Who was Enoch in the Bible?

Enoch was the seventh patriarch from Adam, a righteous scribe and prophet who was taken directly into heaven without dying as a reward for his faithfulness. He stands out among the antediluvian figures as an intermediary who received visions of divine judgment and cosmic secrets, then transmitted heavenly knowledge to humanity while escaping ordinary mortality. His name means "dedicated" or "initiated" in Hebrew, and traditions credit him with inventing writing and astronomy while mastering the precise reckoning of time.

In the Book of the Watchers he is commissioned to pronounce judgment on the rebellious angels who consorted with human women, revealing the origins of evil and the binding of those beings until the final reckoning (1 Enoch 6). Jubilees portrays him as the first to learn writing and record the signs of heaven before his removal to the Garden of Eden, where he continues to write of judgment (Jubilees 4:17-23). The Book of Jasher expands on his sustained communion with the divine and his gradual withdrawal from a world growing in wickedness (Jasher 3).

Later sections of 1 Enoch present his heavenly journeys culminating in permanent dwelling among the holy ones (1 Enoch 70), while 2 Enoch describes angels carrying him, at age 365, through seven heavens to stand before the face of God, after which he writes 366 books and instructs his sons before his final ascent. Though the Book of Enoch is not part of most biblical canons, it was widely read in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity and survives complete in the Ethiopian tradition that still regards it as scripture.