did the catholic church take the book of Enoch out of the Bible?

Question

Enoch is in Genesis, and i recently have read about his book, but have not read it for myself? So i have a ton of questions about it.
the bible warns of those that will be punished for "taking out scripture, or adding scripture" to it.

Answer 1

Do a search of "the canon of scripture".

There are several good books about why some are and some are not in what we call the bible.

Answer 2

See it depends on how you look at it it. Enoch was not "removed" from the Bible because it was never officially a part of the Bible. It was the church that canonized the NT scriptures, meaning selected what documents were to go in or be excluded. (The OT was long before that canonized as the Hebrew Tanach) As a Christian I do however believe that this selection was done under the influence and direction of the Holy Spirit (as was the Hebrew OT scriptures).

I better question would be why was the book of Enoch not included in scripture.

But to answer you original question, no the Catholic church (or anybody else for that matter did not "remove" the book of Enoch from the Bible (The set of canonized OT and NT scriptures).

Answer 3

The Catholic Church defined the canon of Scripture once and for all time in 397 AD at the Council of Carthage. Before that time there was no "Bible" as we know it. There were about 14 or 15 gospels floating around the Church, at least 100 letters, and a dozen or so other miscellaneous texts. The Church narrowed it down to 27 New Testament writings and 46 Old Testament writings, and that is the only authoritative list in the history of Christianity. Since that time, not a word of the biblical text has been changed (excpt of course by Martin Luther who wanted to throw out 10 books of the Word of God, and did throw out 7 of them). But the full Bible still exists just as the Holy Spirit defined it through the Catholic Church. It has never been changed and never will be.

Answer 4

Hi Friend:

Great question. The Catholic Church did not exclude Enoch from the bible. Enoch was excluded early on, by the Jews because it held too much that pointed to Christ Jesus.

However, it was held dear by the earliest of our Church fathers from the time immedately after Christ's death.

It did not make the official canon at the Council of Hippo in 395 AD, I believe because there was not a complete text of it at that time. Remember, up until 350 AD the church was on the run. Much was lost and/or destroyed.

Lucky for us, we've got the Dead Sea Scrolls. Or was it the Nag Hamadi Library? I can't remember now which finding had the complete text.

I agree though, it's a GREAT read!

Answer 5

The Book of Enoch is a title given to several works that attribute themselves to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah; that is, Enoch son of Jared (Genesis 5:18). (There are also three other characters named Enoch in the Bible: the son of Cain (Gen. 4:17), the son of Midian (Gen. 25:4), and the son of Reuben (Gen. 46:9; Ex. 6:14). The last two are transcribed "Hanoch" in the modern translations).

Most commonly, the phrase Book of Enoch refers to 1 Enoch, which is wholly extant only in the Ethiopic language. There are also 2 other books called Enoch, 2 Enoch (surviving only in Old Slavonic, c. 1st century; Eng. trans. by R. H. Charles (1896) [1][2]) and 3 Enoch (surviving in Hebrew, c. 5th-6th century[3].) The numbering of these texts has been applied by scholars to distinguish the texts from one another. The remainder of this article deals with 1 Enoch only.

Most modern scholars consider the Enochic literature to be pseudepigraphal.

Whilst this book does not form part of the Canon of Scripture for the larger Christian Churches, various groups, including the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Coptic Church of Alexandria, regard parts or all of 1 Enoch to be inspired Scripture. The currently known texts of this work are usually dated to Maccabean times (ca. 160s BC).

Answer 6

The "Prophecy of Enoch" is mentioned only in the Book of Jude, verse 14.

No where else do we see scriptural evidence of the prophecy. From Jude, one can cross reference to Deuteronomy 33:2 and read a similar prophecy attributed to Moses.

The Catholic Church did not delete the "Book of Enoch" from the Bible. Neither did the Septuagint in the Middle Ages when they convened to collate the Books of what we now call The Bible.

The Book of Enoch is not part of the Apocrypha, nor is it even mentioned in "The Lost Books Of The Bible."

Answer 7

The Books of Enoch (of which there were several) was a series of popular religious fiction written during the time of the Maccabean Revolt (around 250-200 BC) after the Old Testament had been completed (around 400 BC) and before the New Testament was begun (Around 48 AD). Enoch himself was the seventh descendant of Adam, who the Bible claimed lived around 4000 BC. (See Genesis 5:19-26)

While the books were popular, were tranlated into several languages, and read into the second and third century of the Christian era, they have never been recognized by either the Jewish or the Christian faith as scripture. Their origin as works of fiction is well documented. (Would be about like trying to add The DiVinci Code to the Bible, because it is popular and talks about Jesus. But is also well documented (included by the author) as a work of fiction).

And they enjoy the miracle of 20/20 hindsight to be able to predict hundreds of years of history that was already past when the author wrote.

They are an interesting read, because they tell you a lot about Jewish history and traditions, plus some of the religious beliefs of the Maccabean time. They are available on the Internet if you would like to read them. There is nothing in them that Christian need to fear or suppress. After all, they are well documented as works of fiction.

Answer 8

The Catholic Church has taken out so many things from the Old Testament. Starting from Jesus Christ himself, he reduced The Ten Commandments to two Great Commandments and saying those are where the Ten Commandments are hung. He desecrated the Sabbath Observation which God said will be the only sign between his people and Him for generations and arrogantly claimed he is the Lord of the Sabbath. The Catholic Church added the Trinity to what God of the Old Testament claim that there is no One before Him and no One besides Him.
God said also only to Him that every knee shall bend and head to bow but look how many statues inside the church who has ears that cannot hear, feet that cannot walk and lips that cannot talk where their people have been kneeling to every hour of the day. God was emphatic against graven images but already they have Jesus for centuries still hanging on the cross. It is not only the Book of Enoch that they have taken away; many things that will unclaim their deceptive teachings were hidden in their archives if not totally burned during the days of the inquisitions. A reason why they silently want the Jews to be totally erased on the face of the earth because they know for as long as there is a Jew that could testify to their wrong teachings. Luckily, they were helped by the holocausts and as long as those that knew are either dead or too senile to make testimonies, they are safe. Even Jesus himself said that he came to fulfill the law and not abolish them and made comments about what would happen to anyone who would try to make changes, add or omit anything in the law shall be called least in heaven. Your tons of questions is answered by this few observations.

Answer 9

The book of Enoch was never in the Bible. It is referred to by a book of the Bible, but was never part of it.
The difference between the Catholic Bible and the Protestant one, is that in the 16th century, when the Reformers rejected certain Catholic doctrines as not being found in the Bible, the Catholic church declared certain aprophycal books to be inspired, because in one of them there was a reference to praying to the dead. These books had previously been translated into the Latin Vulgate by Saint Jerome, but had been set apart from the other books and identified as not being a part of the inspired canon. This was changed at the Council of Trent, I believe.

Answer 10

No. The book of Enoch was a pseudoepigraph of the 2nd century AD, and was not written by Enoch.

It was rejected in the canonization process because it did not meet the standards of acceptance. It was not written by an apostle or someone close to the apostolic circle. It was falsely identified with Enoch. It's message was not on par with the Christian Gospel.

Answer 11

I don't believe the book of Enoch was written by that same Enoch, as it would have been too old to survive. The oldest book is believed to be Job, which may have come from the time of Jacob (Israel). I wouldn't say any book was removed from the Bible as such, but when the current Bible was assembled, it was not included. One of the qualifications for putting a book in the Bible was did Jesus quote it, for example.