Should the Book of Enoch be included in modern Bibles?

Upvote:1

Should the Book of Enoch be included in modern Bibles?

The short answer is no

There is is just one exception to this rule and that is with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

The Book of Enoch is simply not recognized as being part of the depot of the faith. In other words, is it is not recognized as a canonical inspired book in any denomination except the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Various Aramaic fragments found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as Koine Greek and Latin fragments, are proof that the Book of Enoch was known by Jews and early Near Eastern Christians. This book was also quoted by some 1st and 2nd century authors as in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Authors of the New Testament were also familiar with some content of the story. A short section of 1 Enoch (1:9) is cited in the New Testament Epistle of Jude, Jude 1:14–15, and is attributed there to "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" (1 Enoch 60:8), although this section of 1 Enoch is a midrash on Deuteronomy 33:2. Several copies of the earlier sections of 1 Enoch were preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It is not part of the biblical canon used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews). While the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church consider the Book of Enoch as canonical, other Christian groups regard it as non-canonical or non-inspired, but may accept it as having some historical or theological interest.

It is today wholly extant only in the Ethiopian Ge'ez language, with earlier Aramaic fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few Greek and Latin fragments. For this and other reasons, the traditional Ethiopian belief is that the original language of the work was Ge'ez, whereas modern scholars argue that it was first written in either Aramaic or Hebrew, the languages first used for Jewish texts; Ephraim Isaac suggests that the Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew: No Hebrew version is known to have survived. The book itself asserts that its author was Enoch, before the biblical flood.

The most complete Book of Enoch comes from Ethiopic manuscripts, maṣḥafa hēnok (መጽሐፈ ሄኖክ), written in Ge'ez, which were brought to Europe by James Bruce in the late 18th century and were translated into English in the 19th century. - Book of Enoch

Although it is not recognized as a an inspired work from God and thus non-canonical, it may still have some historical interest for some Christians here and there.

For example, the Catholic Church does not recognize the Book of Enoch as being a canonically inspired book. But many years back, there was a movement to publish this book as well as a few other smaller non-canonical (apocryphal) books as an appendage at the end of their bibles for as an historical reference work that some would like to see preserved: Least they perish altogether (ne pereant). This movement did not last long and one would be hard pressed to find such editions now.

Theses editions made it clear that those books found at the end of the Bible were non-canonical works were printed with these editions as works to be used for reference sources only since not everything quoted from the Bible is done so from within the Scriptures themselves, but may have come from apocryphal sources!

More post

Search Posts

Related post