Book of Enoch

Among the most important non-canonical texts of ancient Judaism, this ancient apocalyptic work is attributed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. Composed in stages between roughly the third century BCE and the first century CE, it survives in full only in Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic). The collection gathers several distinct sections, including the Book of the Watchers, which recounts the fall of rebellious angels who take human wives and father the violent giants known as the Nephilim, and the punishment that follows. Other portions present Enoch's heavenly journeys guided by angels, visions of the cosmos and the places of the dead, an elaborate astronomical and calendrical treatise, allegorical dream-visions of Israel's history, and apocalyptic prophecies of final judgment. The translation presented here is the influential English edition prepared by the scholar R. H. Charles, long a standard reference for students of the period. The text shaped later Jewish and early Christian ideas about angels, demons, the afterlife, and the end of days, and it is quoted directly in the New Testament Epistle of Jude. It remains canonical scripture in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition.