Why Not Enoch? Rediscovering a Lost Voice in the Biblical Story What if one of the most fascinating — and forgotten — voices of biblical history is still speaking?By Luis Gonzalez for The Last WireRecovering the Missing Frame of the Biblical StoryBrian Godawa did not begin his Chronicles of the Nephilim series with Enoch. He began with Noah. Only later did he return to Enoch, recognizing that something essential was missing. Noah’s obedience, survival, and covenant make sense only if the depth of corruption that preceded the Flood is understood. Enoch supplies that missing frame.
This is not an argument for expanding the biblical canon or elevating extra-biblical literature above Scripture. It is an argument about context. Ancient readers, Second Temple Jews, and early Christians did not treat Enoch as a curiosity. They treated it as a lens. Godawa’s decision to write Enoch as a prequel reflects that same instinct. Judgment without context feels arbitrary. Enoch restores moral and cosmic coherence.
The biblical text itself gestures in this direction.
Genesis 6 offers only a few cryptic verses about the “sons of God,” the Nephilim, and the corruption of the earth (Genesis 6:1–4). The New Testament briefly echoes Enochic language in
Jude 1:14–15. Godawa’s Enoch does not invent this world. It inhabits the silence Scripture leaves behind.
6 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
Before the Flood preserves life, a witness must explain why preservation is even necessary.
A World Already Beyond RepairThe world Enoch inhabits is not primitive or confused. It is advanced, organized, and confident. Knowledge accelerates. Power consolidates. Boundaries erode. In Godawa’s telling, the Watchers do not simply rebel. They teach. Humanity does not merely fall. It adopts.
This matters because it reframes corruption. Evil is not ignorance. It is sophistication without restraint. Violence becomes normalized. Exploitation becomes infrastructure. The earth is described as “corrupt” not because of isolated acts, but because the system itself has turned inward on appetite and dominance (Genesis 6:11–12).
Godawa draws heavily on ancient Jewish interpretations preserved in texts like 1 Enoch, where forbidden knowledge plays a central role in humanity’s collapse. Whether one treats these texts as theological commentary or mythic expansion, they reflect how ancient communities understood Genesis. Corruption was not accidental. It was taught.
A helpful academic overview of this interpretive tradition can be found in discussions of Second Temple literature and the Watchers tradition, such as those summarized in scholarly treatments of 1 Enoch and Genesis 6.
Witness as Moral ResistanceEnoch does not reform the world. He records it. His role is not intervention but testimony. This is crucial. Godawa presents Enoch as the last moment when truth is spoken plainly, before it must be enforced through judgment.
Enoch names crimes power would prefer to mythologize or forget. He speaks against beings who are stronger, older, and more entrenched than he is. His authority does not come from force, but from alignment with divine order.
This is memory before distortion. Once Enoch is removed, memory will no longer function as warning. It will eventually be reshaped into myth.
Corruption thrives when it no longer needs to explain itself.
Why Enoch Had to Be Written After NoahGodawa’s authorship order matters. He wrote Noah Primeval first. Only afterward did he realize that obedience without explanation risks being misunderstood. Without Enoch, the Flood can feel like divine overreaction. With Enoch, it appears restrained, even delayed.
This mirrors how ancient readers encountered these stories. Enoch was never meant to replace Genesis. It was meant to interpret it. Godawa’s prequel does the same work narratively. It answers the modern reader’s unspoken question: “Why was the Flood necessary at all?”
By restoring Enoch, Godawa reframes Noah not as the beginning of the story, but as its midpoint.
Connecting to Noah and BeyondEnoch explains why judgment came. He does not show what survives it.
That burden falls to Noah, whose obedience carries life and meaning through the Flood itself. And beyond Noah, the question becomes even more troubling. What happens when survival forgets why it was spared?
That question will surface later in the figure of Gilgamesh, where memory bends into myth and power replaces obedience.
