Page 8 - Book Of Enoch

The Book of Enoch

Condition of the Text

I believe the text to be in good condition generally. It seems to be almost

complete, with a beginning and an end, and it is self-consistent. Even more

significant is the way that Enoch's character and style of writing are still

apparent. The only parts that I suspect were written by different authors I

have separated out, as the Book of Methuselah, and the Book of Noah,

(chapters 10 & 11).

The translation by Michael Knibb, into English, is very good, and I have

had to do very little to the text in order to change it from a good translation

into clear English. I have added quite a lot of punctuation and improved

the presentation, but I have made only very minor changes to the text (such
as substituting ‘before’ with ‘in front of’ where appropriate. In a few

places I have substituted “sky” for Heaven where it makes the meaning
clearer. Where Enoch says “the face of Heaven” he means the sky but I

have left it unchanged. I only changed Heaven to sky where I was sure that
was the intended meaning. Similarly, I have tried to use Earth with a

capital where I think the meaning is the whole planet and earth, without a

capital, where the meaning may just be the ground – which Enoch often

differentiates himself by referring to “the dry ground” rather than “the

earth”.

Fortunately, Enoch's style was to use a simple vocabulary, and he assumed

no pre-knowledge by the reader. Anything complicated, he explains at

length, with quite a lot of repetition.

This has helped to preserve the book through many translations. There are

a few places, even so, where there are problems. I have marked these with

dots (.....) where some words seem to have been lost. Fortunately, there are

not many of these, and nothing important appears to be missing.

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