Missing Scripture: The Book of Enoch

Happy Sunday, everyone. Today we're talking about a missing book of Scripture, the book of Enoch, and some discoveries that have come out in the past about this book and how it compares to what we have in Revealed Scripture. Enoch, of course, was the seventh generation down from Adam. These were long generations. These people back then apparently lived for many more years than we do today, although their conception of year might be different than ours. I don't know that they're working off the Gregorian calendar that came much later.

Who's this Enoch guy? Just by way of quick refresher, this is from the sixth chapter of the book of Moses, where verses 35 through 37 say that the Lord spake unto Enoch and said unto him, “anoint thine eyes with clay and washed them, and thou shalt see.” And he did so. And he beheld the spirits that God had created, and he beheld also things which were not visible to the natural eye. And from thenceforth came the saying broad in the land, “a seer hath the Lord raised up unto his people.” And it came to pass that Enoch went forth in the land among the people, standing upon the hills and the high places, and cried with a loud voice testifying against their works. And all men were offended because of him. So there's much more there, but Enoch is this righteous person who is called of God, given a vision, becomes a seer, is able to see all kinds of things. As we'll get into a little bit later, he's commanded to write these things down, to teach them to his children and to others. And of course, then this is Enoch of the city of Enoch of Zion, that his righteousness created such a concentrated group of fellow righteous people, to the exclusion of all the wicked people in surrounding areas that he was preaching against and telling them to repent. And then the city of Enoch is called up to God's presence to one day be reunited with the latter-day Zion as well. So that's the Enoch that we're talking about. I'm sure you've heard of him before.

There's some interesting tidbits, though, about Enoch that I had never come across before until a year or two ago. I came across a series of articles written by Hugh Nibley. It was a 13-part series that he wrote for the Ensign magazine in 1976. And he called the series of his articles, “A Strange Thing in the Land.” Now, this is taken from the very next verse in Moses 6, after where we left off, where it says, “We go yonder to behold the seer, for he prophesieth. And there is a strange thing in the land. A wild man have come among us.” So that's the people saying, “Hey, we're going to go check out this seer guy. He's prophesying. There's a strange thing happening. There's this wild man among us doing these weird things.” So it's the strange thing in the land, hence Hugh Nibley's title. Okay. And I should credit where credit is due. A lot of what I first learned about, a lot of what I'm going to share with you, comes from this series of articles. It's very fascinating. In typical Nibley fashion, he goes off and says all kinds of things. And a lot of it's very esoteric and deep and presumes that you know more than you actually do. But he does a really good job, I think, for a lay audience of teaching some of the stuff. And then, of course, that sent me down all kinds of rabbit holes to read the actual text and learn other things about it. So let's get into it.

Now, this lost book of Enoch, nearly all the writers of the New Testament were familiar with it. It was considered canonical or scriptural by the early Christian church fathers. This was part of their canon, la Biblia, the Biblia is like a library. It's a library of, right. You had all these letters floating around and people's manuscripts that were copied that Jesus said this thing. And then you got Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John doing their gospels to kind of say, “here's what all went down.” And there's all these loose collections that later get turned into what we call now the Bible. Well, among the loose collections of things that were considered scriptural was this book of Enoch, its influences all over the New Testament. You have some very explicit passages of the New Testament referencing Enoch and Enoch preaching, which shows that they were aware of said preaching, even though it was millennia prior. Therefore there was a book recorded with the preaching. There's mentions of Enoch as an individual. There's also mentions throughout the New Testament of concepts and ideas or phraseology that depend on or are connected to things that are in this lost book of Enoch. There's someone, a British biblical scholar, like a century ago who did his translation in 1917 of the book of Enoch. And he kind of connects all these dots to the New Testament of like, “look, this teaching in the book of Enoch has a connection here to this passage in the New Testament.” So it's kind of littered throughout, according to this guy's analysis, there's like 30 passages in early Orthodox Jewish and Christian writings in which the book of Enoch is mentioned specifically. So there was a book of Enoch. It did exist. It taught a bunch of things. It was considered scriptural.

Well, how could this book of Enoch become lost then if it was part of the early canon? In his one of his articles, Nibley says, “how could a book of such longstanding influence, authority and veneration possibly have become lost?” Very simple. It ran afoul of ideas held by the doctors of the Jews and the Christians alike. So we'll share a few of these ideas in just a moment. These ideas to which these apostatizing church leaders objected, and Nibley places this around the fourth century, but these ideas didn't really just fade out, right? They were buried. They were deliberately memory holed and destroyed and cast aside. This wasn't just kind of a gradual fade out. Interesting. I kind of thought of the lectures on faith in the past musing. I shared how that was the doctrine and the doctrine covenants. And then there was a doctrinal objection to it by some church leaders. And so they memory holed it. They just kind of eliminated it and said, “you know, here's these revelations.”

The only surviving fragments of Enoch that we have today, and we'll get into this next, come from Christian copyists, early Christians that were copying the then existing book of Enoch. So we owe it to these early Christians who were creating their copies. And it's only some of those copies that end up surviving that give us a little peek into what may have been in the original book of Enoch. Now this concept and the teachings in the book of Enoch have been rejected by many people since, you know, certainly the early Christians that were memory holding it, of course, but even later folks, here's John Calvin, for example, who considered Enoch no more than just a mere mortal, his translation to heaven when he's called up to heaven, right, and transfigured or whatever. He says that was nothing. He was some extraordinary kind of death is what he calls it. And he thought that when it says Enoch was walking with God, that that meant no more than he received inspiration. So a lot of downplaying, and you're going to see this consistently that the scholars and the theologians and everyone are just very dismissive of Enoch.

Now what's lost became partially found. There was some early awareness. Apparently, I'm getting this part directly from Nibley's article that in 1553, someone told the King of France, “I've heard there's reason for believing that there are books of Enoch at Rome and an Ethiopian priest has told me that the book is held to be canonical and is attributed to Moses.” So that was in 1553, early whisperings of this connection to the book of Enoch from an Ethiopian priest. About a century later, 1633, we've got the famous Codex Alexandrinus. This was presented to the King of England, 1633, and it was accompanied from Egypt by a monk who had been living in Egypt and told of a monastery possessing thousands and thousands of volumes of records in which he claims this monk to have seen the book of Enoch. And the person that that monk talked to about this, one of the people was a manuscript collector. And so he heard about this, he wanted to get one. He ended up going to, I think Ethiopia is where he went, maybe to Egypt. But he found one of these copies. It ended up in a library. Scholars dismissed it. They thought that this guy, this manuscript collector had been deceived, that it was like a forgery and a crock. And this is again, the common theme, denial, dismissal, right? Throughout these whispers in the 1500s and the 1600s of the claim of the book of Enoch until 1773. This is when James Bruce brings some copies to Europe that he obtained in Ethiopia. They sat in libraries for a century.

I should also note here that these copies that we're talking about, these Ethiopian based copies of the book of Enoch used by the Ethiopian Christian branch of the church or sect or whatever, these were what is called one Enoch. I guess we could say first Enoch. Now this isn't first Enoch, second Enoch, third Enoch in the same sense of like first Corinthians, second Corinthians, right? Or first Nephi, second Nephi. These are not a continuation from a building off of one another. These, as you'll see in a moment, are separate records purporting to be connected to and copied from, evolved from the original book of Enoch. So one Enoch, I'll just say first Enoch because say one and two Enoch sounds weird. So first Enoch, that's all we're talking about. These Ethiopian based texts are first Enoch, one Enoch. I guess if I say first Enoch, that makes us think of like, so I'll just say one Enoch, even though that's weird. Okay. So we'll talk about two and three in just a second. For like a quarter century, these discoveries of one Enoch, the book of Enoch were ignored as if they'd never even been discovered. Again, just everyone's like, “nah, that's not legit. That's not real.” In the early 1800s, so again, about a quarter century after James Bruce discovers them in 1773, there are a few translations that are made, but then again, like silence for a couple of decades, like hardly anyone's heard of it. Those who've heard of it are dismissing it. The first English translation of the Ethiopian manuscript was published in 1821 by a guy named Richard Lawrence. That's important because we're going to talk about could Joseph Smith have been influenced by or had access to this document. 1821 is when the first English translation of this manuscript happens. There's more translations in subsequent decades into other languages, and again, it's like not really taken super seriously, frankly, until the Dead Sea Scrolls are found in 1950, in which there were some Aramaic fragments of the book of Enoch among the Dead Scrolls. And suddenly people are like, “oh, that one Enoch, the book of Enoch is historically legitimate to some degree. Like we have to take this more seriously.” So starting in the 1950s is when research into this kind of picks up because of the Dead Sea Scroll finding. Okay.

So that's all the book of Enoch from, through Ethiopia, what is now called one Enoch. Two Enoch is also called Slavonic Enoch. This is the Slavonic edition that originates in, folks think, the eighth century, but based on an earlier work of a book of Enoch. Most scholars believe that this is like a Bulgarian Slavic version was translated for one or more Greek versions. So again, what we're getting are these much later copies of a copy of a translation of a whatever, right? And so this is coming much later, but it's coming through a different place, not Ethiopia. This text was lost for several centuries and then it was recovered and then published in the late 1800s. So of note there, long after Joseph Smith. Okay. So he didn't have access to what is called two Enoch. Some scholars attribute to Enoch to a Jewish sect. Others think that it was the work of first-century Christians. Some considered a later Christian work, you know, there's widespread disagreement about who was primarily responsible for producing two Enoch and who were they and when were they. So the first translation of two Enoch comes in 1896. Okay.

There's three Enoch as well. The oldest version people can find on this one is like 1650. There's not a great chain of custody of this one. I think people think it's legitimate, but it's just not as pure, I guess you could say. So it doesn't really get as much attention. Okay. So then the question is what could Joseph have had access to when he is including in the book of Moses, we just read at the beginning from chapter six, this story of Enoch, the city of Enoch and him becoming a seer and all the things, right? What could Joseph have had access to? He definitely did not have access to two Enoch. So we've set that aside already. We'll get into in a little bit some of the connections and similarities between two Enoch, which Joseph had zero access to. There was no possible way at all. And the book of Moses that Joseph quote unquote translated. Okay.

So the only book of Enoch available to anyone before 1830, which is when Joseph gets the revelations that are when he, when he does the soak. I put quote unquote translation cause it's not like Joseph has gold plates that he's translating. This is during his inspired translation of the Bible, which rather than reading actual documents, this is more just revelation. Joseph is just being given like, “here's what the apostle John actually said.” And here's right here, here's what, uh, here's what Enoch and Moses actually said. So Joseph isn't transcribing, translating a specific document. He's just being revealed to this information of what was in the original before it was translated and copied and distorted and memory holed. Okay. So Joseph does that in 1830. That's when he is focused on his inspired translation of the Bible. The only book of Enoch available to anyone when Joseph Smith was doing this was the 1821 English translation of one Enoch by that Richard Lawrence guy that I mentioned. The translation in 1821 prompted, according to Hugh Nibley, three studies were done. They were done by apparently unknown scholars, no named people. He says that they hardly attracted the attention of the learned world at all. And even so the tendency of these studies was not to enhance, but to minimize the importance of the book of Enoch. So there's these few little studies that come out that's not like today where there's a centralized website. Anyone can look this up and get notifications, right? There's some kind of randos that are studying this stuff, but very minimal, very contained. And so this 1821 translation of the book of Enoch only made its way into the hands of a few scholars and in Europe and in England. And even then they gave it hardly any notice. Again, most people are dismissing this. This isn't real. This isn't taken the world by storm. This isn't taken Christendom by storm. This isn't taken journalists catching their attention. It's just changing hands a little bit, but it's not enough to make its way over to Joseph. It's extremely implausible. The, as I said, all these Christian denominations are denouncing it. They're not circulating it. They're not sharing it. Quite the contrary, you know, they're ignoring it to the extent anyone are even aware. The 1821 translation doesn't make its way by 1830 into the libraries in America. Certainly not anyone that Joseph would have had access to.

Then Hugh Nibley points out this guy, Michael Stewart, who in 1840 wrote a book and an analysis and a translation of sorts of the book of Enoch. So again, this is 1840. This guy, Stewart is, or was at the time, the professor of sacred literature in the theological seminary at Andover college. Now, what text is he using for the basis of his research? He's not using that 1821 first edition, first translation. He's using a later translation that had just come out 17 years later after the first version. And it's coming to this guy, this premier theologian at this university, this professor of sacred literature. If anyone's familiar with the Apocrypha and all these different things, right? It's this guy. And so when this 1838 translation comes out, this is a new thing for him. He wasn't even aware, it appears, of the 1821 translation. So nearly two decades later, there's an updated revised new English translation. And this guy, Stewart is like, “Oh, what's this thing?” Which further shows that like there's zero way that farmer Joseph would have had access to this over in the Eastern United States. Okay. So Stewart, his purpose in writing this book is to make American clergymen aware for the first time of the existence of the book of Eden. Keep in mind, this is 1840. And basically nobody knows about this. So Stewart's purpose in writing the book is to say, “Hey guys, check this out.” So this is long after the 1830 revelation that Joseph Smith got. Stewart says in his book, “the possession of this work in our country is rare and our public so far from being antiquated with the contents of the work are in general, not at all aware as I have reason to believe that the book has even been recovered and published to the world.” So Stewart's like, “yeah, no one knows about this thing.” So that's the point of my Stewart. My book is to kind of say, “Hey, we want to acquaint the public with the contents of this book of Enoch.” So if this applies to the far more publicized 1838 translation of the book of Enoch, right, then Stewart doesn't even mention the 1821 edition, right? Only just a few little scholars and specialists were even aware. So that's further showing that the likelihood, the opportunity for Joseph to have had access to the translated English version of this one Enoch document, let alone have access to it and be able to utilize it and be even aware of it, frankly, is just near zero.

Okay. So then the question becomes why memory hole the book of Enoch? Why were there, why did the early Christians and the apostatizing fathers push this down the memory hole? You know, Stewart, for example, the same 1840 guy, this professor of sacred literature at the theological seminary at Andover, he writes in his book, “to what purpose is an appeal to a book confessedly apocryphal and therefore of no authority? I have not the most distant intention to refer to the book of Enoch as a book of authority. I can never be brought to believe that the Ethiopians had any good right to place it in their Canon. My full belief is that our present scriptures are the only and the sufficient rule of faith and practice.” Okay. So what's Stewart saying here? He's basically saying that the early Christians weren't smart enough to understand what's what and to understand what was and should be canonical, right? It was only the later church leaders that were right. It was only the later fathers, the one who kind of cast aside certain books as apocryphal and encompassed other ones, but those early Christians, the one living at the time, the one living much closer to when these things were done, they're all ignorant rubes, right? It's the later councils and creed authors and these scholarly Christian theologians, the ones who are eminent enough to understand whether this should be considered scripture or not, right? Because here's Stewart saying our present scriptures, the Bible are the only and the sufficient rule of faith and practice. Reminds you of in Nephi saying in the Book of Mormon that people would say, “oh, a Bible, a Bible, I have no need of other stuff,” right? Here's Stewart saying the same thing with the Book of Enoch. “Oh, we don't need this other stuff. The Bible is sufficient for the rule of faith and practice.” Okay.

So one example, here's one that Nibley flags in his article from Stewart, Stewart again, 1840. He writes, “the very basis of the first part of the book, that is the alleged carnal intercourse of angels with the daughters of men is an impossibility, enough to say absurdity.” So this comes from the Old Testament and the Book of Enoch talking about the sons of God having intercourse with the daughters of men, right? And the daughters of God having intercourse with the sons of men. So Hugh Nibley, his commentary and reply to

This again, what did Stewart just say? He's like, "This is absurd." The first part of Enoch's book is talking about carnal intercourse of angels with the daughters of men, right? He says, "It's impossible. It's absurd."

So Hugh Nibley says, "What could the writer, the writer of the Book of Enoch, what could the writer have had in mind?" Instead of asking that question, the churchmen of every denomination simply threw the book out the window. To this day, in the official encyclopedias of the Lutherans and even in the literature of such fundamental literalists as the Seventh-day Adventists and the Mennonites, no articles appear under the name of Enoch, nor do we find any mention of Enoch in the contemporary vocabulary of Jewish life or in the book of Jewish concepts. Though all the other great patriarchs have places of honor in these works, Enoch is out. So again, he's being memory-holed by tons of different Jewish and Christian sects and branches and whatnot. Okay.

So again, there's no curiosity on the part of Stewart. There's no, there's no theological wrestling. What could Enoch have meant by saying that the sons of God and the daughters of men were marrying? Could it have been something else? Not actual angels and angelic beings having intercourse with men, but, you know, sons of God being otherwise purified, like priesthood holders and, and disciples who were marrying with carnal, heathen women, right? Like there's, there's answers here, but Stewart isn't curious. He's, he's not probing for anything. He's just putting aside and saying, "This is absurd," which is the treatment that Enoch is getting and had been getting for centuries from a lot of these people.

Interestingly enough, Stewart flags that there's a lot of Christian, he says, "true Christology before the time of Christ," that in this book of Enoch, there is like Christ-centered content. He says the whole contour of the messianic part of the book indicates more knowledge of Christology than any uninspired Jew could reasonably be supposed to possess at any time before Christianity was published. So, so Stewart concludes that the book was written by a Christian Jew, someone who was familiar with Judaistic, uh, Jewish practices, but who understood Christian theology. Uh, Nibley comments. He says, "This is a question that has exercised all the students of early apocalyptic writings of recent years. What can we do when an undeniably Jewish work is full of undeniably Christian elements?" That of course was one of the major stumbling blocks of the Book of Mormon. How could Jews before the time of Christ speak and act so much like Christians and vice versa?

So that's something to wrestle with here, right? These scholars are like, "Oh, there's, this is purporting to be the book of Enoch, which predates Christ, but it has all this like Christian-related stuff in here. So clearly this must be just a, a fictional, whatever, let's put it aside. It's not truly the book of Enoch because otherwise it wouldn't have this like Christ-centered stuff in it." You read, as we'll get into, you know, Joseph Smith's inspired translation. And of course the Christ stuff, Jesus Christ's full name is all over the place. But people like Stuart can't process that because it conflicts with their theological understanding. "That's impossible. There was no Christ before Christ. So anything purportedly written prior to that, that has Christology, Christ focus in it must be a later recreation and fabrication. Therefore it's dismissed because it doesn't comport to the understanding of the doctrinal understanding of these people." Okay.

