Book excerpt: Though widely read by early Christians, the book of Enoch was banned by the church in the fourth century and considered lost for 1,600 years. A mention of it in the New Testament led 19th-century scholars to a manuscript of the Enoch story in Hebrew and Aramaic verse, and a theological study of the manuscript in English followed in 1912. Yet it too eventually disappeared from public view. This edition of the lost biblical book is re-written in contemporary English and recounts the apocalyptic vision revealed to Enoch, the father of Methuselah, when he was taken to heaven by archangels who showed him the future of mankind as he looked down upon the world.