The Book of Enoch is a Dangerous Demonic Snare

By Jeremy James 

This paper originally appeared on the website: zephaniah.eu

We need to remind ourselves every day that we live in a time of astounding deception. The Enemy has designed so many distractions and diversions that true believers can waste hours of precious time on matters of absolutely no value. Worse still, he has devised so many traps and snares, so many illusions and lies, that without the Word of God to protect us we would be crushed like sheep beneath an avalanche.

In order to enjoy this protection we must read the Word of God every day and immerse ourselves in it. We must believe it and lean on it, trusting it to enliven and enrich our understanding. It is primarily by reflecting on the Word that we hear what the Holy Spirit is telling us.

The Enemy Hates the Word of God

The Enemy hates the Word and is doing everything he can to pollute it, to shake our faith in it, to discredit it, and by various devious means to weaken our reliance upon it. One of his most successful and best known devices has been the augmentation of Scripture. This comprises, not just the inclusion of spurious works in the canon of Scripture, but the elevation of uninspired, theological writings to the point where they color our understanding of Scripture and lead us astray.

The writings of Ellen G White are a good example of this. A member of the Seventh Day Adventist church may study the Bible with all sincerity but, by doing so through the lens of Mrs White’s writings, he cannot understand it. The distortions are subtle but destructive. The same is true of Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon and The Pearl of Great Price. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, has added a number of Apocryphal books to the Bible and, by doing so, has grievously polluted the purity of God’s Word. Moreover, it has added to this confusion by raising Papal encyclicals and equally flawed human documents to the level of holy writ.

Any book that dominates one’s understanding of Scripture can have a similar effect.

In this paper we will examine one of the most dangerous of these duplicitous works, the so-called Book of Enoch.  

Background

At the outset it should be understood that The Book of Enoch is really five separate books by different authors, bound together as a single work comprising 108 chapters.

The first book, chapters 1-36, deals with The Watchers and the ephilim. It is undoubtedly the one that exercises the greatest influence over modern speculative writing. The Watchers are a group of fallen angels, while the Nephilim are the offspring produced from their sexual union with women.

The second book, chapters 37-71, contains The Parables of Enoch. There are three parables in all. The first deals with the nature of heaven, the second with the Enochian concept of a messiah, and the third with the nature of the earth.

The third book, consisting mainly of chapters 72-82, deals with astronomy and the movement of the heavenly bodies.

The fourth book, chapters 83-90, contains an apocalyptic vision of the Flood, a vision of the millennial kingdom, and the history of Israel to the time of the Maccabees, expressed as events that had yet to happen.

The fifth book, chapters 91-108, also called the Epistle of Enoch, contains admonitions to his children, as well as prophetic reflections on the destinies of the righteous and the wicked, respectively.

The Book of Enoch (presumably comprising all five books, though no-one knows for certain) was familiar to post-Apostolic writers, some of whom seem to have regarded it as genuine, though how this affected their interpretation of Scripture is also unclear. However, when the constituent books of the Bible were selected and endorsed by the ecclesiastic authorities in the fourth century AD, The Book of Enoch was not included. It remained forgotten until its rediscovery over a thousand years later.

The Book of Enoch was at no time part of the Jewish canon of Scripture and was not included in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament which was completed around 130 BC. [Hereafter, when we speak of The Book of Enoch, we mean all five books, except where a lesser number is indicated.]

The only complete version of the ‘book’ (i.e. books 1-5 in a single volume) is in Ge’ez or Ethiopian, dating from the 16th century or thereabouts. Copies of this version were discovered by the Scottish explorer, James Bruce, in 1773 and brought back to Europe. The first translation in English was not published until 1821.

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain fragments in Aramaic from four of the books (No fragments from The Book of Parables were identified). These fragments contain enough text to allow their place in The Book of Enoch to be determined, but not nearly enough to confirm that the version found by Bruce is substantially the same as the one on which the Qumran fragments were based. [This author questions the veracity of the Dead Sea Scroll “discovery” – for reasons outlined here]

Scholars have made a tentative estimate of the periods in which the books were written. No scholar of repute, as far as we know, attributes the work as a whole to Enoch, the son of Jared, mentioned in Genesis 5:18. It is universally agreed that, like virtually all Apocryphal literature, the Book of Enoch was written in what is often called the inter-testamental period, after the last of the Old Testament books had been written (c.400 BC) but before the appearance of the earliest works of the New Testament. Such works were often made attractive to naïve readers by falsely attributing them to a person of note, such as Solomon, Noah or Enoch. A similar technique was used later to propagate the so-called Gnostic gospels, where bogus writings were attributed to the Apostles, such as The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, or The Apocalypse of Paul.

