The Book of Enoch

The Book of Enoch by Efren Gamboa is a verse-by-verse commentary on the self-titled book by a man known as Enoch found in the book of Genesis in the Bible. In Gamboa’s commentary, he reports that his purpose in interpreting this historical book is to show it as holy among all the peoples, bring back its status of holiness along with the existing books of the Christian Bible, and show its relevance to our lives today.

Chapter by chapter, Gamboa explains to his readers what is being said in Enoch, because according to the author, who claims that according to Noah, you need a key or special code to decode this book due to its many prophecies and relevancy to our lives.

The first chapter sets the scene for the book and the style of the author’s interpretations. Fallen angels, outer space, aliens, space ships/flying saucers, advancement in science, DNA, and how to interpret the identity of the one, true God are some of the topics relevant to The Book of Enoch. Gamboa’s interpretations pull from the beginning with creation to more current happenings, such as World War II and the killing of Jews.

The Book of Enoch discusses seventy chapters, some with simple language, while others include scientific terminology and figures to prove cycles of the moon and the true calendar that should never have been abandoned. Gamboa has created and shared a recreation of the Calendar of Creation/Enoch’s Calendar based on the information given to him by El (God) directly, which is color-coded and over one hundred pages long.

It seems that Gamboa fully believes what he has written, but as a Christian, I couldn’t take anything he said as anything other than an enjoyable, imaginative science fiction story and a good chuckle. Personal feelings aside, his interpretations don’t always coincide with the direct text from Enoch, and it appears that he adds more than is in the text.

The first chapter is an example of this: the Watchers are mentioned by name in the text, but in his interpretation, he explains who the unnamed Watchers are and many more “facts” about them not found in the text. The same occurs when he interprets Enoch’s rising up into heaven as him in a space ship going into space, except there is nothing to point toward that being a fact in the text.

There are many grammatical and spelling errors throughout the book, and it doesn’t read fluidly due to the overabundance of commas and semicolons. To me, The Book of Enoch reads as having nothing real, let alone holy, about it… ESPECIALLY when Gamboa claims that Jesus is the prince of demons…