Banned from Bible? 12 Clickbait Crimes to Watch Out For

The story the internet tells

The Book of Enoch is a free money sort of captivating topic that gets farmed by social channels and now AI slop machines alike. Here's Joe Rogan--one of the most prominent faces of the internet-- "I got into the book of Enoch recently, which is an ancient religious book that was at one point in time included in the canon that was like the Bible and everything like that.

But then they decided it was too crazy and they removed it from the Bible...It's the craziest [ ]...it's gods coming down and mating with women and creating this race called the Nephilim...The Watchers descended to Earth on Mount Hermon. They take human wives, teaching humanity forbidden knowledge, sorcery, astrology, metalworking, weapons, cosmetics, and enchantments. [This is] older than the Old Testament." We started adding up the views saying stuff like this, and our estimate quickly got to a billion or more. Words like forbidden, banned, removed, and secret are used..."Ethiopian Bible Reveals Forbidden Words of Jesus" It generally says Enoch was kept from you in some way, and what's inside will terrify you or shake Christianity.

Why the clickbait spreads

We're going to take an unpopular path here--laying out what's actually TRUE in the ocean of clickbait sensationalism. Much of the content we reviewed only seemed to know the Bible about as well as 20 other topics, and this led us to want to bring our own take on what's actually shocking--and not--in Enoch. Amid all the AI content, it's also worth noting that the humans being this video studied all 108 chapters. Today we'll expose the repeat crimes of the genre so you don't get played, cover what genuinely stands out to specifically someone who knows the Bible, and we'll do it all as fast as we can.

What Scripture says about Enoch

Crime number one: These fallen angels are given Hellish horns, wings, and beastly, giant-like frames. In reality, the Watchers most likely looked human and had no wings — like the 15-plus times angels get mistaken for ordinary men in the Bible. Across Scripture, it's consistent: the throne-worshippers have wings and the ones acting on earth don't. Our assumptions about wings and demonic looks come from medieval art, not the Bible.

The biblical Enoch in three passages

Fact 1: The parts of the Bible on Enoch are so short we can read it all now: Genesis 5:24: "Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him." And Hebrews 11:5 in the new testament says: "By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. For before he was taken up, he had this testimony, that he pleased God."

And Jude chapter 1 says "It was about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment" That's it. Fact 2: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Enoch are numbered not because they're a set--it's the very opposite. It's to make clear that they're totally unrelated, written by different people at different times, often centuries apart, merely sharing Enoch as a main character.

Fact 3: None of the authors are Enoch, knew him, or wrote within a thousand years of him. Yet Joe Rogan says Enoch is older than the Old Testament--a quiet foundation attack. This will be crime number two because this claim has zero support. The furthest you can say is that the oldest books of Enoch are older than just the single youngest book of the Old Testament, which is Daniel. But the books of Enoch that share overlap in subject with Daniel still come later.

Fact 4: When people say "The Book of Enoch," they typically mean 1st Enoch. Fact 5: 1st Enoch has a lot more credibility than 2nd or 3rd Enoch. It has far more historical Jewish legitimacy, and fragments of only first Enoch were in the groundbreaking Dead Sea Scrolls discovery. Fact 6: Even 1st Enoch is really five different books, each probably written by different circles of Jewish folks and each written as much as several hundreds of years apart.

Facts 7 and 8: 2nd Enoch is about a journey through layers of heaven, and in 3rd Enoch, he's turned into an angel, and God himself calls Enoch quote "THE LESSER YHWH". If you know your Bible, alarms should be going off here. The Bible is clear that humans and angels are distinct classes of beings and humans do not get angel-ified. And YHWH is totally incomparable to any other being.

Enoch and the canon

Our third crime to expose--and it's probably the biggest one--is everything that says or even suggests that Enoch was banned or removed from "the Bible". This is about as wrong as it gets. When people say "canon" or "Bible" they basically mean the books held at a much higher level of authority than all other books. Enoch was never. in any reputable canon of either early Jews OR early Christians. It was certainly a valued text for Jews, but its authority was never anywhere near the rest.

How canon actually worked

Picture canon as a slider, not a light switch. At the top sits the Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy--zero debate or confusion, ever. Just below it, the Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, the histories with all the kings, the four Gospel accounts and seven of Paul's thirteen letters--they're overwhelmingly accepted and quickly.

A handful took longer and had some minor debate like Esther and Song of Songs, but people agreed relatively easily. Certain last-to-join books like Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and Revelation take some time and have more significant debates. We should expect this, because it's a big deal to call anything the very Word of God. These were disputed insiders though, whereas Enoch was never an insider at all. Lower still, a real gap below the rest, sit books Catholics and Orthodox folks keep but Protestants don't--Judith, the Maccabees, and some additions to Esther and Daniel.