While there is seemingly no consensus as yet as to when each of the five ‘books’ were written, it is generally agreed that portions may pre-date the Maccabean revolt of 167 BC, while other parts may have been penned in the first century BC but before the arrival of the Romans in 63 BC. The Book of Parables, on the other hand, was probably written late in the first century A.D.

The attack on God’s Word has been ongoing, not just in Apostolic times and thereafter, but from the Babylonian Exile, if not before. For example, during the Exile an influential group of apostate Jews initiated the Talmudic tradition in which commentaries by learned rabbis were taken to be as authoritative as Scripture. Jesus berated the Pharisees for elevating their “traditions” in this way: “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.” (Mark 7:9) He even described them as a generation of vipers and serpents (Matthew 23:33). In light of this we should hardly be surprised that these various hypocritical and apostate groups were willing to give credence to works which had no place in the canon of Scripture.

God preserves His Word

God said He would preserve His Word. The canon of Scripture was closed in 96 AD or thereabouts when John completed the Book of Revelation. In doing so John would have been able to confirm for his disciples the contents or constituent books of the New Testment, as well as those of the Bible as a whole. The Roman Catholic Church likes to perpetuate the myth that the contents of the New Testament were not finally determined until the 4th century A.D., but she does this primarily to assert her hold over the Bible.

When John penned Revelation 22, the last chapter in the book (and the Bible), he was formally closing the canon of Scripture and, in doing so, must have known exactly what that canon was:

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” (Revelation 22:18-19)

Since God’s Word is an organic whole, we know that these verses apply to the Bible as a whole and not just to the Book of Revelation. This means that, from the start of the 2nd century, the church, the body of true believers, knew exactly which books were in the Bible. The Book of Enoch was not one of them.

The modern fascination with The Book of Enoch

Today The Book of Enoch has come to be regarded by many as a book that “should” have been in the Bible but was inexplicably excluded. Its admirers claim that it answers so many questions and fills in so many gaps in our knowledge that it must be true. Even early Apostolic writers spoke well of it, including Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. Furthermore, since there is no record of why it was excluded from the Bible, they argue that it must have been dropped for purely political reasons. Many contend that it was actively suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church since it contained ideas that were inconsistent with Catholic theology. Some even believe that God allowed it to disappear until our modern age when it contents would be vital to our understanding of prophecy and the well-being of the End Time church.

There is an entire industry devoted to this book, with one prophecy conference after another extolling its revelatory gems. The literature relating to this book is quite extraordinary. Numerous popular authors, including many who claim to be Christian, continue to produce books and videos which treat The Book of Enoch as a factual historical text.

A major prophecy conference held in July 2016 in Colorado Springs – a popular location for New Age, esoteric, and occult events – featured a long list of speakers who are pushing the Nephilim agenda, including Tom Horn, Gary Stearman, L A Marzulli, Doc Marquis, Cris Putnam, Josh Peck, Michael Lake, Ken Johnson, Derek Gilbert, and Stan Deyo. Similar prophecy conferences in the past have included such well-known Nephilim aficionados as Chuck Missler, Russ Dizdar, Rob Skiba, Doug Hamp, and Michael Heiser.

In addition to those who profess to be ‘Christian’, there are many teachers and socalled prophets of the New Age who offer a ringing endorsement of The Book of Enoch. Why? Because it fits perfectly with the New Age vision of the future, where ‘highly evolved’ beings come to earth from another ‘galaxy’ to save our ‘planet’ from destruction and lift the ‘initiated’ remnant into a state of ‘cosmic consciousness’.

The Nephilim Deception

We addressed the question of the Nephilim, ETs and UFOs in some earlier papers, including:

The Great Nephilim Deception:
Why Christians are Being Tricked into Believing in ETs and UFOs (#49),

The Jesuit-controlled ET Deception is Rapidly Taking Shape (#62),

Fatal Flaws in the Gap Theory:
Why the Earth and the Heavens are around Six Thousand Years Old (#85),

The Curse of New Age Christianity:
Chuck Missler and His ‘Holographic’ Universe (#55) We would refer the reader to these for an analysis of the great Nephilim deception and related matters. Meanwhile, we will confine ourselves in this paper to The Book of Enoch itself, the common source of many of these false teachings.

We would refer the reader to these for an analysis of the great Nephilim deception and related matters. Meanwhile, we will confine ourselves in this paper to The Book of Enoch itself, the common source of many of these false teachings.

Reasons why The Book of Enoch is a fake

There are so many reasons to reject The Book of Enoch, not simply as a book that should be excluded from the Bible, but as a book that cannot be trusted on any level.

Let’s start with the reasons for excluding it from the Bible:

Imagination, not inspiration

1. It was plainly part of the archive of Aramaic literature that blossomed after the return from the Babylonian exile. The Jews had been exposed to a wealth of pagan ideas in Babylon, and then to the Zoroastrian philosophy of the Persians and Medes after the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. With the rise of the Seleucid empire and the gradual Hellenization of many Jewish communities, the mythology of Greece and the metaphysics of Plato left their mark on the Jewish imagination. The former was steeped in tales of women mating with the gods of Mount Olympus to produce human offspring that possessed supernatural abilities. Greek mythology was also replete with stories of hybrids that were part animal and part human.

Several authors speaking in the first person

2. The Book of Enoch was originally five separate works by different authors, all speaking in the first person. Apart from the later inclusion of a few editorial passages to link them together, they have no continuity of thought and no connection with the message of the Bible or with the progressive revelation that we find in Scripture. What is even more striking is the extent to which it ignores Biblical truth, and in numerous places makes statements that actually conflict with what Scripture has revealed.

A false god

3. The Book of Enoch makes no convincing reference to the God of the Bible. Its ‘god’ is the god of Plato and Greek metaphysics, a god with whom man cannot have a personal relationship. As some commentators have noted, the god of ‘Enoch’ is very similar to the Great Architect of Freemasonry.

A false doctrine of sin

4. The Book of Enoch teaches a deeply heretical concept of sin, one that makes a complete mockery of Biblical revelation. As far as its various authors are concerned, sin entered the world through the fallen angels. Mankind was the victim of an angelic invasion which fatally polluted the human germline and produced – in a way that is never clearly explained – a sharp demarcation between the righteous and the wicked. At some future date a messiah-type figure will emerge who will purge the earth of the latter and usher in the millennium.

A purely human messiah

5. The messiah-type figure in The Book of Enoch is not the Messiah of the Bible – of Isaiah, Zechariah, and the Psalms. There is only a tentative portrayal of him as a saviour and no indication whatever that he is divine.

No doctrine of Redemption

6. Without the Biblical doctrine of sin, The Book of Enoch never teaches, or even implies, that sin is repugnant to an awesomely Holy God or that man, in his fallen state, is completely alienated from God and needs a Redeemer. Rather earth is seen as a battleground in which good eventually triumphs over evil, where grace and mercy have no real meaning, and where death itself is but a phase in a cosmic struggle. The idea that sin must be punished and that the wages of sin is death is completely alien to the strange theology running through this book.

Not part of the Jewish canon

7. The Book of Enoch was never part of the Jewish canon of Scripture and was never recognized by Christians as part of Scripture.

Reasons why this book is simply not trustworthy

Now let’s examine the integrity of this book from an historical standpoint. Even though it is not part of the canon of Scripture and was not divinely inspired, is it possible that some of what it teaches is factually correct? For example, did it set out in written form an oral tradition that had been handed down for centuries from the time of Noah and, to that extent, rather like the First Book of Maccabees, contains material based on actual events?

As we shall see, the evidence clearly shows that The Book of Enoch is unreliable on every level. Here are some further reasons for rejecting the book in its totality, in addition to those already cited above:

1. It was not written by the son of Jared

The book masquerades as a work by Enoch, the son of Jared and grandfather of Noah, who lived more than three thousand years earlier. This shows that its authors were attempting to pass off as a true prophetic work a fictional composition of their own devising. Had the work been based on a long-established oral tradition and written in the third person, there would have been no need to engage in such a deception. So, either it was a bona fide copy of a document written three thousand years earlier by Enoch, or it was a deliberate fraud. The problem with fraudulent material is that none of its contents can be trusted. We have no way of knowing whether some parts, if any, were either factually true or based on actual events.

2. We don’t know the source of Jude’s quotation

We know Enoch said this because the Bible tells us so. Where? In Jude 1:14-15. We have no way of knowing whether Jude consulted a text known as The Book of Enoch, that he regarded it as part of the canon of Scripture, or that he endorsed any other part of the book. All we know is that the Holy Spirit inspired Jude to include that quotation and its attribution in his letter.

Paul quoted Epimenides (without attribution) in Titus 1:12 (“All Cretans are liars”) but we do not for a moment imagine that he was recommending the writings of Epimenides, a pagan, or that any part of his writings would edify believers.

3. Angels are spirits

Defenders of The Book of Enoch also like to point to another verse in Jude, along with a similar verse in 2 Peter, and claim that the angels in question were the Watchers which fathered the Nephilim :

“And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” – (Jude 1:6)

“For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;” – (2 Peter 2:4)

It is a longstanding principle of Biblical interpretation that no verse of Scripture should be read in isolation, especially where a doctrinal issue is concerned. We must compare scripture with scripture and discount interpretations that conflict with what is plainly stated elsewhere. The Word of God tells us that angels are spirits:

“Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire:” (Psalm 104:4)

“And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” (Hebrews 1:7)

“But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14)

Angels also differ from humans in that they were all brought into existence at the same time. There was no need for them to procreate since their total number was fixed for all time by God when He created them. Jesus was referring to this when he said:

“For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” (Matthew 22:30)

If angels cannot procreate among their own kind, they certainly cannot do so with humans. They have no genetic seed by which they can transmit their image, and as spirits have no corporeal component. Therefore the idea that angels mated with humans at any time is simply absurd.

Let’s look at the principal text that the Nephilim promoters use to justify their false belief:

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” (Genesis 6:1-6)

All of this occurred within the lifetimes of just two people, Adam and Methuselah. What is more their lifetimes overlapped by 243 years – see chart above. Everybody alive on earth at the time of the Flood was closely related to one of the ten men in the chart above.

We are literally speaking of a massive population consisting mainly of cousins and grandchildren. We know from the dreadful breach that occurred between Cain and Abel that there existed two religious systems at the time, one which accepted the need for a Redeemer and one which did not. The old Bible commentators called the former group the Sethites since, like Seth (brother of Abel), they sought a relationship with God “And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.” – Genesis 4:26).

The generations of Adam

The Bible makes a sharp distinction between the Sethites and the descendants of Cain. We can see this clearly in Genesis Chapter 5 which opens with the words:

“This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:” (Genesis 5:1-3)

The ten men named in the above chart are all listed in “the book of the generations of Adam”, but the descendants of Cain are not. They are named instead in Chapter 4: Enoch (not to be confused with the son of Jared), Irad, Mehujael, Methusael (not to be confused with Methuselah), Lamech (not to be confused with the son of Methuselah), and the sons of Lamech – Jabal, Jubal, and Tubalcain.

Thus the earth for many years comprised two distinct religious groups, the Sethites or children of God – because they called upon the name of the LORD (Genesis 4:26) and accepted that they were made in the image of God, just like Seth (Genesis 5:3) – and the Cainites, who are described as the children of men because they did not call upon the name of the LORD and did not accept that they were made in His image.

The Sethites, the chosen people of their age, soon did what the Israelites did a few thousand years later – they intermarried with pagan women (“the daughters of men.”) Instead of remaining separate they allowed themselves to intermingle with the children of disobedience. This had disastrous consequences, and wickedness quickly spread across the earth. The children produced by these unions seemed to carry great influence in both camps and became “mighty men, men of renown”. The spiritual vitality of the Sethites quickly waned as these “mighty men” led them further into Cainite depravity. As a result “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and…every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5)

Stature is not necessarily physical

The Hebrew words in Genesis 6:4, which are translated “giants” and “mighty men” in the KJV, refer to stature. The context tells us that this related to their political standing, their stature as leaders of men and thus their instrumental role in leading the Sethites down the path of depravity. We find the same history repeating itself in the story of Israel, where intermarriage with pagans and a failure to separate completely from false religious practices led to a rapid departure from the path of righteousness. This was accelerated by the emergence of powerful political figures (“mighty men”) like Jeroboam, who instituted the worship of golden calves, and Ahaz, whose marriage to Jezebel led to Baal worship and vicious religious persecution. We don’t need to invent giants and hybrid offspring to understand what was happening in Genesis 6. In fact, an interpretation based on giants and hybrid offspring is entirely inconsistent with the context and with the socio-political conditions being described.

4. There are no hybrid spirits Defenders of The Book of Enoch also like to argue that the unclean spirits which Jesus expelled from his followers came originally from dead hybrids. They reject the notion that the demons or unclean spirits of the Bible were fallen angels, perhaps of the lowest order. Instead they speculate – based on chapter 15 – that the spirits of dead Nephilim, being neither fully human nor fully angelic, had no designated place to go when their physical body died and were obliged instead to wander the earth looking for another body to inhabit. In some variations of this story, the unclean spirits were not those of the Nephilim themselves but of the part-human, part-animal hybrids that the Nephilim produced via genetic experimentation.

However, they are wrong. In the order established by God, both the spirit of man and the spirit of animals have a designated place: “Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?” (Ecclesiastes 3:21) Neither wander the earth after death. The Nephilim hybrid, combining human and animal tissue, must have had either a human or an animal spirit. As such it had a designated place, neither of which entailed wandering the earth after death.

5. Similitude is not incarnation

In their vain to attempt to convince themselves that the fallen angels can mate with humans, the defenders of The Book of Enoch point out that angels assumed physical form on several occasions in the Bible. They reason that, if angels can assume physical form at certain times, then they are capable of mating with human women.

This is nonsensical reasoning. Firstly, the angels in the Bible who appeared to men in physical form were not incarnate in human form. They were not made of human flesh but were a similitude only. The Angel of the LORD, who appeared to Elijah and others, was Christ in human form, but not yet incarnate in human flesh.

The righteous angels in the Bible are called messengers because they were sent by God. The Hebrew word for angel, malak, and the Greek, angelos, both mean “messenger.” This means they were authorised by God on such occasions to appear to man in human form. There is no indication anywhere in the Bible that angels, whether fallen or righteous, can appear to man without approval from God. The very name, messenger, is an indication of this fact.

Consistency is an important principle of Bible interpretation.

Before we go on to consider why the false teaching of the Nephilim is being promoted so strongly today, we will look first at a few examples of the numerous statements in The Book of Enoch which conflict in some way with the Word of God.

Defenders of this egregious book like to imagine that, since it was allegedly penned by Enoch before the rest of the Bible was written, it did not have to be fully consistent with the revelation that came later. But this is absurd! The Holy Spirit is the author of the Word of God and, as such, everything He says must be consistent. He could never have said anything in The Book of Enoch (had He inspired it) that was not perfectly consistent with what He would reveal later through the prophets. This alone shows that The Book of Enoch is a fraudulent work and should be rejected outright by believers in God’s Word.

Heresies in Chapters 1-5

Take the opening chapters (1-5) which describe the work of creation and conditions on earth after the Tribulation. There is no indication here that the Son of God incarnates and lives thereafter among the righteous. Salvation merely means living in “light and grace and peace”. While the author does envisage the absence of sin and the desire to sin, he goes on to say “they will complete the number of the days of their life and their lives shall be increased in peace” (4.9) This is an outcome that could just as easily have arisen without a Messiah, without salvation, and without any reconciliation between God and man. He also confuses the millennium with the eternal state and deals with the question of sin in an infantile way, as something that will simply no longer exist. The staggering price that must be paid to achieve this is not even hinted at. These chapters (1-5) read more like a fairytale than a vital part of God’s revelation to man.

Heresies in Chapters 6-11

Okay, let’s look at the next six chapters (6-11). These are without doubt the ones that have contributed most to the notoriety of The Book of Enoch by twisting the plain interpretation of Genesis 6 into a science fiction drama. It begins with two hundred angels conspiring together to invade earth and make wives of human women. The following statement is attributed to ‘Semjaza’, the leader of this renegade group: “I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.” In all 19 of these fallen angels are named (6:7), none of whom are mentioned in the Bible. Given that only two fallen angels are named in the Bible, Lucifer/Satan and Abaddon/Apollyon, and only two righteous angels, Gabriel and Michael, we find here an obvious attempt to portray these rebels in heroic or sympathetic terms.