Another example in 2 Enoch. So this is the Slavic version that came decades after Joseph Smith. After Enoch is taken up with the Lord, again, that's mentioned in the Old Testament, right? Enoch is caught up with the Lord. Then he's transformed into like a celestial being. He's transfigured almost like an angel. But so then that's in 2 Enoch, that whole account. Uh, I'll, I'll share just a second. Uh, of course, you know, Jewish people and you know, they, they don't think that people become angels after death and the whole like transfiguration into a celestial being. A lot of Christians and Jews have looked at me like, "No, like Enoch is claiming that he's converted into this celestial being like that, that that's poppycock. That's rubbish. This 2 Enoch is just made up," right? So it's cast aside here from, uh, chapter one, verse 22 of 2 Enoch. It says, "And the Lord said to Michael, 'Go and extract Enoch from his earthly clothing and anoint him with my delightful oil and put him into the clothes of my glory.'" And so Michael did just as the Lord had said to him, "He anointed me and clothed me. And the appearance of that oil is greater than the greatest light and its ointment is like sweet dew and its fragrance myrrh. And it is like the rays of the glittering sun. And I looked at myself and I had become like one of his glorious ones. And there was no observable difference." So Enoch here isn't simply, you know, a human turning into an angel. He's a, you know, a celestial being exalted with, with others, right? Uh, in, in God's glory, there's no observable difference. He says he's caught up in God's presence into Enoch. He's, he's transfigured, right? He's, he's been anointed and clothed, which has a lot of very interesting symbolism, uh, that we learn about in the temple, of course, or, or, you know, talk about the temple. It's in the scriptures too. And, uh, and so he's caught up and he's given by God 30 days to go and share his, his experience that he's had talking with God, having visions, learning all this information. He's given 30 days to go back and share his experience with his sons, write it down for posterity, after which point he would be called back up.

Verse 23 of chapter one from 2 Enoch says, "And I sat down for a period of 30 days and 30 nights, and I wrote everything accurately. And I wrote 366 books." And of course these might've been just, you know, very tiny books and on, you know, goat skin or whatever, who knows, but, uh, maybe it's 366, like chapter length, whatever, who knows, but he wrote a lot. He recorded it down according to, to Enoch.

Now this is fascinating, right? Because this 2 Enoch stuff doesn't come until the late 1800s. Keep in mind that in 1840, when Stuart publishes his kind of critical work of this alleged book of Enoch that he says is not authoritative, Uh, at the time, only one Enoch people are aware of the Ethiopian edition. One of the individuals who learned of the, that 1838 translation of the book of Enoch for the first time was Parley Pratt, who is in England. He's at the time editing the church's paper, the Millennial Star. Uh, there, there's a review that appears from Pratt of this 1838 translation of the book of Enoch in the Millennial Star. Pratt writes, "This book carries with it indisputable evidence of being an ancient production. It steers clear of modern sectarianism and savors much of the doctrine of the ancients, especially in regard to things of the latter day. And it seems plainly to predict the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the mission of our elders together with the later persecutions, befallen our people in America and the final result in the complete triumph of the saints." So it doesn't even occur to Pratt to make a connection to what Joseph one decade prior had revealed in the inspired translation of the Bible. Of course, you may remember from the Doctrine and Covenants, God is like, "Hey, put a pause on your translation work. You got to go to Ohio and you got to do this other stuff." So it was incomplete. Joseph, you know, often wanted to get back and continue. Uh, and, and in England, the, the book of Enoch wasn't to be published until 11 years later in some, they called it the Extracts from the Prophecy of Enoch. And so the portion of the Book of Moses pertaining to Enoch was individually kind of separately published in England, 11 years after this. So Parley Pratt doesn't have in mind and may not have been super aware of Joseph's 1830 production of these excerpts of Enoch. So now a decade later, 1840 in England, he's writing for the paper and he's not making that connection to Joseph at all. He's instead making a connection to the Book of Mormon and to latter-day revelation and to the, this final dispensation, right? He quotes, uh, trying to like prove his point, right? That, "Hey, this book is, is, uh, uh," he says "indisputable evidence of being an ancient production." And, and to bolster that point, he quotes several parts of it to say, "Oh, and look, it's, it's predicting us in the latter day." One, for example, from 1 Enoch says, uh, "To the righteous and the wise shall be given the books of joy, of integrity, of great wisdom to them shall be books be given in which they shall believe in which they shall rejoice." Okay. So Pratt, when he's quoting this stuff, he says like, "We'll leave it to the reader to draw their conclusions." But he's, he's offering these examples to say, "Well, we can interpret this as Enoch seeing our day."

