uses one sentence from 1 Enoch, and why that citation did not put these books in the canon.
- 3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch)
3 Enoch is a later Hebrew mystical book. Rabbi Ishmael ascends to the Merkabah, and Metatron says he is Enoch. It is not the Jewish Bible or the New Testament. This site prints no full text.
- What Is the Book of Enoch and Why Isn’t It in the Bible?
1 Enoch is a composite book written in Enoch’s name. Jude 14–15 quotes 1 Enoch 1:9. The Jewish canon and the major Christian churches did not receive the book. The Ethiopian Orthodox narrower canon does.
How the Canon Was Decided
The Jewish lists, the early church lists, and the later Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant decisions.
Other Early Books
Gospels and other books the early church writers named and did not receive as Scripture.
R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (London: SPCK, 1917), public domain. The verse text is the English Wikisource transcription of that translation. Charles’s editorial signs are kept. He rearranges some verses in chapters 5, 39, 90, 91, and 106, so those chapters are not a straight 1, 2, 3 sequence.