The Neighborhood Watch · Extracanonical Research
Why Are You Reading “Those Books?”
Most prophecy study stops at Daniel and Revelation. But 1 Enoch and Jubilees were considered authoritative by Jesus’ contemporaries. Here’s why they belong in your study toolkit.
Most modern Christians approach end-times prophecy with just Daniel and Revelation as their primary texts. But for the first three centuries of Christianity, two other documents were considered essential context: the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. These weren’t obscure curiosities. They were the background reading that the New Testament assumes you’ve already done.
I didn’t set out to read ancient Jewish manuscripts. I just like Russell Crowe and Bible movies.
So when I saw Noah come up in my movie list one day, I was thinking more of The Passion and less Marvel comics. I shut the movie off once the rock folks started walking around. Angry and motivated, I googled “Noah Russell Crowe” wanting to flame this obvious cash grab. It seemed like blasphemy to me — until I saw an earnest interview with Crowe talking about the account of Noah’s life as told from the Book of Enoch.
Wait… the book of what?
I’m kind of OCD when it comes to information. I want to know things. I need to know things. And when I can’t find a satisfying answer, I don’t move on — I dig deeper. I found a free ebook of the most reputable English translation. It was all going along pretty normally until the Nephilim came along — oh, and Noah has really white hair. This seemed insane.
But as I researched the Dead Sea Scrolls, I found enough evidence to realize that these writings may seem really out there — but ahem, parting the Red Sea with a stick doesn’t seem all that normal either. Just saying.
So I read more and tried to disprove more — but honestly, I could not. Then I wanted to know why we didn’t get these books that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church studies. I was hoping I would not find out that the Roman Catholic Church removed them because of Jubilees and the Sabbath thing. But yeah, that’s pretty much what I found out.
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end.
What if some of that sealed understanding was preserved in texts we’ve forgotten?
Now let me be straight about something. I don’t have a seminary degree. I’m not a theologian. I don’t have a great understanding of prophecy — that’s why I’m reading this stuff. But I do have 30 years in technology, I read ferociously, and I’m now applying those research skills and AI tools to uncover what’s actually true. Not from anyone else’s word. From the sources themselves.
I don’t care if what I find is weird or uncomfortable or makes people think I’m a lunatic. I want to know what history says, what science says, and what scripture says. And if it’s out there — I want to know why.
And what history actually says about these books might surprise you.
During the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE), 1 Enoch and Jubilees weren’t obscure manuscripts hidden in caves. They were widely read, quoted, and considered authoritative by Jewish communities. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain more copies of 1 Enoch than most biblical books, and fragments of Jubilees appear throughout Qumran. Josephus references Enochic traditions. The Talmud acknowledges these texts, even while later rabbis distanced themselves from them.
This wasn’t fringe literature — it was very likely the theological context in which Jesus and the apostles were raised.
Let that sit for a second. The books most Christians have never heard of were bestsellers in the world Jesus grew up in.
Dead Sea Scrolls — What Was Found
"Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
This quote is verbatim from 1 Enoch — a book not in your Bible — cited as prophecy by a book that is.
Jude 14–15 directly quotes 1 Enoch 1:9, calling Enoch a prophet and treating his words as authoritative. That’s not a footnote — Jude, a book in your Bible right now, quotes a book that isn’t in your Bible. If that doesn’t make you at least curious, I don’t know what to tell you.
Peter’s references to angels who sinned (2 Peter 2:4) align directly with Enochic accounts of the Watchers. The binding imagery in Revelation 20:1–3 echoes Enoch. Matthew 22:30’s marriage concepts connect to Jubilees.
Clement of Alexandria called 1 Enoch scripture. Tertullian defended its authenticity. Irenaeus used Enochic chronology. And the Ethiopian Orthodox Church — one of the oldest continuous Christian traditions on earth — never removed these texts at all.
The question isn’t why anyone is reading 1 Enoch and Jubilees. The question is why everyone stopped.