They then take one wife each and, after defiling them, teach them “charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants.” (7:1) This conflicts with the account in Genesis where Adam was created with the skills he needed to carry out the job that God had given him, which would have included a knowledge of botany (just like his knowledge of zoology). So it was not an occult skill that could be acquired only through the intervention of fallen angels, but a gift that mankind had already received from God.

The book then claims (7:2) that the giants born to the human women grew to a height of “three thousand ells” in height. Since an ell is about the same length as a cubit (18″ or so) these giants were meant to have attained a height of 4500 feet, which is absurd. Some defenders of The Book of Enoch imagine that this passage should have read “three hundred ells”, making the giants 450ft tall, but that too is ridiculous. Even if we assume that a height of “thirty ells” or 45ft was intended, we still end up with a physical impossibility.

Apart from the obvious fact that a woman could not give birth to a child that would later attain a mature height of 45ft, human physiology and the laws of anatomy set an upper limit (literally) on how tall we can grow. If we double in height we also increase substantially in volume. This creates serious problems for our internal heat regulation since the ratio of our total mass to our total surface area (our skin – through which we lose most of our body heat) is greatly reduced. If we were 45ft tall, we would risk dying from heat stroke if we undertook any sustained physical exercise. Our skeletal structure is also designed to deal with normal stress loads, such as those produced, for example, when we turn our head suddenly. If we were 45ft tall, the axial stress on our cervical vertebrae would be immense and any sharp movement could cause our neck to snap (This is similar to shaken-head trauma in infants).

The Bible speaks of giants with specific reference to their height in only a few places. Goliath was about 9’4″ in height, while Og, the king of Bashan, had a bed that measured about 13’6″ in length. We can see therefore that the height attributed to the “giants” in The Book of Enoch is both physiologically impossible and entirely inconsistent with what the Bible says about giants.

Factors affecting the size of humans.

It should also be noted that abnormally oversized people were not very common, even in Biblical times. After the Exodus, when the Israelite scouts returned with news that the people of Canaan were unusually tall, they were referring to the inhabitants of a land that was “flowing with milk and honey.” They enjoyed optimum nutrition for many centuries, while the unfortunate Israelites had been oppressed, malnourished, and overworked for generations.

It is well known that a low protein diet greatly affects the overall height of a population. Undernourished mothers bear smaller children, who in turn go on to give birth to even smaller children unless their nutrition improves. Racial grouping is another factor. The average height of an adult male in Denmark today is 6ft. Compare that with the average height of an adult male in Indonesia (5’2″) or Bolivia (5’3″). It is quite possible that the Israelites who left Egypt at the time of the Exodus were significantly smaller in stature than the people of Canaan for perfectly normal reasons.

Sharp conflicts with the Genesis account

The Book of Enoch then goes on to say that these enormous giants “devoured mankind”. This is generally taken to mean that they actually ate human flesh, though it is also possible that they simply exploited and oppressed mankind to the point of extinction. But this conflicts with what the Bible tells us. Noah spent 120 years building a huge ship and no-one ate him. And no-one ate his sons or their wives. And the giants didn’t interrupt the construction of this great ship – which must surely have been visible to all as a project that defied the giants and their authority. According to chapter 7 of The Book of Enoch, the giants then “began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh, and drink the blood.” So, when they were finished eating mankind, they began killing and eating each other.

If chapters 1-5 were akin to a fairytale, then chapters 6-7 are a gothic horror story penned by an imaginative schoolboy. According to this bizarre book, there were virtually no humans left on earth when God sent the Flood. These psychopathic giants had eaten nearly everyone, plus many of their own kind, and had even sinned against birds and beasts, reptiles and fish (though in what sense is never explained). This entire scenario contradicts the Genesis account in an outlandish way, to the point where it even seems to be mocking God’s Word.

Remember, we have examined only the first 7 chapters (out of 108) and found a large amount of apostate material, some of which conflicts so strongly with God’s Word that we cannot understand how anyone could have thought it might be a ‘lost book’ of the Bible!

It would take a lengthy treatise to deal adequately with the rambling, self-indulgent and sometimes incoherent material in the remaining chapters. The ‘author’ portrays himself as a great prophetic hero who travels back and forth to heaven as an intermediary between God and man and, incredibly, between God and the fallen angels. Along the way he has more divine encounters and heavenly journeys than any of the prophets. He is even shown around hell and the celestial regions. His vaunted stature is well captured in the sub-title to one of the many books on ‘Enoch’ that are available on the bookshelves today – Greater than Abraham, Holier than Moses (see image above).

