What the Early Church Fathers Actually Said About 1 Enoch

Part 3 of 10 — Deuterocanonical Studies Series

What the Early Church Fathers Actually Said About 1 Enoch

Most people who have an opinion about the Book of Enoch have never read what the earliest Christians actually wrote about it. We hear confident claims—“it was never considered Scripture” or “the early church rejected it”—but when we went to the Ante-Nicene Fathers and read the primary sources, we found something more complicated and far more interesting.

In Part 2 of this series, we examined Jude 14–15 and its direct quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9. That quotation is in the New Testament itself. But what happened next? Did the Christians who came after the apostles treat 1 Enoch as authoritative? Did they quote it? Did they call it Scripture?

We went through the Ante-Nicene writings—the Christian literature from before the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD—and gathered every significant reference we could find. Here is what the earliest Christians actually said, in their own words.

The Epistle of Barnabas (Late 1st / Early 2nd Century)

The Epistle of Barnabas is one of the earliest Christian documents we possess outside the New Testament. It was so widely respected in the early church that it appears in Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete New Testament manuscript, placed right alongside the canonical books. Whatever we think of its authority today, the early church clearly valued it highly.

In Chapter 4, verse 3, Barnabas introduces a passage from 1 Enoch with a formula that should stop us in our tracks:

“For the Scripture says: ‘And for this end the Lord has cut short the times and the days, that His Beloved may hasten His coming to His inheritance.’”

— Epistle of Barnabas 4:3, quoting 1 Enoch 89:56, 61–64

The Greek phrase Barnabas uses here is he graphe legei—“the Scripture says.” This is the same introductory formula that New Testament authors use when quoting Genesis, Isaiah, the Psalms, or any other book of the Old Testament. Barnabas does not say “an interesting book claims” or “an ancient tradition holds.” He says the Scripture says.

Barnabas references Enoch again in Chapter 16:5, drawing on its prophetic material. For this author—writing within living memory of the apostles—1 Enoch was Scripture in the functional sense of the word: a text you quote with the same authority as the Hebrew Bible.

Tertullian (c. 160–220 AD)

Tertullian of Carthage is the most explicit defender of 1 Enoch in the early church. In his treatise On the Apparel of Women, Book I, Chapter 3, he not only quotes Enoch but anticipates and answers the objections against it. The passage is worth reading in full:

“I am aware that the Scripture of Enoch, which has assigned this order of action to angels, is not received by some, because it is not admitted into the Jewish canon either. I suppose they did not think that, having been published before the deluge, it could have safely survived that world-wide calamity…

“But since Enoch in the same Scripture has preached likewise concerning the Lord, nothing at all must be rejected by us which pertains to us… By the Jews it may now seem to have been rejected for that very reason…

“To these considerations is added the fact that Enoch possesses a testimony in the Apostle Jude.”

— Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, Book I, Chapter 3

Notice what Tertullian does here. He calls 1 Enoch scriptura—Scripture. He acknowledges that some reject it. And then he gives three arguments for its authority: first, that its survival through the flood is no more miraculous than other acts of divine preservation; second, that its content about the Lord pertains to Christians and therefore should not be dismissed; and third, that the Apostle Jude’s quotation of it functions as apostolic endorsement.

Tertullian also makes an argument we rarely hear discussed: he suggests that the Jews may have rejected Enoch precisely because it contains material about Christ. Whether or not we find that argument persuasive, it tells us that in the early third century, a major Christian theologian considered 1 Enoch to be genuine Scripture and was willing to argue the case in writing.

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215 AD)

Clement of Alexandria, the head of the most important Christian school of his era, engaged with 1 Enoch as authoritative prophetic material. In his Eclogae Propheticae (Prophetic Extracts), section 2.1, Clement references 1 Enoch’s account of the fallen angels who taught humanity forbidden knowledge—the arts of war, cosmetics, astrology, and sorcery.

In his major work Stromata (Miscellanies), Book V, Clement draws on the Watchers tradition from Enoch when discussing the origin of certain forms of knowledge. He does not introduce this material with disclaimers or apologies. He treats it as authoritative historical and prophetic material—part of the broader stream of divine revelation that Christians had inherited.