Let's get into some actual additional, uh, examples from the book, books, plural, of Enoch, these different versions. Let's those, uh, start and go back to Moses 6. This is from Joseph's inspired translation. Let's go to verse five. Uh, it notes that a book of remembrance was kept in the, which was recorded in the language of Adam, uh, for it was given unto as many as called upon God to write by the spirit of inspiration. So this is establishing that, uh, in, you know, Enoch's lineage, his forefathers, they're keeping this book of remembrance. Uh, and as many have been called upon by God are commanded to write, right. They're inspired, uh, their inspiration, they receive. You go down in the same chapter to verse 46, it says "for a book of remembrance. This is Enoch talking. We have written among us according to the pattern given by the finger of God and it is given in our language." So previously, right? Adam was keeping this, passing it down. Enoch's got it. We were keeping this book of remembrance. That's important as you'll see in just a second. Section 107 of the Doctrine and Covenants says that Adam stood up in the midst of the congregation and notwithstanding, he was bowed down with age being full of the Holy Ghost predicted whatsoever should befall his posterity unto the latest generation. "These things were all written in the book of Enoch and are to be testified of in due time." So here, Joseph is, is revealing and showing like, "Hey, we're going to be able to have access to additional revelation. And there is this book of Enoch that's recording this great vision of Adam for all of his posterity." Keep in mind that section 107 that I just read from was given five years after Joseph has received what is now chapters six and seven of, of the book of Moses, which contains, uh, the excerpts from, from Enoch. And so five years later, God here is saying, "All this stuff is documented in the book of Enoch and are to be testified of in due time. There's more to come." Did you know that? Did you know that there's a book of Enoch that has all these things that we're going to get access to at some point? Talk about that in a bit.

Before getting into Enoch, let's do one more. This is 2 Nephi 29. This is familiar to you. "I command all men in the east, the west, the north, the south, everywhere, that they shall write the words, which I speak unto them." That is God's pattern. He's testified of that in modern revelation and the Book of Mormon and the Bible, right? Consistently what I command, what I reveal, I caused to be written. So Enoch keeping a book of remembrance, writing down a book for 30 days and 30 nights, allegedly 366 books is part and parcel of, of God's pattern to instruct and reveal, and then to have it documented.

Here's from 1 Enoch chapter 81. "And he said unto me, 'Observe Enoch, these heavenly tablets and read what is written there on and mark every individual fact.'" And I observed the heavenly tablets and read everything which was written there on and understood everything and read the book of all the deeds of mankind and of all the children of flesh that shall be upon the earth to the remotest generations. In chapter 103, "I know a mystery and have read the heavenly tablets and have seen the holy books and have found written therein and inscribed regarding them." He's talking here that he's getting access to all this divine knowledge. He's communing with God. He's, he's as a seer, he's having all this information revealed to him. He can see like Adam did, right? And recorded in the book of remembrance down to the remotest of generations, down to the last day. He understands this stuff. He's being shown this stuff, just like the apostle John, just like Nephi, just like these guys who were given a vision of everything. The brother of Jared commanded to write it down. Most of them, some of them are like, "Nope, John already wrote that down. You don't need to, we're sealing it up. It'll come forth in its own due time." But God is sharing all this stuff and then saying, generally, "Write it down, record this." Enoch is saying, "I've seen these heavenly tablets. I've seen these books, these, these sources of knowledge. And I have these mysteries and I've been given this information." Uh, sounds a little bit like, let's go to Moses 7 again from Joseph's, uh, restored version. "And it came to pass, this is Enoch. I turned and went up on the Mount. And as I stood upon the Mount, I beheld the heavens open and I was clothed upon with glory. And I saw the Lord and he stood before my face and he talked with me, even as a man talketh one with another face to face. And he said unto me, 'Look, and I will show unto thee the world for the space of many generations.'" Later, it says that the Lord showed Enoch all things, even unto the end of the world. And he saw the day of the righteous, the hour of their redemption and received a fullness of glory. Keep in mind, Joseph basically had zero way of having any access to this 1 Enoch translation at all. There's, it's just preposterous to even argue that based on the circumstances and, and look how similar that is. And 1 Enoch, right? He's, he's, uh, you have this portion. Let me scroll up to it where he's saying, um, the Lord says to Michael, "Go and extract from Enoch, his earthly clothing, put on him the clothes of my glory." Michael did as the Lord said unto him, "He anointed me, he clothed me," right? That's from 1 Enoch. And here we have in Moses 7, uh, "I was," Enoch says, "I was clothed upon with glory." Again, just like we read in 1 Enoch, seeing the remotest generation, seeing all this stuff from the heavenly books, this wisdom from God. And here in Moses 7, "I will show unto thee the world for the space of many generations." He showed Enoch all things, even until the end of the world, right? These, these patterns, these connections, these similarities between for now 1 Enoch and Joseph's inspired translation. Of course, as we read in chapter six of Moses, that after Enoch is learning all this stuff and getting this vision, he says a book of remembrance was written among us according to the pattern given by the finger of God. He's writing it down. There is a book of Enoch. I mean, there's frankly a book of his fathers and Adam and all the rest, right? Enoch is not necessarily unique. Although Nibley does include a number of like quotes and things from scholars and apocryphal, whatever, that, that refer to Enoch as like the great record keeper. I was losing it a little bit when I was trying to follow what Nibley was saying here and what sources he was using, but he's got one after the other that are all kind of, uh, uh, ascribing to Enoch the title of great record keeper. You know, not only is he a seer and seeing all these things, unlike anyone before him, keep in mind, because only after he became a seer did the saying go out in the land that, uh, you know, seer had the Lord called. So he's unique in this regard. And to that end, the book of Enoch probably, you know, causes all others before it to pale in comparison because he's getting these amazing visions and he's teaching this to his children and his posterity is writing it down. The book of remembrance, according to the pattern given by the finger of God, Enoch in Moses 6 commands, uh, his posterity to pass this on. He says, "Teach these things freely unto your children."

