How to Read the Book of Enoch: A Guide for First-Time Readers
108 chapters, five parts, and a few places where many readers give up. Where to begin, and what you are allowed to skip.
There are books everyone talks about and few have read to the end. The Book of Enoch is one of them. Many people open it with enthusiasm, read about the angels who came down to the daughters of men, go on a little further, and then hit a chapter made entirely of gates of the sun and parts of the day, and quietly close the file.
It is not their fault. The Book of Enoch is not built like a novel, and nobody bothered to tell them so in advance. This short guide is meant to save you from giving up.
The first thing to know
1 Enoch is not one book. It is five different works, written by different authors over about three hundred years, and bound together. Each of them has its own subject, its own style, and sometimes its own opinions.
Whoever expects one continuous plot will be disappointed. Whoever treats the book as an anthology, in which each part can be read separately and in any order, will enjoy it much more. There is no obligation to start on the first page and finish on the last.
The five parts, and what is in each
The Book of the Watchers, chapters 1 to 36. This is the famous part, and everything else grew out of it. It contains the story of the two hundred angels who came down on Mount Hermon, of the Nephilim and of Azazel, followed by Enoch’s journeys to the ends of the earth and to the place of the souls.
The Book of Parables, chapters 37 to 71. Three “parables,” which are really visions of the day of judgment. Here a heavenly figure appears, called “the Son of Man” or “the Chosen One,” who sits on the throne of glory and judges the kings. This is the latest part of the book.
The Book of the Luminaries, chapters 72 to 82. An astronomical work: the movement of the sun, the moon and the stars, and a calendar of three hundred and sixty-four days.
The Book of Dreams, chapters 83 to 90. Two dreams of Enoch. The first is short, about the Flood. The second is long, and tells the history of the world as a fable about animals.
The Epistle of Enoch, chapters 91 to 108. Moral teaching, consolation for the righteous and sharp rebuke for the rich and the oppressors, ending with the story of the wondrous birth of Noah.
The recommended reading order
Start with the Book of the Watchers. If you are impatient, skip straight to chapter 6. The first five chapters are a solemn overture, and the plot begins after them. Chapters 6 to 16 are the heart of the story, and can be read in half an hour. Notice one odd detail: in chapters 6 to 11 Enoch does not appear at all. He enters the story only in chapter 12, when the angels who sinned need someone to write a plea for forgiveness on their behalf.
Then go on to the journeys, chapters 17 to 36. Here the book changes pace. Enoch travels, looks and asks, and an angel answers him. This is how one of the visions opens:
This 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.
1 Enoch 14:8
From there jump to the Book of Dreams, chapters 83 to 90. The Animal Apocalypse in it is one of the most original passages in ancient literature, and it needs a short key. The bulls are the fathers of the world, from Adam to Noah. The sheep are the children of Israel. The beasts and birds of prey are the nations around them. “The Lord of the sheep” is God, and the seventy shepherds are the angels who were put in charge of the people and did not guard it as they should have. With this key in hand you will easily recognize the Exodus from Egypt, the building of the Temple and its destruction.
After that, read the Epistle of Enoch, chapters 91 to 108. Look for two things in it. One is the “Apocalypse of Weeks,” which divides all of history into ten weeks, as if the world were one great calendar. The other is the series of cries of “woe to you,” which sound surprisingly current to anyone who has ever read an article about social inequality.
Save the Book of Parables for a second reading. It is beautiful, but repetitive, and it demands patience. And leave the Book of the Luminaries for last. Read its first chapter, chapter 72, to understand the system, and its last chapters, 80 to 82, in which Enoch hands the books to his son. You are allowed to skim the tables in between. Nobody is going to test you.
Which version to read
The site offers two English editions of 1 Enoch. One renders Lazarus Goldschmidt’s Hebrew translation of 1892 into biblical English, in the language of the King James Bible. The other is a version in modern English, based on the same translation.
The recommendation is simple. Read the modern English version first, to understand what is going on. Then go back to the chapters you loved in the biblical English edition, to hear how it sounds when it is written like the Book of Genesis. The division into chapters and verses is the same in both editions, so you can compare them verse by verse.
Three small tips
Do not get stuck on names. The book is full of the names of angels, some of them long and strange. It is enough to remember four: Semyaza and Azazel, the leaders of the angels who sinned, and Uriel and Raphael, who accompany Enoch. The rest you can read without remembering.
Do not look for consistency. Sometimes Semyaza is the chief culprit and sometimes Azazel. Sometimes Enoch travels west and sometimes east, without any explanation of how he got there. These are not copyists’ mistakes. They are seams between different traditions, and they are part of the interest.
And remember when it was written. Whoever wrote the book knew neither the Talmud, nor Christianity, nor the Kabbalah. He lived in a world in which the Bible had not yet been closed, and in which questions that seem settled to us were still wide open.
And afterwards
Whoever has finished 1 Enoch, or wants a break in the middle, will find in 2 Enoch a completely different experience: one short story that rises from heaven to heaven and ends with a father’s farewell to his sons. You can finish it in one evening.
It is commonly assumed that an ancient book demands reverence, total silence and an open dictionary. The Book of Enoch demands mainly curiosity, and a willingness to skip when necessary. Its authors did not write it to stand on a shelf. They wrote it, or so they said, for a distant generation yet to come. They could hardly have guessed how distant that generation would be, but their invitation still stands.