The takeaway: there was never a time when every book was a simple in or out. And even the very Jewish community that gave us our only complete access to it--which is in the Ethiopic language--rejected it. It was never removed or banned because it was never in.

Our fourth crime is quietly mixing up "authoritative word of God" with "valued, quote-worthy writing." Christians have hundreds of historical books they quote and treasure without ever calling them Scripture. But what about the Bible quoting Enoch in the book of Jude? And the seeming allusions in Peter's books? We'll keep crime number five quick--Paul quotes pagan Greek poets three times, so clearly quotation does not equal Bible. It's a meaningful signal, and it helps us hold Enoch as valuable, but it's not everything.

Crime 6 is the huge overstatement of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. They do later canonize Enoch, but this isn't until roughly the ~500s. They're the only ones to do so and they may not have if they weren't so segregated from the rest of the church. Crime 7. It's also not like the Ethiopians have 68 books in their canon but then Protestants choose to exclude 2 because they're embarrassing or foundation shaking. The Ethiopians had 81--a whole 15 more--which clearly shows that they think about "canon" with very different criteria. Crime number eight is when people put the book of Daniel shoulder to shoulder--or even inferior to--Enoch.

This just isn't true. Daniel gets received into the Jewish canon quickly and that's all the difference in the world. And the rest of the Bible clearly holds Daniel in much higher regard than Enoch. Crime number nine is to suggest Enoch was lost to time then rediscovered at which point bombs get dropped. This type of framing always sells well--whether it's this or historically bankrupt takes like the Da Vinci Code--but it's just not true. The Western Church knew about Enoch the entire time, and the only thing that happened late was copies of it being brought to Europe.

What is actually in 1 Enoch

Now let's get into what's most interesting and notable IN 1st Enoch.

The Watchers

Book one of five: the Watchers. This is the famous part Joe Rogan was reading. Enriching the Bible's own story, we now get a number--200 fallen angels--and a location--Mount Hermon. They take human wives and teach stuff like weapon-making, astrology, and enchantments. Their children are even more explicitly linked to giants, and the world fills with violence. This actually isn't that wild if you know your Bible--more on that later.

What will be fresh is its origin story for demons: when these giants die in the Flood, their spirits roam bodiless and torment people. It was a common Jewish view to tie these to the very demons Jesus casts out. Most Christians today don't even know about this, let alone hold the view if they do know--the concept of fallen angels alone is enough to explain demons--but prominent scholars like Michael Heiser have greatly expanded awareness of it.

The rest of Book the Watchers is a lot of God sending Enoch back and forth as a messenger of judgment to the fallen angels--complete with angels giving Enoch detailed tours of fiery prisons and the edges of the universe. Though Bible nerds everywhere rightfully appreciate and enjoy 1 Enoch, we have to admit that it can read like a fan fiction, like a Lord of the Rings fan writing their own new details about the weirdest corners of Tolkien's universe, as revealed by its fascination with angel and demon names and occupations and fiery prison details. This plus God's games of telephone with the fallen angels all gathered together to talk to Enoch don't read much at all like the style or priorities of the rest of the Bible.

Keep in mind this is the most credible book of the five books of 1 Enoch. Crime number ten is when this story of fallen angels procreating with humans is presented like it's a wild story being covered up by the church. It is strange, but it's no secret--the unified story of the Bible presents it matter-of-factly in Genesis 6.

And the serpent and the fruit... Cain killing Abel... Lamech who is polygamous and violent... the Tower of Babel. They're all one continuous theme of rebellion against God and transgressing his created order. We've already seen both humans and spiritual beings rebelling against God then with the story of the Nephilim, we see humans and spiritual beings involved in the same event. The genuinely weird part is the feasibility of the offspring at all, but again, Enoch doesn't uniquely have that detail.

And once you realize they most likely took human form -- the way angels do 15+ times across the Bible -- not the freakish winged, hairy monster the clickbaits sells you -- it gets less weird. It's also noteworthy that while a strong majority of study-inclined Christians now consider these "sons of God" to clearly be divine beings due to Jude, Job, 1st and 2nd Peter, and other ancient writings, a minority of people still think they were just humans.

The Parables and the Son of Man

Book two: the Parables. Here, it gets serious. This whole book describes an exalted, heavenly figure — pre-existent, enthroned in glory, worshiped by the nations, handed all judgment. It reads uncannily like Jesus, over and over. Then, after chapter upon chapter of these Jesus-like descriptions, the book reaches its climax and reveals who this mysterious figure actually is — Enoch himself.

This is so fundamental of a claim that we're no longer in "should this be in the Bible or not territory", we are now in "are we going to choose Enoch or the rest of the Bible" territory. In fairness, it's the majority view that Enoch is plainly presented as the Son of Man, but there are other views that do a little more gymnastics to avoid it, and the manuscript timeline truly is foggy.

