It was written more than two thousand years ago and survived complete in only one language: Ge’ez, the ancient language of Ethiopia. Here you can download the Book of Enoch in English for free, in biblical English from the Hebrew translation of 1892 and in modern English.
The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish work, written between the third century BCE and the first century CE and attributed to Enoch son of Jared, the great-grandfather of Noah. It tells of angels who came down to the earth, of the Nephilim who were born to them, and of Enoch’s journey into the heavens.
The book of Genesis gives Enoch a single verse, one of the most mysterious in the Bible: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him
. The verse does not say where Enoch was taken or what he saw there. The Book of Enoch is one of the oldest and most detailed attempts to answer that question.
The book was left out of the Hebrew Bible, and over the centuries it all but disappeared. Fragments of it in Aramaic were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the complete text survived only in Ge’ez, in the Ethiopian Church, which counts it among its scriptures to this day. From there it returned to Hebrew in 1892, in the translation of Lazarus Goldschmidt, and from his Hebrew it now comes to you in English.
The Second Book of Enoch, also known as “Slavonic Enoch” and “the Book of the Secrets of Enoch”, is a separate work. It survived in Old Church Slavonic, and it describes Enoch’s ascent from heaven to heaven until he stands before the face of God.
Three complete books in PDF, laid out for comfortable reading on a phone screen. Free to download, with no sign-up and no payment.
The first translation of the Book of Enoch into Hebrew, made by Lazarus Goldschmidt directly from Ge’ez and published in Berlin in 1892, rendered verse by verse into the language of the King James Bible. With Goldschmidt’s own preface.
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All 108 chapters in clear, flowing present-day English, based on the Hebrew translation of Lazarus Goldschmidt. The Watchers, the Nephilim, the parables and the visions, with no dictionary needed.
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The Book of the Secrets of Enoch: the ascent from heaven to heaven up to the tenth heaven, the secrets of creation, and the words Enoch leaves his sons moments before he is taken up to heaven.
Free downloadThe story of the Book of Enoch, from the Second Temple period to the present day.
Writings about Enoch are composed in Aramaic, and perhaps also in Hebrew, and over time they merge into a single book. Copies of it are read at Qumran, near the Dead Sea.
The Book of Enoch is quoted in the Epistle of Jude in the New Testament, and the early Church Fathers mention it by name.
It stays outside the Hebrew Bible and outside most Christian scriptures. Outside Ethiopia people stop copying it, and in Europe only its name and a few quotations remain.
The Scottish traveler James Bruce returns from Ethiopia with three manuscripts of the book in Ge’ez. It turns out that the Ethiopian Church had kept it all those years.
Richard Laurence of Oxford publishes an English translation, and Europe reads the Book of Enoch for the first time in about a thousand years.
August Dillmann publishes the Ge’ez text based on five manuscripts, followed two years later by a German translation.
Lazarus Goldschmidt, aged 21, publishes in Berlin the first Hebrew translation of the book, made directly from Ge’ez.
In Cave 4 at Qumran, Aramaic fragments of the Book of Enoch more than two thousand years old come to light. They confirm how ancient the book is.
New editions bring 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch into present-day Hebrew and English, free to download here.
1 Enoch 6:1–2, 5–61In those days, when humankind had grown numerous, beautiful and lovely daughters were born to them. 2The angels, the sons of heaven, saw them and desired them, and said to one another: Come, let us choose wives for ourselves from among the daughters of men, and father children. 5Then they all swore together and made a pact among themselves. They were two hundred angels in all. 6They came down on Ardis, the summit of Mount Hermon, and they named the mountain Hermon, because there they swore under a ban and made their pact.
1 Enoch 7:2–52The women conceived and gave birth to the Nephilim, giants three hundred cubits tall. 3They devoured everything humans had worked for, until there was nothing left for people to eat. 4They began to sin against birds and beasts, against creeping things and fish; they ate their flesh and drank their blood. 5Then the earth cried out against the violence.
1 Enoch 8:1–21Azazel taught people to make swords and knives, shields and breastplates, and showed them what came after: fine craftsmanship, bracelets and jewelry, eye paint and the beautifying of eyelids, precious stones, the finest of all stones, and every kind of dye and the metals of the earth. 2Wickedness grew great and lewdness spread. They sinned and corrupted all their ways.
1 Enoch 10:4–64And God said to Raphael: Bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness. Open the desert that is in Dudael and throw him in there. 5Lay rough, sharp stones on him and cover him with darkness, and let him stay there for ever. Cover his face, so that he may not see the light. 6And on the day of the great judgment he will be thrown into the fire.
1 Enoch 14:8–108This is how the vision appeared to me: clouds called to me in the vision, and a mist summoned me. The rush of the stars and the lightning drove me on and hurried me, and the winds in the vision lifted me and carried me away. 9They brought me up into heaven, and I came near a wall built of crystal stones, surrounded by tongues of fire. Then fear began to take hold of me. 10I went into the tongues of fire and came near a great hall built of crystal stones. The walls of that house were like a floor of crystal bricks, and its floor too was crystal.
1 Enoch 17:4–64They brought me to the waters called the waters of life, and to the fire of the west that receives the sun as it sets. 5I came to a river of fire whose fire flows like water and pours into a great sea in the west. 6I saw all the great rivers, came to a place of great darkness, and went to the place where all flesh goes.
