Enoch: The Man Who Walked With God and Was Not
The man who 'walked with God: and he was not; for God took him,' and who became the hero of an entire library of visions.
Enoch is the son of Jared, father of Methuselah and seventh generation from Adam. After 365 years, Genesis 5:24 breaks its pattern: "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."
Genesis gives Enoch only a few lines. He is the son of Jared, the father of Methuselah, and the seventh generation from Adam. He lives 365 years, far shorter than his relatives, and then the text breaks its pattern: instead of saying he died, it says "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him" (Genesis 5:24). The number 365 matches the solar year, which many scholars think is no accident.
That short, strange ending inspired a huge body of writing. In 1 Enoch he is a scribe who carries messages between God and the fallen Watchers, tours the ends of the earth and the prisons of disobedient stars, and receives astronomical lessons from the angel Uriel. In 2 Enoch two enormous men with shining faces carry him through the heavens. In 3 Enoch he is transformed into the angel Metatron.
Enoch also appears in the New Testament. Hebrews 11:5 says he "was translated that he should not see death," and Jude 14–15 quotes a prophecy "Enoch also, the seventh from Adam" spoke, which is a close match to 1 Enoch 1:9. Islamic tradition often identifies him with the prophet Idris, whom the Quran says God "raised to a high place." Enoch is the Bible's clearest case of a human taken alive, and later writers filled the silence with journeys, secret books and transformation. Scholars note parallels with Enmeduranki, a Mesopotamian king before the Flood who was taught heavenly secrets by the gods.
A New Testament letter, Jude, quotes a prophecy from the Book of Enoch almost word for word, even though that book is not in most Bibles.
Most scholars see the biblical Enoch as partly modeled on Mesopotamian figures like the seventh antediluvian king Enmeduranki, and treat the Enoch books as later works written under his name.
