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Thank you so much for your post!

Indeed, there is only one way Enoch could be authentic and that would be if it were originally written by Enoch who was the uncontested grandfather of Noah. The language of such writings in 3300 B.C. may be lost to us or may simply remain undiscovered. Perhaps we will find a Rosetta stone in Iraq.

The scholars always take the scientific materialism approach to ancient manuscripts. Which is to say that they do not consider prophesy real. Hence the statement in the above Meridian article:

One rule of dating used by modern scholars, is that if anything is prophesied which turns out to be correct, it must have been written after the event, because otherwise the author would really have to have been a prophet! This complete rejection of the entire concept of revelation forced Laurence to put the authorship of the Book of Enoch extremely late because he saw that it prophesied not only the existence of Parthia (250 B.C.), but even the reign of King Herod the Great, which began in 37 B.C.

By the way, Enoch also prophesied about The Elect One (Jesus Christ) and thus using that rule of thumb would have to have been written in the first century A.D.

Since we know that the Enochs at Qumran are copies, and they carbon-date as far back as 186 B.C. - and there exist no older copies from which to work --- the next logical step in further determining whether 1 Enoch could be authentic is to look at the text.

Most of Enoch is like Revelation, speaking in parables and metaphors of future events and supernatural worlds. But Enoch is unique in that it does have the book of astronomy which may allow us to surmise for our own satisfaction whether the author had knowledge which he could not have possessed even at 200 B.C. by any means other than Spiritual revelation.

For Lurkers:

In reading the book of astronomy, I noted several passages which indicated such knowledge and thus I am looking for any other possible explanation:

1. That the light of the moon is a reflection from the sun.

2. That the sun and the moon both orbit.

3. That the sun and the moon generate energy.

4. That the sun shines even when it is not seen.

5. That stars come into existence and die by becoming lightening (supernovae).

6. That the end (or beginning?) of all the heavens is a pit of no measure and no content. (singularity?)

The bottom line is whether all of the above could have been known in 200 B.C.