Alright folks, let me walk you through what I actually did yesterday when I went down this Enoch rabbit hole. It started totally simple and kinda spiraled. Buckle up.
First, Just Clicking Around Like Anyone Else
Honestly? I was bored. Scrolling through some history forums late at night. Kept seeing snippets about this “Book of Enoch” thing popping up, people arguing about giants and angels and crazy old visions. Curiosity got me bad. Figured, “What the heck, let’s just see what it actually says.” So I pulled up some plain text translations – just searching for “Enoch English” stuff online. Didn’t even know where to find a real book version handy.
Started reading at the beginning. Immediate weirdness. Right off the bat, it dives into these “Watchers” – not your usual choirboy angels, more like rebels. And they hook up with human women? Okay, that’s… different. Then it claims they teach humans all sorts of forbidden knowledge: magic, weapons, cosmetics. Like, all tech and craft skills came from these fallen angels? That hit me. Why blame knowledge itself? Made me pause.
The Giant Problem (Literally)
This led straight into the next bit everyone talks about: the Nephilim. The kids from those angel-human pairings? They’re giants. Massive dudes causing chaos, eating humans – cannibal giants? That was wild. But the kicker was Enoch saying this hybrid mess was a major reason the Flood had to happen. Not just humans being generally naughty, but this corrupted bloodline wrecking everything. That felt like a huge, specific answer to the “Why the Flood?” question I grew up hearing simplified answers to. It’s messy, uncomfortable, but… detailed.
Then I hit the next wall. Enoch gets called up to Heaven before he physically dies? Like, gets a tour? He describes multiple levels of Heaven, archangels with specific jobs, different kinds of angels doing different things… It felt way more like an organized celestial bureaucracy than anything I remembered from Sunday school. Places like Eden itself supposedly being transported up? Wild.
Trying to Make Sense of the Weird Stuff
My brain was doing cartwheels. So I tried to chase down a few specific points people argue about:
- Calendar Obsession: This book spends ages talking about a 364-day solar calendar. Like, way more detail than feels necessary for a prophecy book. Made me wonder – was this some ancient group arguing against the lunar calendars others used? Or just an odd fixation?
- Messiah Talk: Way later parts start calling someone “The Son of Man” – super similar terms Jesus later used. But Enoch talks about him like he’s already pre-existent in Heaven? Felt jarringly New Testament, yet this book was supposedly way older. Did they share ideas?
- Judgement Tour: Enoch gets shown future places of punishment and reward for angels and humans. Burning valleys, waiting places for souls… Felt like the roots of later hell/heaven concepts popping up way earlier than I thought they did.
Halfway through, I was flipping between different translations on screen, getting really confused by contradictions. Some parts were crystal clear angels-on-earth stuff, others were dreamlike fever visions full of symbols (cows changing colors, anyone?). Impossible to tell what was meant literally, symbolically, or added later by scribes.
End Result? More Questions Than Answers
By the end of the night, my desk was covered in scribbled notes. Spilled coffee everywhere trying to manage too many tabs. Here’s what stuck with me:
- This stuff clearly influenced parts of the New Testament writers (especially that Son of Man title). They were referencing Enoch!
- The explanations it offers for the Flood and angels are super specific, almost mythic-level stories, very different from the standard brief versions.
- The sheer detail about Heaven, calendars, and cosmology feels like ancient people wrestling in a big way with understanding God, evil, and the universe. It’s ambitious.
But the biggest takeaway? Holding this thing felt like grabbing a live wire. Here’s a very old text, massively influential on early Christian/Jewish thought regarding key things like sin and angels, yet it’s missing from the official Bible. Answers some old questions but leaves a truckload of new ones behind. Genuinely strange and fascinating. My brain is still buzzing today.
