St. Jude makes reference to 2 apocryphal writings in his epistle, The Assumption of Moses and the Book of Enoch. There are many questions that arise from this, such as whether those books should have been in the canon of Scripture, or if Jude made a mistake, etc. There have been many explanations about it, and I have a little theory of my own.


First of all I believe that the epistle of Jude is inspired by God and without error. I don’t believe Jude made any mistakes whatsoever, and at the same time I don’t believe that the Assumption of Moses nor the book of Enoch is inspired nor should they have been put into the canon of Scripture.


Those books are apocryphal. But I have found that with many apocryphal writings there are lots of truth intermingled with pious legends. Oftentimes there were well meaning people of God who had knowledge of oral traditions that had been handed down through generations and they have taken it upon themselves to write them down to preserve them, and in the process of writing them down they would record many true things imperfectly, sometimes exaggerating some of the details.


Regardless of who the authors were and how many exaggerated details are in the Assumption of Moses and the book of Enoch, Jude’s use of these traditions reveals to us that there is a level of truth and value in them. And we can also believe that those portions that Jude cites and makes reference is true because Jude was lead by the Holy Spirit to use it.


As for the question of Jude giving credit to Enoch himself as the one who prophesied, this should not be troubling at all. Who is the say that Enoch did not make that prophecy. Maybe Enoch did prophecy, and his prophecy was preserved but not perfectly, at least not exactly the way that it exists now in the book of Enoch. Maybe the book of Enoch has carried some oral tradition from Enoch himself but through time has been mixed with pious legend, as other apocryphal writings do. And let us assume that Jude was guided by the Holy Spirit to quote the part that actually came from Enoch himself.