Who Wrote the Book of Enoch, and When?

The title page of every modern book carries the author’s name, and below it, in small print, a copyright notice. We are so used to this arrangement that it is hard to imagine a world in which a writer spends years writing a book and then signs it with someone else’s name. And yet that is exactly what the authors of the Book of Enoch did. They wrote a large and rich book, and gave all the credit to a man who, according to tradition, lived before the Flood.

The question of who they really were is a detective puzzle, and its clues are scattered between caves in the Judean Desert and monasteries in Ethiopia.

The short answer

1 Enoch was not written by Enoch, nor by a single author. Scholars believe it is a collection of at least five works, written by Jews in the Land of Israel over about three hundred years, between the third century BCE and the first century CE. The names of the authors are unknown, and it is doubtful they will ever be discovered.

Five books in one binding

Anyone who reads the Book of Enoch straight through feels the voice change. Sometimes it is a narrative about angels and giants, sometimes tables of sunrises and sunsets, and sometimes rebukes against the rich. The explanation is simple: these are different books.

The Book of the Watchers, chapters 1 to 36, tells of the angels who came down to earth and of Enoch’s journeys. The Book of Parables, chapters 37 to 71, deals with the day of judgment and with the figure called “the Son of Man.” The Book of the Luminaries, chapters 72 to 82, describes the movement of the sun, the moon and the stars. The Book of Dreams, chapters 83 to 90, unfolds the whole of history as a fable about animals. And the Epistle of Enoch, chapters 91 to 108, is a word of warning and consolation for the last generations.

At some point someone bound all of these together. The modern reader is therefore holding a small library that only looks like a book.

How to date a book that has no date

None of the authors bothered to say when they wrote. Scholars have three ways of finding out.

The first is the manuscripts. Fragments of the book in Aramaic were found at Qumran, and the oldest of them were written in the late third or early second century BCE. A work cannot be younger than its copy, so the Book of the Luminaries and the Book of the Watchers were written in the third century BCE at the latest. They are older than the Book of Daniel.

The second is historical hints. In the Animal Apocalypse, part of the Book of Dreams, the history of Israel is told as a story about sheep and wolves, and the story stops at a very particular moment: one lamb grows a great horn and fights the beasts of prey. Most scholars identify this lamb with Judah Maccabee, which means the vision was written during the revolt, around 165 BCE. The author could tell of everything that had happened up to that day. About what came after it he had to guess.

The third is absence. The Book of Parables was not found at Qumran at all, and it mentions peoples from the east who invaded the land. For this reason many date it to the end of the first century BCE or to the first century CE, and it is probably the latest part.

What can be known about the authors

We have no names, but a general portrait can be drawn. The authors wrote in Aramaic, the spoken language of the Jews of the land. They knew the Torah well, and especially the Book of Genesis. They were learned men: whoever wrote the Book of the Luminaries commanded detailed astronomical knowledge that recalls the star lore of Babylon.

The landscape also gives something away. The plot of the Book of the Watchers takes place around Mount Hermon and the waters of Dan, and some scholars have concluded from this that at least part of the book was written in the north of the land, far from Jerusalem.

And one more thing is clear: they were not satisfied. The Epistle of Enoch is full of cries of “woe to you” against the rich who build their houses with the toil of others, and against the powerful who pervert justice. The Book of the Watchers tells of guardians who betrayed their task, and some read it as a veiled critique of the priests of those days. These are the writings of people who felt that the world was not being run as it should be, and that someone above needed to step in.

Why sign someone else’s name?

Here we come to the question that troubles the modern reader. Why would anyone write a book and attribute it to someone else? Today we would call it forgery.

In the ancient world things looked different. We value originality, and whoever comes up with something new wins fame. In the Second Temple period people valued antiquity. A new idea was suspect simply because it was new, and an ancient idea was credible simply because it was ancient. An author who wanted to be heard had to show that his words were not his own. The Book of Enoch is not unusual in this: the Book of Daniel, and many other works from the same period, are also attributed to ancient figures.

And Enoch was the perfect candidate. He lived before the Flood, and so came before all the prophets. The Torah says that he walked with God, and so he saw things nobody else had seen. And it tells almost nothing about him, so nothing written in his name can be disproved.

It is also possible that the authors did not see themselves as frauds. They saw themselves as a link in a chain. The book itself describes that chain:

And now, Methuselah my son, I am telling you all these things and writing them down for you. I have revealed everything to you and given you the books in which all this is written. Methuselah my son, keep the books written by your father's hand, so that you may pass them on to the generations to come.

1 Enoch 82:1

Whoever wrote these words probably believed that he was passing on a genuinely ancient tradition. As far as he was concerned, he was only putting it in writing.

A book written over three hundred years

Put all the evidence together and a rather strange picture emerges. The Book of Enoch was written over about three hundred years. The last author was born many generations after the first had died. They did not know one another, did not coordinate, and may not have agreed on everything. And yet they all wrote in the same voice, the voice of the same ancient man, and added a chapter to the same story.

The common view is that a great book requires a great writer. The Book of Enoch suggests another possibility: one figure, strong enough that generations of writers are willing to disappear behind it. Their names we have forgotten. Enoch’s name we still remember, and that, it seems, is exactly what they wanted.