Open your New Testament to Jude 1:14. The apostle Jude, writing as scripture, quotes a prophecy directly from “Enoch, the seventh from Adam.” He cites it with the same authority as any Old Testament reference elsewhere in his letter.
Now flip to your table of contents and look for the Book of Enoch. In most Bibles, you won’t find it.
This gap has been discussed by biblical scholars for generations. The Book of Enoch circulated widely in Jewish and early Christian communities before and during the time of Jesus. Fragments of it later turned up among the Dead Sea Scrolls, confirming it was read and copied centuries before the New Testament was written. Jude’s original audience likely knew the text well enough that he didn’t need to explain what he was quoting.
Even so, Enoch never made it into the Protestant or Catholic canon. Historians point to several factors: disputes over authorship, canon lists that shifted across regional councils, and translation decisions made centuries apart, from the early church through the 1611 King James printing and later editions.
One tradition kept it. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has maintained an 88-book biblical canon since antiquity, including Enoch and Jubilees alongside the 66 books familiar to most Western readers. It’s the same expanded canon reflected in what was found at Qumran.
You don’t have to settle every canon debate to find this worth sitting with. A verse you already treat as scripture is quoting a book almost no one reading it has ever opened.
The Complete Ethiopian Bible brings all 88 books, Enoch included, into English in one edition alongside the 66 you already know. Jude thought it was worth quoting. Read it for yourself here.