Question
What is the Book of Enoch?
Answer
The Book of Enoch bears the name of the Patriarch Enoch, great-grandfather of Noah, and consists of discourses on apocalyptic and cosmological subjects. Two such books are extant; both of them can be dated to Second Temple times. Both were probably originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, but were translated into Greek, and then into Ethiopic and Slavonic, respectively. For more details about the aggadic and apocryphal literature on Enoch, and about the two Books of Enoch, see Vol. 6 of the Encyclopedia Judaica, cols. 793-799.