How to Study the Books of Enoch and Jasher

Scripture Notes now has all 3 books of Enoch, as well as the book of Jasher in them for your study pleasure. Why should you study them? Watch the video below where I have a conversation with David Hocking about them. You may recall that David did a webinar for us a while back on these books which was very insightful (link).

It should be of interest to you to recall the Lord told us in Doctrine & Covenants (D&C) 107:57 that:

“These things were all written in the book of Enoch, and are to be testified of in due time.”

It seems we have reached that time but largely haven’t recognized the opportunity to take advantage of it.

Is it OK to read non-canonical texts?

Of course it is. The Lord said as much about the Apocrypha in D&C 91. There is a lot of truth there and whoever has the Spirit with them while they read will benefit from it. These are ancient texts that have a lot of truth in them.

How-To

The “how-to” portion of this video is short. Essentially:

1) Prayerfully get the Holy Spirit with you.
2) Start reading and when you see something of interest (or feel prompted to), do a scripture search next to what you’re reading to see if there are parallels in the scriptures.
3) Record your questions, insights, and cross-references.
4) This is all easier with Scripture Notes as you’ll see in the video.

Check out one example below this video…

 

After sending out an email about this video and blog post, someone replied back that only the Bible is scripture, so I sent him an email explaining there is value in these other books even if they aren’t canon. You just need the Spirit with you to guide you and you can find truth.

There are many prophetic books mentioned in the scriptures we do have, that we don’t have access to.  For example in 1 Chronicles 29:29, it mentions a Book of Samuel the seer, Nathan the prophet, and Gad the seer. There are a total of 20 books mentioned in the Bible by name that we don’t have.

Another is in Jude 1:14 where Jude references Enoch’s writings.

I didn’t actually know if this verse was mentioned in the book of Enoch because I’m not familiar enough with it, so I started off doing a search for:

Lord +saints

I wasn’t sure if anything would come up, and nothing did. I wasn’t sure if that statement made it into the Enoch fragments we have.

Then I was reading the next verse, 15 and something prompted me to search for “ungodly.” That found the reference right in the first chapter of 1 Enoch, verse 9. Pretty cool.

Other Resources:

Get David Hocking’s book at: https://beaconlightbooks.com/shop/

Also check out Hugh Nibley’s book, Enoch the Prophet

Hugh Nibley also did a multi-part series of articles published in the Ensign magazines from 1975-77. Part 1 is here.

Legends of the Jews, Enoch the Prophet article