The book of Enoch...

[Pink Spider]

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Why is the book of Enoch not
included in the Bible?

It is not gnostic, is it?
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[Semiday]

There are enough things to discover in the Bible, without including The book of Enoch, for instance what did Jesus mean when he said
"if these kept silent the stones would cry out" and
Matthew 13:35 ... I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.
When you have found even one of these "things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world." you will have plenty to marvel at.
I could continue.
So take the trouble to look at what you already have.
Ian

 

[Lukaris]

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Why is the book of Enoch not
included in the Bible?

It is not gnostic, is it?
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Enoch is not gnostic and was highly regarded by many in the ancient church but it fell into obscurity & was long forgotten. Here is an article re this book: The Book of Enoch and The Secrets of Enoch

 

[food4thought]

High again Pink Spider;

I don't know very much about the Book of Enoch, but I have read a good portion of it. From what I understand, there were concerns that it, or at the very least least a large portion of it, was not written by the pre-flood prophet Enoch, but by someone else in the 2nd century BC.

Also, even though there is a quotation of Enoch in the book of Jude, and a few of the themes of Enoch are echoed in other NT books, I wouldn't put too much stock into the entire content of the book of Enoch available to us today, as the book fell out of use for over 1000 years and we do not have reliable ancient copies of it (at least this is what I have heard), so what we have today is probably significantly different from what it originally said.

Hope this helps;
Mike

PS: sorry for my disappearing act, but I have been quite busy recently. Good to see that you are still seeking!

 

[Semiday]

I understand what you are saying, and thank you for sending the link, I own a large book, called The Pseudepigrapha this contains the book of secrets of Enoch, book of Adam and Eve, and many more such books, I used to read them avidly, but always there was a shadow of doubt.
So when I read that passage by Matthew ... I WILL OPEN MY MOUTH IN PARABLES; I WILL UTTER THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN KEPT SECRET FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD.
This I could rely on, so I set my mind to understand that parable (the parable of the leaven)Matt 13:33 After a long battle with that parable, in the spring of 2008, I finally put the last element of the parable in place, The Leaven itself, what I found left me stunned for several days, I now have three parables that all tell the same story (each parable telling its part of the story) and it was Jesus that told the parables.
Have a nice day Ian

 

[Tigger45]

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Why is the book of Enoch not
included in the Bible?

It is not gnostic, is it?
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I hope this is a good start for you.


The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch;[1] Ge'ez: መጽሐፈ ሄኖክ mäts'hafä henok) is an ancient Jewish religious work, ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, although modern scholars estimate the older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) to date from about 300 BC, and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably to the end of the first century BC.[2]
It is not part of the biblical canon as used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel. Most Christian denominations and traditions may accept the Books of Enoch as having some historical or theological interest or significance, but they generally regard the Books of Enoch as non-canonical or non-inspired.[3] It is regarded as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, but not by any other Christian group.
It is wholly extant only in the Ge'ez language, with 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 non-Ethiopian scholars tend to assert that it was first written in either Aramaic or Hebrew; E. Isaac suggests that the Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew.[4]:6 No Hebrew version is known to have survived. The book itself claims to be written by Enoch himself before the Biblical Flood.
The authors of the New Testament were familiar with the content of the story and influenced by it:[5] a short section of 1 Enoch (1 En 1:9 or 1 En 2:1 depending on the translation) is quoted in the New Testament (Letter of Jude 1:14–15), and is attributed there to "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" (1 En 60:8). The text was also utilised by the community that originally collected the Dead Sea Scrolls.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Enoch is in a class of literature known as Pseudepigrapha, falsely-named writings. Usually claiming to have been written by some famous person from ancient Israel's past but in fact only having been written in the era of the 2nd Temple. That in and of itself isn't problematic; but it is the sort of thing that made most of these sorts of writings never more than a curiosity among both Jews and later Christians.

As such Enoch never received serious or wide circulation as anything serious, with the exception of in Ethiopia.

In most of the Christian world it just never was taken very seriously, and as such was never under for any consideration for inclusion in the Biblical Canon by the vast majority of Christians.

Enoch isn't in the Bible for the same reason the Dialogues of Plato aren't in the Bible, or any other book or text one can pick at random.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Pink Spider]

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Thank you all for your
great and learned replies.

I will respond individually
shortly!
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[orangeness365]

Regardless of whether or not the book of enoch should be added or not, or is a forgery, or if we don't know everything that happened during Jesus' stay on earth, it is just important that we believe in Jesus as the son of God.

John 20:30-31
The Purpose of This Book
30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

 

[lesliedellow]

The short answer is that it doesn't appear in the Hebrew scriptures, which means it doesn't appear in Protestant Bibles, and it doesn't appear in an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, which means it doesn't appear in Catholic Bibles.

There are any number of extant Christian and Jewish texts, from the first and second centuries, and earlier, which are not in the Bible. Some of them, such as 1 Clement and the Didache, are impeccably orthodox, but if all of them were in the Bible, you would need a forklift truck to pick it up.