Curious Christian

Somebody recently asked why 1 Enoch was left out of the Bible. This is a question I hear more and more often these days. Here is how I often answer:

1 Enoch was widely read during the Second Temple period, but it was never part of the Hebrew canon or the mainstream Septuagint tradition. It had secondary status at best, although it was clearly influential in some circles. The fact that Jude quoted from Enoch, and that Jude is considered canonical, doesn’t automatically grant canonical status to Enoch. In the book of Acts, the apostle Paul quotes from a well-known pagan philosopher, but no one imagines that this grants canonical status to the pagan philosopher’s writings. Endorsing part of a work in Scripture doesn’t mean the whole work is endorsed as Scripture.