The process of writing occupies a prominent role in 1 Enoch 1-36. This theme begins in the section dealing with the rebellion of the Watchers (1 Enoch 6-11) when God tells Raphael to write all Asael’s sin ‘on (or over) him’ in 10:8. This presumably involves Raphael writing an epitaph over Asael’s tomb or an indictment for use at the final judgment.⁵⁷ Although this is the first of a number of occasions when angels engage in writing, the main character to do so is Enoch himself, who is presented as a scribe.

Enoch had been translated to heaven before the secession of the Watchers from heaven and had spent his time with the Watchers and the holy ones (12:1-2). But after the Watchers descended to earth and created havoc there, the good angels sent him to earth to warn them that they would not receive forgiveness and would even witness the slaughter of their beloved sons (the Giants; 12:1-6). In some Ethiopic versions of 1 Enoch 12:3 (perhaps translating now lost Greek versions) Enoch says that the Watchers ‘called me, Enoch the scribe’. This was a self-designation by Enoch indicating that he regarded being a scribe as a fundamental aspect of his identity; it was how he categorised himself.⁵⁸ In the next verse the good angels directly addressed him in this way, saying, ‘Enoch, righteous scribe, go and say to the Watchers of heaven—who forsook the highest heaven …’. Yet their mission for Enoch did not involve his use of scribal skills. Instead, they commissioned him to deliver a message of condemnation that he would relay orally to the rebellious Watchers (12:4-13:2). This he did (13:3), his status as righteous presumably qualifying him to deliver such a message to those who self-evidently were not. The condemned Watchers asked Enoch to employ his scribal skills in writing a memorandum of petition for them seeking forgiveness and then reciting this petition before the Lord of heaven (13:4-5). Enoch wrote out this petition for them and then went off the waters of Dan, south of Mount Hermon, to recite it to God (13:6-7). Later, God himself called Enoch and said, ‘Fear not, Enoch, righteous man and scribe of truth’ (15:1). Various references to this petition in this section of the text consolidate the picture of Enoch as a scribe. Enoch’s scribal activity is not mentioned again until 1 Enoch 33, when Enoch sees the ends of the earth and the gates of heaven from which the stars come forth (vv. 2-3), clearly alluding to the opening verses of the Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72:1), and writes down what Uriel shows him (33:4). This statement legitimates the role of Enoch as the scribe who communicated astronomical knowledge to the Enochic scribes in the third century BC to the first century AD, that is, to those who claimed intellectual descent from him.

That Enoch is presented as a scribe in this text and in the other constituent parts of 1 Enoch, when the Hebrew Bible says nothing about him in such a role, means that some, if not all, of the other members of the scribal group who produced 1 Enoch over three or four centuries were also scribes. Why would the author of 1 Enoch 1-36 have designated a hero, a revealer of heavenly mysteries, from the past, as a scribe if that did not correspond to the self-designation of the members of his group? The presentation of Enoch as both a righteous scribe and someone with cosmographic and astronomical knowledge made him an exemplar for this group and the alleged source of their own writings on the righteous and the unrighteous, and on the nature, history and ultimate destiny of both humanity and the cosmos itself.