Small-Group Study & Discussion Guide

Was the Book of Enoch Banned from the Bible?

A four-session guide through the full episode — the Christmas thread, fear and faith, the Book of Enoch, and how we got the Bible.

This episode ranges wide — it opens with Christmas "deep cuts," turns to fear and faith, then tackles the two questions in the title: Was the Book of Enoch really removed from the Bible? and How was the Bible actually put together? This guide breaks the conversation into four sessions you can do in one long sitting or across four weeks. Each session has the big idea, a short recap, the passages to look up, discussion questions, and a way to live it out.

The Christmas Deep Cuts

The Scarlet Thread

▶ approx. 8:40 – 36:00

Before the big topics, the hosts trace what theologians call the scarlet thread — the slain lamb that runs from the first pages of Genesis all the way to the cross, and lands right in the manger. The claim: the Christmas story is packed with sacrificial-lamb imagery that no human author could have coordinated across 1,500 years.

Key points

• Healing in his wings. Malachi's last prophecy promises a Messiah with "healing in his wings." The Hebrew kanaf means both "wing" and the "fringe/edge" of a garment — so when the woman with the issue of blood reaches for the fringe of Jesus' robe, she's acting on Malachi's promise.
• Bethlehem = "house of bread" — fitting for the One who calls Himself the bread of life.
• Why shepherds? They were the lowest social rung (their testimony wasn't even valid in court). God announces the birth to the lowly — "the humble are in, the proud are out."
• The lamb, start to finish: the skins that cover Adam and Eve (Gen 3); the ram that spares Isaac (Gen 22); the Passover blood on the doorposts (Exod 12); the Day of Atonement lamb (Lev 16); the shepherds who raised the sacrificial lambs; Jesus laid in a manger like a newborn lamb; "Behold, the Lamb of God" (John 1:29); the Last Supper where every Passover element is named except the lamb — because the Lamb is at the table.
• The one cry. Jesus never cries out under torture, but does when darkness falls and He is forsaken (Mark 15:34) — the moment the temple curtain tears from top to bottom.

The Practical Heart of the Episode

Fear Not

▶ approx. 36:34 – 45:00

"Fear not" appears roughly 365 times in Scripture — and the hosts insist it's a command, not a suggestion. A Christian is meant to carry one controlling fear (the fear of God), which drives out the fear of everything else.

Key points

• Take every thought captive. Josh's picture: interrogate each thought like a border agent — "Who sent you, and what kingdom are you from?" Some thoughts you assume are yours (or even God's) originate in "the kingdom of darkness."
• Fear looks out; faith looks up. Fear listens to the world; faith listens to the Word.
• Order matters: facts → faith → feelings. Most people invert it — putting feelings first, then treating the feeling as the fact. Set your mind on what's true; let the feelings catch up (or not).
• Chesterton: Jesus promised His followers they'd be "completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble."

The Headline Question

Was the Book of Enoch Banned?

▶ approx. 45:19 – 70:00

Sparked by a viral Joe Rogan clip and a wave of listener comments, Paul Cunningham (the resident theologian) walks through what the Book of Enoch is, why it isn't in the Bible, and why the popular "they banned it" story doesn't hold up. The core line: you can't ban what was never in.

Key points

• What it is. A writing compiled roughly 300–100 BC, focused on angels and demons. It's pseudepigraphal — falsely attributed to Enoch (Noah's great-grandfather), not actually written by him.
• Never in, so never removed. Not in the Hebrew Bible, not in the Greek Septuagint, not in the Catholic Apocrypha. It's canonical in exactly one tradition — Ethiopian Orthodoxy — which is not the "oldest Bible" (the oldest complete Ethiopian Bible is medieval; the Vulgate and Codex Vaticanus are centuries older).
• Two reasons everyone else rejected it: (1) it's falsely attributed and too far removed from the events; (2) it contradicts Scripture (its timeline of the angelic "fall" doesn't line up with Genesis).
• "But Jude quotes it!" True — Jude 14–15 quotes 1 Enoch 1:9. The key distinction: inspired vs. true. Everything inspired is true, but something true isn't necessarily inspired — and quoting a true line doesn't make the whole source Scripture. (Paul does the same thing quoting a pagan poet in Acts 17 and Titus 1.)
• The Dead Sea Scrolls point. Yes, Qumran had Enoch alongside Isaiah — but they wrote authoritative commentary (Pesher) on Isaiah and the Torah, and not on Enoch. A book on the shelf isn't the same as a book counted as Scripture.

The Second Headline

How We Got the Bible

▶ approx. 70:27 – 96:00

The hosts react to a viral 15-million-view video that, in Josh's words, "takes every myth about the Bible's origins and throws them at you at once." They answer it claim by claim — a useful field guide, because you will hear these again.

The claims, and the responses

• "Jesus wasn't a Christian, He was a Jew." True but trivial. He came not to start a religion but to fulfill the Law and the Prophets (Matt 5:17) and establish a new covenant (Luke 22:20).
• "The Bible didn't exist when Jesus walked the earth." Of course not — the New Testament records His life and can't be written before it happens. Jesus had a Bible (the Old Testament) and foretold the New (John 16:13); Peter already calls Paul's letters "Scripture" (2 Pet 3:15–16).
• "Compiled centuries later by a pagan emperor (Constantine) for political reasons." False. The Council of Nicaea (325) left 20 rulings — none about which books are Scripture; it debated the deity of Christ. The canon was recognized, not invented — and the councils that affirmed it (Carthage, 397) had no emperor present.
• "Just flawed men wrote it — telephone game." The manuscript evidence is the opposite of a telephone game: ~6,000 ancient Greek New Testament copies, within a century of the events, agreeing to over 99.5% — with the variants openly footnoted and none touching doctrine.
• "The Old Testament God isn't the same as Jesus." That's the ancient heresy Marcionism. Both Testaments hold judgment and mercy; Jesus never rebuked the God of the Old Testament — He claimed to be Him ("before Abraham was, I am," John 8:58).
• "The point was never the pages, it was the person — follow Me." And how do you learn to follow the person? You read the pages. If the book can't be trusted, neither can the verse that says "follow me."

Wrapping Up

Two questions, one answer. The Book of Enoch was never "banned" because it was never in the Bible; the Bible wasn't invented by an emperor but recognized by the church over time — and both stories point the same direction: we can trust the book we've been given. The recurring caution across the whole episode is the same one, too: don't chase what's hidden and speculative at the expense of knowing the God who has actually revealed Himself.