The Book of Enoch is any of several pseudepigraphal works that attribute themselves to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah; that is, Enoch son of Jared (Genesis 5:18). Enoch is also one of the three people in the Bible taken up to heaven while still alive (the only others being Elijah and Jesus), as the Bible says "And Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for God took him." (Genesis 5:24; see also Hebrews 11:5).

Most commonly, the phrase "Book of Enoch" refers to 1 Enoch, which is wholly extant only in the Ethiopic language. There are two other books named "Enoch": 2 Enoch (surviving only in Old Slavonic, c. first century; Eng. trans. by R. H. Charles (1896) ); and 3 Enoch (surviving in Hebrew, c. fifth-sixth century). The numbering of these texts has been applied by scholars to distinguish the texts from one another. The remainder of this article deals with 1 Enoch only.

Whilst this book does not form part of the Canon of Scripture for the larger Christian Churches, various groups, including the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, regard parts or all of 1 Enoch to be inspired Scripture. The currently known texts of this work are usually dated to Maccabean times (ca. 160s BC). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch)