Enoch in early Jewish and Christian reading

Says וַיִּתְהַלֵּךְ חֲנוֹךְ אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִים (wayyithallekh chanokh ’et-ha’elohim, “Enoch walked with God”), וְאֵינֶנּוּ כִּי־לָקַח אֹתוֹ אֱלֹהִים (we’enennu ki-laqach ’oto ’elohim; BSB “and then he was no more, because God had taken him away”) (Gen 5:24). “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he did not see death” (Heb 11:5), and Jude calls him “the seventh from Adam” (Jude 14).

The words Jude quotes (Jude 14–15) also stand in 1 Enoch 1:9, where the Lord comes with his holy ones to judge all and convict the ungodly. Ben Sira’s Hebrew calls Enoch “A miracle of knowledge to all generations”, where the Greek has “an example of repentance” (Sir 44:16), and says, “He also was taken up” (49:14). Jubilees makes him the first to learn writing and sets him in Eden, writing down the world’s judgment (Jub 4:17, 23). Josephus says he “departed and went to God; whence it is that they have not written down his death”. In the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan he is called “Metatron the Great Saphra” (5:24). Augustine keeps writings under Enoch’s name out of the canon, “not because the authority of these men who pleased God is rejected, but because they are not believed to be theirs”. These are their views; 1 Enoch is reported as reception, not authority.

Uncertain Whether Jude drew on the book or a shared tradition, and what Enoch’s taking involved beyond Gen 5:24 and Heb 11:5, are open. No lean is taken, and these readings do not fix the meaning of 5:21–24.