New Testament References
Church Fathers & Tradition
I grew up Seventh-day Adventist. And look — I have my issues with that church, and I’m not here to get into them. But one thing the Adventist tradition got right, whether they followed through or not, is the idea that you should study for yourself. Don’t take the pastor’s word for it. Don’t take the denomination’s word for it. Open the book and read.
That’s all I’m doing here. Except now I’m reading the books nobody told me about.
During the 3rd and 4th centuries, as Christianity became institutionalized, the biblical Seventh-day Sabbath had been replaced by Constantine, making Jubilees very inconvenient. Church fathers like Jerome and Augustine began questioning texts outside the Hebrew canon. The Council of Laodicea (363 CE) formalized exclusions. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church never removed these books, preserving complete manuscripts that allowed modern scholars to understand what was lost.
Why They Were Removed — 3rd & 4th Century
The Suppression Timeline
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church — one of the oldest continuous Christian traditions — never removed them. 1 Enoch remains in their canon today.
Think about that list for a minute. Greek philosophy. Anti-Jewish sentiment. Imperial politics. Theological control. Notice what’s not on the list? “Because they were wrong.” Nobody removed these books because the content was disproven. They removed them because the content was inconvenient.
While Daniel and Revelation provide powerful prophetic frameworks, they leave critical questions unanswered that Enoch and Jubilees address directly.
How do we understand the calendar systems that drive prophetic timing? What’s the origin and nature of demons? Why do judgment patterns distinguish between the sealed and unsealed? How do we interpret “as in the days of Noah”?
These texts provide systematic answers that make biblical prophecy clearer, not more confusing.
What These Texts Answer
Now I know what you’re thinking. Nephilim? Disembodied spirits? Calendar math? This sounds like late-night History Channel territory.
Fair enough. But consider this — you already believe a donkey talked, a man lived inside a fish for three days, and the Red Sea split down the middle. At some point you made a decision that the weird stuff in the Bible was true because the source was credible. All I’m asking is whether we prematurely cut some credible sources out of the conversation.
Look, I’m not trying to rewrite the Bible. But I’d like to understand why somebody else did.
I am in no way proposing adding to Scripture or elevating these texts to biblical authority. But I want to understand the historical and theological context that shaped how the biblical authors thought about prophecy. When we study the end times with only Daniel and Revelation, it’s like trying to reconstruct a culture with half the artifacts.
These texts don’t contradict Scripture — they illuminate it.
The non-negotiable principle: Scripture is the plumb line. Nothing in these texts should contradict the biblical canon — they should illuminate it, not replace it. The same institutional pressures that led to Sunday worship also influenced which books survived in our canon. That doesn’t invalidate Scripture’s authority, but it does suggest we should understand the historical context of how our Bibles were assembled.
I question everything. I was raised to question everything, and I got in trouble for it more times than I can count. So when someone hands me a book and says “this is everything you need,” my first question is: who decided that? My second question is: what did they leave out? And my third question is: why?
Read with prayer and discernment. Use good study tools. Discuss with mature believers. Let Scripture interpret these texts, never the reverse.
The goal isn’t to rebuild the canon, but to reclaim the context. When we read these texts as the historical background they are — the theological air that first-century Jews breathed — biblical prophecy becomes clearer, not cloudier.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church preserved 1 Enoch and Jubilees for good reason. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed their antiquity. The New Testament writers quoted them without apology.
The real question was never whether these texts deserved a place in your study. It was whether you’d been told they existed.
Now you have. What are you going to do with that?
The Neighborhood Watch · Watch. Observe. Protect. · I Am.
References & Further Reading
Scripture
- Jude 1:14–15 (KJV) — Direct quotation of 1 Enoch, calling Enoch a prophet
- 2 Peter 2:4 (KJV) — Angels that sinned, cast into chains of darkness
- Genesis 6:1–4 (KJV) — Sons of God and daughters of men
Primary Sources
- The Book of Enoch — R.H. Charles translation, Sacred Texts Archive
- Dead Sea Scrolls — Britannica — Discovery, contents, and significance for Second Temple Judaism
- Book of Jubilees — Britannica — Overview and canonical history