Even more heresy

We will now examine a few of the more jarring passages in the remainder of the book. As our grandparents would have said, some of them stick out like a sore thumb:

“And again the Lord said to Raphael: ‘Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness…the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin.'” [10:4&8]

Seemingly all sin is ascribed to the leader of the band of fallen angels known as the Watchers – to just one entity. Not to the fallen angels or to any member of the human race. The Bible says, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) – but not according to the false prophet known as ‘Enoch’.

There is no suggestion anywhere in the Bible that the fallen angels could possibly be redeemed. In order to redeem man, Christ had to become a man. The fallen angels have no redeemer and no possibility of redemption. But ‘Enoch’ tries to prise the door open just a little bit:

“Then I went and spoke to them all together, and they were all afraid, and fear and trembling seized them. And they besought me to draw up a petition for them that they might find forgiveness, and to read their petition in the presence of the Lord of heaven.” [13:3-4]

When he came before God “the Lord called me with His own mouth, and said to me: ‘Come hither, Enoch, and hear my word.’…go, say to the Watchers of heaven, who have sent thee to intercede for them: “You should intercede for men, and not men for you.”” [14:24 and 15:2]

We are meant to imagine a scenario where the most dangerous of the fallen angels ask a mortal man to intercede before God on their behalf. The Bible makes it quite clear that all men are fallen, so how can a man in need of redemption approach God and request clemency and redemption on behalf of the fallen angels? It is utterly absurd, a blasphemous perversion of what the Bible plainly teaches. We see yet again how The Book of Enoch trivializes sin and the damage caused by sin. It also glorifies a particular man, namely ‘Enoch’ himself, and even has the audacity to portray him as a Christ-like figure.

A different gospel

Later, just before the Flood, we see Enoch undertaking another journey to God – he seems to be able to travel back and forth to heaven whenever he chooses – to intercede on behalf of man:

“And now, O God and Lord and Great King, I implore and beseech Thee to fulfil my prayer, to leave me a posterity on earth, and not to destroy all the flesh of man, and make the earth without inhabitant…” [84:5]

The Bible says “…there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5), but not according to the false prophet known as ‘Enoch’. This apostate book is teaching a different gospel, as well as a completely false account of the relationship between God and man in his fallen, alienated state.

Blasphemy

Later it tells us that ‘Enoch’ was sent back to earth to record for the benefit of mankind the many revelations given to him in heaven:

“And I observed the heavenly tablets, and read everything which was written (thereon) and understood everything, and read the book of all the deeds of mankind, and of all the children of flesh that shall be upon the earth to the remotest generations.” [81:2]

“One year we will leave thee with thy son, till thou givest thy (last) commands, that thou mayest teach thy children and record (it) for them, and testify to all thy children; and in the second year they shall take thee from their midst.” [81:6]

In making these claims, it is ascribing to fallen man the ability to do what Christ alone can do:

“And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.” (John 3:13)

Yet again we see how The Book of Enoch diminishes the stature of Christ and contradicts the Word of God in the most outrageous fashion.

Its demonic origin is also evident in a cleverly blasphemous statement in chapter 18. On one of his many celestial journeys ‘Enoch’ claimed to have seen “the firm foundations of the earth”, including “the corner-stone of the earth” [18:2] The cornerstone is an important Messianic figure, familiar to all who love God’s Word, but here it is deliberately stripped of its redemptive connotations and presented merely as an inert lump of matter. The dark angel who channeled this work must have taken great satisfaction in this.

Christ is also mocked in a later chapter when ‘Enoch’ relates yet another of his many visits to heaven and describes what he calls “the four presences” before the throne of God:

“And he said to me: ‘This first is Michael, the merciful and long-suffering…'” [40:9]

He is referring here to Michael the archangel and ascribing to him an attribute of Christ. This is a common theme in the occult, where Christ is equated in some manner with the angel Michael. Both the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists, for example, confuse the pre-incarnate Jesus with Michael.

*note: Jeremy James is an gifted Bible expositor, researcher and writer. While he holds to a Dispensational view of eschatology, that has no bearing on this very important paper.

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