Prophet Idris (Enoch)

Anyone asking who was Prophet Idris (Enoch) must begin with two short scriptural notices rather than with archives or inscriptions. The Quran names Idris twice. Surah Maryam calls him a man of truth and a prophet, and states that God raised him to a lofty place ^[1]. Surah al-Anbiya lists him beside Ishmael and Dhu al-Kifl among the patient, whom God admitted into His mercy ^[1].

The Hebrew Bible offers a similarly compact account of Enoch, son of Jared and father of Methuselah, seventh in the line from Adam. Genesis records that he lived 365 years, that he walked with God, and that he was no more, because God took him ^[2]. The unusual phrasing, so different from the death notices given for the other patriarchs in the same chapter, invited readers from antiquity onward to conclude that Enoch never died in the ordinary way ^[3].

Neither text supplies a birthplace, a datable era, or biographical detail in the modern sense. Scholars therefore treat Idris and Enoch as figures of sacred memory whose significance lies in what generations of believers understood them to represent: uprightness rewarded with an extraordinary nearness to God ^[2][4].

The Quran does not state that Idris is Enoch, and the origin of the name Idris has been debated for centuries. Classical Muslim commentators, including al-Tabari and later Ibn Kathir, placed Idris in the generations between Adam and Noah and identified him with the biblical patriarch, noting that the Genesis genealogy puts Enoch exactly there ^[4][5]. The Arabic root of the name suggests study or instruction, which fit neatly with the traditions portraying him as a teacher ^[4].

Some modern researchers have questioned the equation. Entries in the Encyclopaedia of Islam survey alternative proposals, among them links to Ezra, to the Greek figure Andreas from the Alexander romance, and to Hermes Trismegistus, the sage of Hellenistic Egypt ^[4]. Medieval Muslim writers themselves often merged Idris with Hermes, calling him the first to write with the pen and the founder of the sciences of the stars ^[4][6].

Whatever the philological verdict, the identification with Enoch became the mainstream view in Islamic tradition. It allowed exegetes to read the Quranic phrase about Idris being raised to a high place alongside the Genesis statement that God took Enoch, treating the two as descriptions of a single event ^[1][5].

Between roughly the third century BCE and the first century CE, Jewish writers produced an entire library around Enoch. The longest work, known today as 1 Enoch, survives complete only in Ge'ez, the classical language of Ethiopia, and portions of its Aramaic original were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran ^[3]. In these texts Enoch tours the heavens, receives calendrical and astronomical knowledge, and intercedes concerning the rebellious angels whose story expands on Genesis chapter 6 ^[3][7].

George Nickelsburg's commentary and James VanderKam's studies show how these books cast Enoch as the ideal scribe: a righteous man granted visions, tasked with recording divine judgments, and associated with a solar calendar of 364 days ^[3][7]. His biblical lifespan of 365 years, matching the days of the solar year, reinforced his connection with the ordering of time ^[2][7].

The Epistle of Jude in the New Testament quotes a prophecy attributed to Enoch, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church still counts 1 Enoch among its canonical scriptures ^[3]. A separate work, 2 Enoch, preserved in Old Church Slavonic, describes his ascent through multiple heavens, while the later Hebrew 3 Enoch transforms him into the exalted angel Metatron ^[8]. This literary afterlife, unmatched by almost any other figure from Genesis, explains why Enoch loomed so large when Muslim scholars encountered his name ^[4][8].

Islamic tradition filled the Quran's silence with an appealing portrait of a civilizing prophet. Ibn Kathir's collection of prophetic narratives reports the widespread view that Idris was the first human to write with a pen, and that he was born while Adam still lived ^[5]. Later compilations credit him with knowledge of astronomy and arithmetic and with instituting weights and measures ^[4][5].

One detail proved especially durable in Muslim cultures: Idris as the first tailor. Craft guilds in the Ottoman world and elsewhere adopted him as the patron of tailors and scribes, and the tradition that he sewed garments while earlier generations wore skins circulated in popular literature for centuries ^[4][6]. These attributions cannot be verified historically, and classical scholars themselves transmitted them as reports rather than as revelation, but they reveal how communities imagined the beginnings of ordered, literate life ^[4].

The merger with Hermes gave this portrait a philosophical dimension. Writers in the Islamic world described a threefold Hermes, the first of whom lived before the Flood, built temples, and taught the sciences; this antediluvian Hermes was routinely equated with Idris and Enoch ^[6]. Through that channel the prophet entered works of alchemy, astrology, and philosophy, cited as the fountainhead of ancient wisdom ^[6].

The most discussed of all Prophet Idris (Enoch) facts is his departure from the world. The Quranic statement that God raised him to a lofty place received several readings. Many commentators understood a bodily ascent, reporting traditions that Idris was lifted to the fourth heaven, where, in the famous narrative of the Prophet Muhammad's night journey, the Prophet, peace be upon him, greeted him ^[1][5]. Others took the raising as a metaphor for exalted rank and honor rather than physical elevation ^[4].

Jewish and Christian interpreters faced the same question about Genesis. The Epistle to the Hebrews states plainly that Enoch was taken so that he did not see death ^[2]. Rabbinic opinion was divided: some sages praised Enoch's translation, while others, wary of speculation, insisted the verse meant an early death ^[8]. The Slavonic and Hebrew Enoch books chose the boldest option, describing his transformation into a heavenly being ^[8].

Across all three traditions, the shared conviction was that an unusually righteous life had ended in an unusual way. Muslim theologians were generally careful to note that the details rest on transmitted reports of varying strength, and that the Quran itself affirms only his truthfulness, his prophethood, his patience, and his elevation ^[1][4].

Few figures with so little scriptural text attached to them have shaped so much religious imagination. Among the notable Prophet Idris (Enoch) achievements in the eyes of tradition are the arts of writing, measurement, and the observation of the heavens, and although these are legendary attributions rather than documented deeds, they made him the emblem of sacred learning in Muslim civilization ^[4][5][6]. Mosques, schools, and generations of children across the Islamic world have carried his name.

In Jewish and Christian history his influence traveled through the Enochic books. The Dead Sea Scrolls showed that these writings were copied and studied centuries before the common era, and scholars such as Annette Yoshiko Reed have traced how the Enochic story of the fallen angels kept resurfacing in Jewish and Christian thought long after the books left most biblical canons ^[3][7]. In Ethiopia the figure remains fully scriptural to this day ^[3].

The endurance of Idris and Enoch owes something to the very brevity of the sources. A man who walked with God, spoke truth, endured with patience, and was raised beyond ordinary human limits offered every later community a frame for its own ideals, whether scribal, mystical, scientific, or devotional ^[2][4]. His story is less a chapter of ancient history than a mirror in which readers of three faiths have examined what a life close to God might mean ^[1][8].