Page 7 - Book Of Enoch

The Book of Enoch

Jerusalem during the reign of King Manasseh of Judah, (695 - 642 BC),

which are documented in the Bible, (2Chronicles 33:1 - 20, and at 2Kings

21:1 – 18).

King Manasseh was not of the Jewish faith, he erected alters to Baal and

Asherah in Solomon's Temple. In Kings at 21:16, it says that so much
innocent blood was shed that it filled Jerusalem from end to end. At this

time, the religious establishment left the country, taking the Ark of the
Covenant and all the important religious texts with them.

After a number of years in Egypt, the refugees went further south, near to
the source of the Nile, at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. The descendants of these

people are the Falashas, who even today follow the form of Judaism that

had been practiced in Israel only before 620 BC. The Ethiopians translated

The Book of Hanokh into Ge'ez, and had enough respect to look after it.

Meanwhile, all Hebrew versions disappeared but a substantial part of the

book had survived in Greek, and some parts in Aramaic, but until Scottish

traveler, and freemason, James Bruce, returned from Ethiopia in 1773, with

three manuscripts, no one in the west had ever seen the whole book.

The two commonly available translations were done soon after this and the

book was received with an embarrassed silence, for the most part, and not

widely read.

This book is based on a new translation published in 1978, which was

produced as a result of research into a large number of the Ethiopian

manuscripts and a review of all other surviving fragments. My hope is that

this present edition will be the best version of Enoch's book available in

English.

I think this is an important book, and I have done my best to present it as

clearly as possible, and in a way that I hope Hanokh would have approved

of.

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