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The Enoch Conundrum
By Fr. Dennis | March 24, 2007
Sounds like an intriguing Sci-Fi thriller, doesn’t it? “The Enoch Conundrum,” coming this Summer to theatres everywhere!
But seriously, I’m referring to an interesting problem that troubles Scripture scholars. It’s called the “Enoch Problem” (I chose “conundrum” because of the alliteration), which is something that WE WERE TAUGHT ABOUT IN SEMINARY, Janet, thank you very much.
Take a look at Jude (the letter of Jude, brother of James). It’s a short little letter that appears right before the Revelation of John near the end of the New Testament. It’s so short, in fact, that it’s only one chapter, so it’s numbered off in verses without chapter numbers. Now look at verses 14 and 15. Or, easier than that, I’ll quote them for you:
14. Enoch, of the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied also about them when he said, “Behold, the Lord has come with his countless holy ones
15. to execute judgment on all and to convict everyone for all the godless deeds that they committed and for all the harsh words godless sinners have uttered against him.”
Jude 14-15
Well, the author of Jude (let’s call him “Jude,” because I don’t have any good reason to think it was written by someone other than Jude, the brother of James) seems to be quoting something from Enoch’s own words.
But did Enoch say it? Let’s look at the verses in Genesis that Janet pointed to.*
21. When Enoch was sixty-five years old, he became the father of Methuselah.
22. Enoch lived three hundred years after the birth of Methuselah, and he had other sons and daughters.
23. The whole lifetime of Enoch was three hundred and sixty-five years.
Gen 5:21-23
Genesis does not record ANYTHING as having been said by Enoch. So how could Jude have had some quotation from Enoch, if the author of Genesis never recorded any such quotation?
The answer is that Jude got it from the Book of Enoch. Try looking that up in your Bible. Don’t find it there? That’s because it’s not there at all. It’s not part of the Canon of the Old Testament. So how is that a problem? It’s a problem because Enoch is being quoted in a canonized book of the New Testament, a book inspired by God, as the Church teaches in Dei Verbum (a document of the Second Vatican Council),
Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind” (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Greek text).
Dei Verbum, #11.
So the quote from Enoch that Jude uses is inspired because it’s included in Jude’s letter which is inspired. Does that make the Book of Enoch inspired? Or just the bit that Jude quoted?
When non-Catholics read the gospels, many of them claim that Jesus does not quote from the seven “Catholic” books of the Old Testament. They call those books “Apochrypha,” while the Catholics call them the “Deuterocanon.” But the fact is that Jesus frequently quotes from the Deuterocanon, and it is often on that basis that Catholic apologists will claim that the Church was right in saying these books are canon because Jesus quotes from them in the gospels, and the gospels themselves are canon.
How does that argument work when we try to apply it to the quote from Enoch in Jude’s letter?
UPDATE: I failed to mention this earlier, but in some of the Eastern Churches not in union with Rome, but who, nonetheless, can trace their origins to the Apostles themselves, the Book of Enoch is considered canonical.
That, my friends, is the Enoch conundrum. And if your faith says that Jesus founded a Church, not a book, and it is the Church that is given the gift of the Holy Spirit for the sake of revealing those things that God intends to reveal, then you don’t really have a problem at all. Just an interesting puzzle.
*I ended that sentence with a preposition, instead of writing “Let’s look at the verses in Genesis to which Janet pointed.” I think it’s clearer in modern English to end it the way I did. The other version is less natural to English, mainly because it’s a Latinised construction.
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March 24th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Goodness, this thing has taken on a life of its own.
(I tend to think that a bit of curiousity is an extremely helpful thing. May it inspire loads of exegetical curiousity on loads of other scriptures for future preaching!)
March 24th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Maybe it would have been better to call this “The Enoch Enigma.” It would be even MORE alliterative.
March 24th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Enoch enough, already!
April 8th, 2007 at 12:51 am
The possible solutions, of course, are several. If your professors already went over all of these, I apologize profusely.
1) Neither the book of Enoch that we have, nor any other writings of a fellow named Enoch were inspired by the Holy Spirit — Jude simply had read them, and the Holy Spirit inspired him to cite a line from them that happened, through human skill, to be true and insightful.
2) Since Jude says, however, that “Enoch prophesied,” it seems more likely that Enoch was guided by the Holy Spirit at least when he uttered this phrase. So perhaps the book of Enoch that we have contains inspired material but is not entirely inspired. This could be because the Holy Spirit didn’t want Enoch to write an entire book, or because the book we have is not the same thing that the Holy Spirit inspired Enoch to write — Enoch’s writing was necessary, but its preservation throughout history was not indispensable for the work of salvation, and so the Holy Spirit did not avert the human error that caused the original writing to be un-inspiredly altered. Maybe.
3) Or perhaps the book of Enoch that we have IS inspired, and the Church has simply not been moved by the Holy Spirit to certify it as canonical. The jabberings of Protestants aside, the certification of the Canon is merely a certification that these books ARE inspired, not a declaration that all others are NOT. If the sensuum fideum were to shift so as to regard Enoch as canonical (say in response to reunion with the Orthodox), the Church could reexamine the issue. For the time, however, we can rest assured that the content of the book is not absolutely indispensable for salvation, or it would already be in the Latin canon.