The Strange Visions of Enoch

Occupying a sometimes arcane world, the Pseudepigrapha are that collection of scripture-like books usually attributed to such ancients as Adam, Moses or the patriarchs, but actually composed, for the most part, between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D. The accompanying article (“Don’t Let Pseudepigrapha Scare You”) provides general background about the Pseudepigrapha.

In this article, I would like to focus on a single book of the Pseudepigrapha, the Book of Enoch. Perhaps the best known work of the collection, Enoch is attributed—falsely, of course—to the sixth descendant of Adam (Genesis 5:1–24; 1 Chronicles 1:3).^a Enoch was the father of Methuselah, who, as everyone knows, lived 969 years. Enoch, however, lived only 365 years, the number of days in the solar year.