Clement was no fringe figure. He was the teacher of Origen, the intellectual center of Alexandrian Christianity, and one of the most learned men in the early church. He read widely in both Jewish and Greek literature, and he was careful about what he considered reliable. His casual use of Enoch as a trusted source tells us that in late second-century Alexandria, 1 Enoch circulated comfortably among the texts that serious Christians read and cited. It was not hidden or controversial. It was part of the library.

Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130–202 AD)

Irenaeus carries a special weight in any discussion of early Christian tradition. He was a student of Polycarp of Smyrna, who was himself a student of the Apostle John. When Irenaeus tells us what the earliest Christians believed, he is drawing on a chain of transmission that goes back to the apostles themselves.

In Against Heresies , Book IV, Chapter 36.4, Irenaeus references the fallen angel tradition that is rooted in 1 Enoch’s Watcher narrative—angels who descended to earth, took human wives, and taught forbidden arts. He also addresses this theme in his Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching , Chapter 18, where he describes the angels who taught humanity “the virtues of roots and herbs, dyeing in colors and cosmetics… and all sorcery.”

Irenaeus engages with this tradition as part of the received understanding of angelic rebellion and its consequences.

What makes this significant is not just what Irenaeus says, but who he represents. If Polycarp passed down the apostolic teaching, and Irenaeus faithfully transmitted what Polycarp taught, then the Enochic tradition was part of the air that the earliest post-apostolic Christians breathed. It was not a novelty. It was part of the inherited worldview.

Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133–190 AD)

Athenagoras was an Athenian philosopher who converted to Christianity and became one of its most articulate defenders. In his A Plea for the Christians, addressed to Emperor Marcus Aurelius around 177 AD, Chapter 24 contains a description of the fallen angels that reads like a summary of 1 Enoch:

These angels, then, who fell from heaven and haunt the air and the earth, and are no longer able to rise to heavenly things, and the souls of the giants, which are the demons who wander about the world, perform actions similar… the angels who fell into impure love of virgins… were captivated by the love of women.

— Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, Chapter 24

Athenagoras presents the Watcher narrative—angels falling through lust, producing giant offspring whose disembodied spirits become demons—not as one theory among many, but as the Christian account of the origin of demonic activity. This is 1 Enoch’s cosmology, presented to the Roman Emperor as straightforward Christian teaching.

Justin Martyr (c. 100–165 AD)

Justin Martyr, one of the earliest and most important Christian apologists, writes in his Second Apology, Chapter 5, about the fallen angels in language drawn directly from the Enochic tradition:

God… committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom He appointed over them. But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by the love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons.

— Justin Martyr, Second Apology, Chapter 5

Justin is writing in the mid-second century—barely a generation after the last apostle. He presents the Enochic Watcher narrative as established Christian fact: angels were given stewardship, they fell through lust for women, and their offspring became the demons. This is not presented as Justin’s private opinion. It is presented as what Christians believe—the kind of thing you explain to an emperor when you are trying to make Christianity intelligible to an outsider.

Justin clearly expected his audience to find this account coherent, not controversial.

Origen (c. 184–253 AD)

Origen of Alexandria, arguably the most prolific scholar of the early church, engages with the Book of Enoch in several works. In De Principiis (On First Principles), Book I, Chapter 3.3 and Book IV, section 35, he references Enochic material. In Against Celsus, Book V, chapters 54–55, he engages more directly with the text.

Origen’s relationship with 1 Enoch is nuanced. He draws on it, cites it, and finds value in it, but he also expresses reservations about its canonical status. This ambivalence is itself revealing: by the mid-third century, 1 Enoch was still in active circulation, still being discussed and debated, still considered valuable enough that the greatest scholar of the era thought it worth engaging with seriously—even if he was not prepared to put it on the same level as Isaiah or the Psalms.

Origen represents the beginning of a shift. The early, unreserved acceptance we see in Barnabas, Tertullian, and Justin is starting to give way to a more cautious posture. But even Origen does not reject it outright. He continues to engage with it as a text that carries real weight, even if he is uncertain about its precise status. If the greatest scholar of the third century could not simply dismiss 1 Enoch, that tells us something about how deeply embedded it was in the Christian intellectual tradition.