In 1 Enoch chapter 93, it says, God says, I Enoch, excuse me, Enoch says, "I'll declare unto you my sons, according to that, which appeared to me in the heavenly vision and which I have known through the word of the holy angels and have learned from the heavenly tablets." And Enoch began to read from the book. So same thing for Moses 6, he's teaching it to his children. He's telling them to teach it to their own children in the Slavonic version. And to Enoch, Enoch is accompanied by two angelic guides and brings to the earth, these heavenly books to be handed down from generation to generation. So a little bit more symbolic, uh, uh, you know, description of this heavenly information being brought down to be passed on down the generations.

In 2 Enoch, let's continue from that. This is in chapter 33. It says, uh, God says, "Take thy books, which thou hast written and go down to earth and teach them to thy children and hand over the books, which thou hast written with thy hand, and they shall read them and know the creator of all. And they shall hand on these books written by thy hand to their children and their children's children from parent to parent. And from generation to generation, the writing written by thy hand and by the hand of thy fathers, Adam and Seth shall not be destroyed unto the last days for I have commanded special angels to preserve the writing on the hands of thy fathers that it perish not." That's interesting, right? That there were special angels commissioned according to, to Enoch, to protect Adam and Seth's early writings and Enoch's writings, right? "The writing written by thy hand and the hand of thy fathers, Adam and Seth shall not be destroyed in the last days." So even though there's these copies and these fragments and these copies of translations from Ethiopia and Bulgaria and all these things that have survived the book of Enoch, the book of Adam, the book of remembrances exists. According to 2 Enoch, angels have special charge over it. Kind of sounds like Moroni and the gold plates, right? You got one of these things where God has this record hidden somewhere. It exists. Got, you know, it's like the ultimate scavenger hunt, Indiana Jones escapade, right? That this thing exists and will be brought forward at some point in the future.

Compare this. This is also from 2 Enoch again, which Joseph Smith had zero, like no one had access to it. It was not discovered until decades, half a century after Joseph was dead. So here's from 2 Enoch. Compare this one. There's all kinds of little comparisons in Nibley's articles that are totally worth diving into. 2 Enoch chapter 35. "I know the evil disposition of mankind, but I will spare a righteous man of thy family. And the books written by thy hand shall appear and that of thy fathers among the children of men. The appointed angels will show them unto them that believe and explain them." Hmm. That sounds like Moses 1. "When the children of men shall esteem my words as not, I will raise up another like unto thee, and the writings of your vision shall be had again among the children of men among as many as shall believe." So you've got, "I know the evil disposition of mankind." And "when the children of men shall esteem my words is not," you'll got, "I will spare a righteous man of thy family" versus "I will raise up another like unto thee." You've got "the books written by thy hand shall appear and that of thy fathers among the children of men." And then "the writings of your vision shall be had again among the children of men." And then "the appointed angels will show them unto them that believe." And then "among as many as shall believe." Right? So if I had time and interest, I'd create a fancy little chart for y'all to look at. But the point is you break this down line by line and, and those are very, very similar. Again, I can't stress this enough. Nobody on earth had access to 2 Enoch, what we just read from at the time Joseph. It wouldn't come out for half a century. And yet the consistency here, uh, to, to Enoch is remarkable.

Another comparison from 2 Enoch chapter 31, this is God speaking. "The devil knew that I wanted to make the world with Adam ruling as Lord of it. He became Satan when he fled from heaven, before which time he was Satanel. He changed his nature and was no longer an angel. He preserved his identity, but his state of mind was altered as when any righteous person becomes"

Wicked. And he conceived the impossible idea of setting up his throne to be equal to my power. Wow. Again, two Enoch.

Long after Joseph sounds almost exactly like Moses 4, that Satan came before me saying, “Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son and I will redeem all mankind. Wherefore give me thine honor.” I mean, that’s just like, you can imagine these things that get translated 18 times over many, many centuries, right? Copied differently or whatever. But like, if you had Moses 4 going to the undiluted original source and being restored in these latter days and then you take this one, man, those sound basically conceptually identical.

