Enoch and the Watchers

Genesis gives the sons of God four verses. The Book of Enoch gives them a rebellion, a list of names and a trial. The Watchers angels came down and taught what they had no right to teach. They left the world with knowledge it had not earned, and everything in this archive follows from that descent.

Start with who the Watchers were and with Azazel, the one blamed for metalwork, cosmetics and war. The angelic hierarchies in these texts hold far more ranks than the canonical ones. The connection between Enoch and the Nephilim is where the giants enter the story. A general reading of the book shows how its five sections fit together.

Enoch himself does not stay human. His transformation into Metatron is one of the strangest passages in Jewish literature. Stranger still are the visionary sections. The Animal Apocalypse retells the history of Israel with livestock. Enoch’s ten weeks divide time into fixed periods, and the Similitudes introduce a Son of Man before the gospels do. The 364-day calendar explains why Qumran kept different feasts from Jerusalem.

The Books of Enoch: Master Collection gathers all three books of Enoch, translated and annotated.