When Did Acceptance Decline?

The turning point came in the fourth and fifth centuries. Augustine of Hippo and Jerome, two of the most influential Latin fathers, generally did not accept 1 Enoch as Scripture. By the time of the major fourth-century councils that shaped the biblical canon as we know it, 1 Enoch was excluded from most canonical lists in both the Eastern and Western churches.

But there is a significant exception. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church never dropped 1 Enoch. It remains part of their biblical canon to this day—a continuous tradition stretching back to the earliest centuries of Christianity. When we say “the church rejected Enoch,” we mean that some branches of the church, in some regions, during a specific period, moved away from it. The Ethiopian tradition preserved what others set aside.

The reasons for the decline are complex. The growing influence of Jerome’s Hebraica Veritas —the principle that the Hebrew text of the Old Testament should be the standard—worked against books that survived primarily in Greek or Ethiopic. No Hebrew text of 1 Enoch was known at the time (the Aramaic originals were lost until Qumran), and that absence counted heavily against it in Jerome’s framework.

The consolidation of the canon in the fourth century naturally required drawing boundaries, and books that sat on the margins were vulnerable. And some of the elaborate angelology in 1 Enoch may have made later church leaders uncomfortable as theology became more systematized and less tolerant of speculative cosmology.

It is worth pausing on the timeline. For roughly the first two hundred and fifty years of Christianity, 1 Enoch was quoted, cited, and defended by writers across the entire geographic range of the church. The shift toward exclusion was a fourth-century development, driven by specific theological and textual priorities. Neither position—acceptance or rejection—is the “original” Christian view by default. Both have deep historical roots.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Twentieth-Century Confirmation

In 1947, a discovery in the caves near Qumran changed the conversation permanently. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeologists found eleven fragmentary copies of 1 Enoch—written in Aramaic, dating from the third century BC to the first century AD.

To put that in perspective: more copies of 1 Enoch were found at Qumran than copies of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, or several other books that sit comfortably in every Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Bible. The community at Qumran—devout Jews living in the centuries immediately before and during the time of Jesus—considered 1 Enoch important enough to copy again and again.

The Qumran evidence does not tell us whether 1 Enoch is “inspired” in the theological sense. But it demolishes the claim that 1 Enoch was an obscure or marginal text. It was widely read and deeply valued in precisely the world that gave birth to both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. When the Apostle Jude quoted Enoch, and when Barnabas called it Scripture, they were not reaching for some exotic curiosity. They were drawing on a text that their readers would have recognized.

What Do We Make of All This?

We are not arguing that 1 Enoch should be added to your Bible. That is a question for communities of faith to work out in light of their own traditions. What we are saying is that the historical record is clear on several points:

• The earliest post-apostolic Christians, writing within living memory of the apostles, quoted 1 Enoch as Scripture and treated its content as authoritative.
• Major theologians from every region of the early church—North Africa, Alexandria, Asia Minor, Athens, Rome—drew on the Enochic tradition as part of established Christian teaching.
• The decline of 1 Enoch’s status was gradual, not sudden, and was never universal. It was accepted longer than most people realize and is still accepted by one of the oldest Christian communities on earth.
• The Dead Sea Scrolls proved that 1 Enoch was among the most widely copied texts in Second Temple Judaism—the very world from which Christianity emerged.

The story of 1 Enoch in the early church is not a simple story of acceptance or rejection. It is a story of a text that shaped how the earliest Christians understood angels, demons, judgment, and the coming of the Son of Man—and then gradually receded from view as the canon solidified. Whether we think that recession was right or wrong, we owe it to ourselves to know what actually happened. And the only way to know is to go back to the sources.

If you want to read the text that provoked all of this debate, you can read 1 Enoch here. If you want to trace the connections between Enoch and the Bible, start with Part 1 of this series. And if you want to see which Bibles actually include it, that is covered in Part 5.

You can read many of these church fathers in their own words in our Ante-Nicene Fathers library. You can also explore the Early Christian Writings hub and the Church Fathers Commentary for more primary sources from the first three centuries of Christianity.