Book Description

Enoch - חנוך, Chanoch or Hanokh - is the name given to one of the most peculiar and mysterious biblical characters in Scripture. He was born, according to the Jewish writings, in the seventh generation after Adam, being the son of Jared, and father of Methuselah.Enoch is the subject of many Jewish and Christian traditions. He was considered the author of the Book of Enoch and also called Enoch the scribe of judgment.According to the Hebrew written tradition called Tanakh, reported in Genesis, chapter 5, verses 22-24, Enoch would have been taken by God so that he would not experience death and would have been spared the wrath of the flood:"And Enoch walked with God, after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he appeared no more, because God took him.There are two extraordinary aspects in Enoch's account, focused on in these verses, which have not been focused on in other generations: the indications in the text that he "walked with God" and the fact that he supposedly would not have died, because "God took him. These accounts were the origin of many fables and midrashim (deeper rabbinical studies) of wise Jews over the centuries. Many of them were very bothered by the fact that Enoch "only" lived 365 years, a short life span for his time, according to the book of Genesis.About this biblical character there are also the apocryphal pseudoepigraphic books: "Book of Enoch I" and "Book of Enoch II", which are part of the canon of some religious groups, mainly the Christians of Ethiopia", but which were rejected by the Christians, because they were not inspired by the Holy Spirit and the Hebrews, because they were particularly troublesome from the political point of view. However, the epistle of Judas, in the biblical New Testament, makes express mention of the Book of Enoch, making a brief quotation in verses 14 and 15 of its single chapter. According to The Book of Enoch: with comparative study of the main translations, there are several books attributed to Enoch, three of which are the best known: The Book of Enoch (or Ethiopian Enoch or Enoch 1), The Second Book of Enoch (or Slavonic Enoch) and The Third Book of Enoch (or Hebrew Enoch). The best known is the first one, which is included in the Ethiopian bible, is considered authentic by the Jews of Ethiopia and was considered authentic by the Jews until about the year 200, having been part of the Hebrew biblical corpus until that time and having been removed by a rabbi, for several reasons, including politics. About 200 years later, St. Jerome, in charge of creating the Christian bible, based himself on the principle of "Hebrew truth", which meant that the books considered authentic by the Jews (from the Old Testament) were authentic. For this reason, the Book of Enoch fell into oblivion in the West, until it was found more than a thousand years later. The Book of Enoch (Enoch 1) was first translated and published in Brazil in 1982. The Book of Enoch is extremely controversial, because it addresses sexual and racial issues. One of the controversies is that of the fallen angels who descended from heaven to have sexual relations with women they considered attractive and generated giants that destroyed the Earth. Another polemic is that according to one passage, Adam and Eve had black children and Adam was white, which indicates that Eve was black.According to the account in Genesis about the age of the patriarchs, Seven and their children were still alive when Enoch was taken by God, as well as Methuselah and Lamech.