The Books of Enoch

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This work comprises the three books attributed to Enoch: 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch. The first, often referred to simply as the Book of Enoch, is considered apocryphal in the Western canon but is included in the Ethiopic Bible. It was regarded as sacred by some early followers of Christ, yet it was excluded from the Bible and vanished for centuries, only to be rediscovered in 1773 in Ethiopic. The first English translation emerged in the 1820s, followed by a German version in the 1830s. Scholars generally date parts of it to the third century BCE and the first century CE, particularly the sections concerning the Son of Man. The oldest complete copies date to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, while fragments found in Qumran are over 2000 years old. Significant manuscripts include Abbadianus 55 and British Museum Orient 485. The second book, known as the Slavonic Enoch, is another apocryphal text found only in Old Slavonic manuscripts, typically dated to the first century CE, though the earliest manuscripts date to the fourteenth century. The third book, the Hebrew Enoch, is a Rabbinic text usually dated to the fifth century CE and is believed by some to have been authored by Rabbi Ishmael, who was familiar with the earlier Enoch texts.