1 Enoch 18:12–1412Beyond that abyss I saw a place with no sky above it and no solid ground beneath it. There was no water there and no bird, only desolation. 13Terrible was the sight I saw there: seven stars burning, as large as mountains, and like spirits they pleaded with me. 14The angel said: This place is the end of heaven and earth. It is a prison for the stars of heaven and for the host of heaven.
1 Enoch 46:1–21There I saw one who had a head of days, and his head was white as wool. With him was another, whose face looked like a human face, full of grace, like one of the holy angels. 2I asked one of the angels who went with me and showed me every hidden thing about this Son of Man: Who is he? Where does he come from? Why does he go with the Ancient of Days?
1 Enoch 106:2–32His body was white as snow and red as a lily in bloom, the hair of his head and crown was like pure white wool, and his eyes were beautiful. When he opened his eyes, he lit up the whole house like the sun, and the whole house was filled with a great light. 3When he was taken from the midwife’s hands, he opened his mouth and spoke to the God of righteousness.
2 Enoch 12:11I looked and saw other flying creatures of the sun, called phoenixes and chalkydri, wondrous and strange. Their feet and tails are like a lion’s, and their heads like a crocodile’s. Their appearance is purple, like the rainbow in the clouds. They are nine hundred cubits in size, and their wings are like angels’ wings, twelve for each one. They serve the sun and accompany it, carrying heat and dew, as God has commanded them.
2 Enoch 21:3–4, 63I was left alone at the edge of the seventh heaven. I was afraid, fell on my face and said in my heart: Woe is me, what has happened to me? 4God sent one of his glorious ones, Gabriel, one of the archangels, and he said to me: Be strong, Enoch, do not be afraid. Rise and stand before God for ever. Rise and come with me. 6Gabriel carried me like a leaf carried by the wind and set me before God.
2 Enoch 22:1–2, 4–51In the tenth heaven, which is called Aravoth, I saw the appearance of God’s face: like iron heated white in the fire and drawn out, throwing off sparks and burning. 2So (in a single moment of eternity) I saw God’s face. But God’s face cannot be described: it is wonderful, very awe-inspiring and exceedingly terrible. 4I fell on my face and bowed down to God, and God said to me with his own mouth: 5Be strong, Enoch, do not be afraid. Rise and stand before me for ever.
2 Enoch 30:1010On the sixth day I commanded my wisdom to create man from seven substances: first, his flesh from the earth; second, his blood from the dew; third, his eyes from the sun; fourth, his bones from stone; fifth, his understanding from the swiftness of the angels and from the cloud; sixth, his veins and hair from the grass of the earth; seventh, his soul from my breath and from the wind.
Who the Nephilim were, why the book was left out of the Bible, and what happened to Enoch himself. In-depth articles on the book, its characters and the long road it traveled.
Giants three hundred cubits tall, born to angels and the daughters of men. What the Book of Enoch tells about them, and what remains of them in Genesis.
Read the articleA book everyone knew, which in the end was left outside. What we know about that decision, and what is still a matter of conjecture.
Read the articleOne verse in Genesis, and two thousand years of attempts to understand it. This is how Enoch became the hero of an entire literature.
Read the articleYes. On this site you can download three complete books as PDF files, free of charge: the Book of Enoch in biblical English, based on the Hebrew translation of Lazarus Goldschmidt from 1892; Enoch I in modern English; and Enoch II in modern English. No registration is required.
The book is attributed to Enoch son of Jared, the seventh generation from Adam, but the names of its real authors are unknown. Scholars believe it was written by several Jewish authors, part after part, between the third century BCE and the first century CE.
There is no single agreed answer. The book was well known in the Second Temple period, but the Jewish sages did not include it in the Hebrew Bible, and over time most Christian churches set it aside as well. The Ethiopian Church has kept it among its scriptures to this day.
They are two separate works. 1 Enoch, “Ethiopic Enoch”, has 108 chapters, survived in Ge’ez, and tells of the Watchers, the Nephilim and the visions of Enoch. 2 Enoch, “Slavonic Enoch” or “the Book of the Secrets of Enoch”, is shorter, survived in Old Church Slavonic, and describes Enoch’s ascent through the heavens.
1 Enoch was most likely written in Aramaic, and parts of it may have been written in Hebrew. Aramaic fragments of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The complete text survived only in a translation into Ge’ez, the ancient language of Ethiopia.
The biblical English version and Enoch I in modern English are based on the Hebrew translation that Lazarus Goldschmidt made directly from Ge’ez and published in Berlin in 1892. Enoch II in modern English goes back to the English translation by William Richard Morfill, edited by Robert Henry Charles (Oxford, 1896).
According to the Book of Enoch, the Nephilim were the children of two hundred angels who came down on Mount Hermon and took wives from among the daughters of men. The book describes them as giants three hundred cubits tall, and says that because of them the earth was filled with blood and violence.
1 Enoch is made up of five parts: the Book of the Watchers (chapters 1–36), the Book of Parables (37–71), the Astronomical Book (72–82), the Book of Dreams (83–90) and the Epistle of Enoch (91–108).
1 Enoch and 2 Enoch, complete, in English, free to download.
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