Most Christians and Jews have never read the Book of Enoch. Most have never heard of it. And yet for several centuries, it was one of the most widely read and influential religious texts in the ancient world. Fragments of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's quoted directly in the New Testament. And then, around the fourth century CE, it was quietly dropped from the canon.
What it says
The Book of Enoch is attributed to Enoch — the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Noah, who in Genesis famously 'walked with God' and was taken up to heaven without dying. In the text, Enoch is taken on a tour of the heavens, including the fate of the fallen angels — the Watchers — who descended to Earth, took human wives, and taught humanity forbidden knowledge: metalworking, cosmetics, astrology, and the art of warfare. The offspring of these unions were the Nephilim: giants who consumed everything and eventually turned on humanity. The spirits of the dead Nephilim, the book claims, became the demons that plague the world.
Why this matters
The Enoch framework reframes a lot of things that seem puzzling in the standard biblical narrative. Where did evil come from? Not just human free will — cosmic interference. It also explains the cryptic Nephilim reference in Genesis, which otherwise sits in the text like a footnote to a story that wasn't told.
Why was it removed?
The early church had several concerns. The text gave a lot of narrative weight to angels — possibly too much in a tradition trying to emphasise monotheism. It also presented a version of evil that didn't map cleanly onto human moral responsibility. But the ideas never disappeared. The fallen angels, the forbidden knowledge, the giants — they kept appearing in Jewish mysticism, in Gnostic texts, and in popular culture, where they remain one of the most persistently fascinating mythological threads from the ancient world.