The Astronomical Book

Book three: the Astronomical Book. It's by far the most boring, though videos sell it as having secret codes for the end of the world. It's page after page of star-charts and calendar math--gates the sun moves through, phases of the moon, all built on a rigid 364-day year. And that central claim is flat out wrong, off by more than a day every single year.

The Dream Visions

Book four: the Dream Visions. There's two dreams. The first is a quick preview of Noah's Flood. Not much to say on it. The second gives a reader quite a few "what in the ___" moments because it's Enoch retelling the entire history of the world...as a barnyard of animals.

Adam is a white bull. Cain and Abel are a black calf and a red calf. Israel is a flock of sheep. The fallen angels are stars that then become bulls and quote (and we're not making this up) "let out their organs like horses, and they began to mount the cows of the bulls, and they all conceived and bore elephants and camels and asses." These farmland piggyback rides are wild indeed, and this is another tale that points a little fan fiction.

Before we move on, note that this also alludes to human form since Adam was also a bull. Book 4 also "predicts" history accurately right up to about 160 BC--then goes cloudy. That's a classic giveaway of a book dressing itself up as ancient prophecy after the fact.

The Epistle and Noah’s strange birth

Book five: the Epistle. Enoch's farewell letter to his kids--mostly a drumbeat of woes against the wicked in a way that adds nothing new to the Bible. There's a line where God says "I and my son"--but here's crime number eleven: the manuscript history for Enoch is far weaker than for the Bible. Scholars doubt this line was even in the original; though we have all of Enoch in Ethiopic from later on, we only have fragments of it in the original Aramaic and secondary Greek. Yet much of the genre presents translations of quality ranging from highly questionable to outright disproven as near equals to Biblical translations.

And 1 Enoch closes with a bizarre birth for Noah--a newborn whiter than snow yet redder than a rose, glowing eyes lighting up the whole house, speaking at birth--all so strange people run to Enoch for answers. Now that you're through it all, "banned from the Bible" should be looking like a stretch...of a stretch...of a stretch.

Does Enoch ground Christian theology?

Here's crime number twelve:

One of the most successful videos—one highly algorithm favored and with 6 million views claims quote "the apocalyptic ideas introduced in Enoch—Hell, salvation, the son of man, the coming of the Messiah—these ideas lay the groundwork for the central themes of Christian theology" This video is not alone. And if this is true, it's certainly a bomb. To have the foundations of Christianity resting on a book like this. But it isn't true. Each of those four ideas are absolutely in the Old Testament — and many centuries before these writings.

The Messiah is the serpent crusher of Genesis, the star of Jacob of Numbers, the scepter from Judah, the promised everlasting Davidic king, and the God with us child and suffering servant of Isaiah. On salvation--the entire Old Testament is God saving his people--and its into this backdrop that Jesus aka Yeshua--Hebrew for "the Lord saves" comes. On Hell, people feel clever shocking Christians with "Actually, Hell isn't IN the Old Testament." There's some truth to that--but it only goes so far.

We still have the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, and every prophet foretelling "the Day of the Lord" where God makes things right and judges evil, including Isaiah's "their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched"--which Jesus himself quotes and the "everlasting contempt" in the book of Daniel. Finally, it's true that the term "Son of Man" occurs a lot in the 2nd book--more than in the Old Testament. But the real source is definitely Daniel chapter 7 — even the scholars who translate Enoch admit this. Plus, book 2 didn't have any fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery. If you've benefitted from this, please consider subscribing and sharing. It really helps us out.

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Is it true, or is it loud?

Let's put the whole thing back together. The Book of Enoch wasn't banned or hidden. It was never in the Jewish or Christian Bible to begin with or received anywhere but late in Ethiopia. There are large-scale cherry-picking operations going on to harvest little bits from Enoch--even shaky textual foundation bits--and then blow them way out of proportion and slap scary AI images on it.

But if you actually read all 108 chapters and know your Bible, the spell quickly breaks. Some of it is strange but harmless like barnyard visions. Other bits should lead us to question Enoch like its faulty calendar and godlike depictions of baby Noah that not even baby Jesus gets.

Other bits are worth knowing at least for a select few--like the possibility that old testament giants are connected to new testament demons. And then, buried under the clickbait, sit things that actually should stop a real Christian cold, like Enoch crowned as the Son of Man. And much more is simply already in the Old Testament but far better.

Then still more is just uninteresting. Now that you've seen these crimes, you have a toolkit because they're reused everywhere. So the next time something promises you forbidden secrets that'll terrify you and shake Christian faith, ask this question: Is it true? Or is it just loud? And where do we find ourselves preferring the latter?