Not every extra-biblical reference is equal. A Greek poet may supply a rhetorical line; the Baal Cycle may illuminate ancient imagery or polemical contrast; but 1 Enoch stands much closer to the New Testament’s own interpretive world. It is not merely a distant parallel from outside. It is a Jewish textual witness from within the world the New Testament inhabits, and in Jude it is used not ornamentally but argumentatively, in a judicial context concerning rebellion and judgment. For that reason, it is methodologically careless to flatten Enoch, the Baal Cycle, and pagan poetic citations into one generic category of “outside influence.” They do not function at the same level.