All right, let’s wrap up a few observations. First off, it’s just interesting to me when we think of the Bible, right? It’s, it’s the whole article of faith of like, you know, we believe the Bible as far as it’s been translated correctly. So too, with these books of Enoch, it’s amazing how much we rely on translations of copies of copies of summaries of translations. And you get this telephone game that distorts things. You get hostile theologians and scribes who are changing things along the way to suit the new order of things at the time and minimizing or memory holding aspects that they find problematic, right? And so it’s just amazing when we think of like our theological understanding, things that Joseph said, right, that are purport to be verbatim and we say them as verbatim. It’s even this case with Joseph Smith, right? Many people have, oh, like I was a scribe at this meeting and now that’s, we put it in first person as if Joseph verbatim said those things when he didn’t quite say it verbatim, right? It’s just interesting to me how much of our religious understanding is based on the telephone game. Kind of, uh, not concerning. I mean, it is concerning, but it’s also odd. Um, you know, it also, to me, it’s a testament that what Joseph was receiving was far superior. Again, going to that undiluted, untainted, uncontaminated original source. And yet when you see these similarities, it’s very, very interesting.

Another observation is I feel like we should be discussing stuff like this a lot more—searching for additional scripture, right? Take Second Nephi 2: “The book shall be sealed. And in the book shall be a revelation from God from the beginning of the world to the ending thereof.” You get this brother of Jared, like remarkable vision, like is in the book of Enoch. You know, Ether 4: “Wherefore the Lord hath commanded me to write them and I’ve written them. And he commanded me that I should seal them up. And he also hath commanded that I should seal up the interpretation thereof. Wherefore I’ve sealed them up.” So how do we get them? How do we, how do we get this stuff? This additional scripture. Next verse: “For the Lord said unto me, they shall not go forth under the Gentiles until the day that they shall repent of their iniquity and become clean before the Lord.” Also in Second Nephi 7, it says, “The things which are sealed shall not be delivered in the day of wickedness and abominations of the people.” We got a lot of wickedness and abominations going on. So, you know, we might be waiting a while for this kind of stuff. And it reminds me also that in Section 84, the saints were condemned, right? Excuse me. They were condemned for treating lightly the things that they had received. So why would we be given more if we remain under that condemnation? If we’re not even utilizing to its fullest extent that which we’ve already been given.

Final scripture, and then we’ll wrap it up. This is from Third Nephi 26: “And when they shall have received this, the lesser part, which is expedient that they should have first to try their faith. And if it shall so be that they shall believe these things, the lesser part, then shall the greater things be made manifest unto them. And if it so be that they, the modern Gentiles, us, will not believe these things, then shall the greater things be withheld from them unto their condemnation.” There are so many greater things out there that are being withheld unto our condemnation, right? Not that God is damning us as a punitive thing. Like we’re damned where our progress is impeded because of our own wickedness and our idolatry and so forth. But these records are out there. They’re in the earth. I mean, it’s just amazing to think of like what more currently exists in a physical location that would be fascinating to reveal and restore all this knowledge that’s been lost and corrupted.

It’s been fascinating to read through One Enoch and Two Enoch. And, you know, some of it’s a little hard to understand. Other parts seem very clear. And, but it’s very insightful to me. And it, especially with those comparisons that Joseph could not have access to it, it confirms to me of Joseph’s prophetic calling that he was a seer, that he was given this information from God and consequently being a direct revelation. What we have in the book of Moses is basically accurate and verbatim compared to the telephone game version that we have in One Enoch or Two Enoch that have come down through generations of copyists and translators and scribes. So it’s a huge witness to me of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling. And even though maybe we’re not going to say, all right, One Enoch and Two Enoch, let’s consider them canonical and let’s, you know, fold them into our, our quad, you know, and consider them scripture. We could still have a little bit of a, you know, like, uh, like we do frankly with, you know, perhaps books in the Bible or other apocrypha. I think we could still spiritually benefit substantially from reading them, especially when we see that there’s so many comparisons, which suggests that there’s a lot of other accuracy, even if it’s a little diluted or modified or whatever, that we can still benefit from reading this stuff.

So I’d be curious in the comments, did you even know about a book of Enoch before I read Hugh Nibley’s thing? I, you know, of course we’ve got our thing in the Pearl of Great Price about Enoch, but this concept of him writing a book and the, the, the one Enoch and two Enoch, uh, evidences that exist and have been translated and have come out nearly all of which were after Joseph’s time are another kind of Testament and very curious, but I feel like I never knew about this growing up. I wasn’t aware of any of those, uh, records, uh, being translated or even existing. So it’s kind of a fascinating thing to consider and to wonder and yearn for, man, what’s in this book of Enoch? Just like the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, this knowledge of the last days, this knowledge of God, of all things, it just sounds amazing. But the question is, are we trying for it? Are we yearning for it? Are we striving for it? Are we, are we treating lightly the things that we’ve received, therefore condemning ourselves to not gain access to greater things?

We got a lot of work to do, but it’s fun to think of this stuff out there. So let me know in the comments, have you heard of the book of Enoch? Any other insights you have? Have you read those Hugh Nibley articles? Uh, you can find them very easily. Just search “book of Enoch Hugh Nibley” and you’ll, you’ll find them. There’s 13 of them and, uh, they’re, it’s a good time. Very interesting stuff. We’ll leave it there and I’ll see you next Sunday. Bye.