The story of how the Book of Enoch survived is essentially the story of Ethiopian Christianity. Every other major Christian tradition eventually excluded it. The Ethiopian church kept it. And because they did, it exists today.
Why was Ethiopia able to maintain its broader biblical canon when Western and Eastern Christianity did not? Several factors contributed.
First, geography. Ethiopia was remote. The theological controversies that drove Western canon decisions — debates about Gnosticism, Manichaeism, competing sects — didn't play out in Ethiopia the same way. The Ethiopian church developed in relative isolation, maintaining older traditions because there was no pressing external pressure to change them.
Second, the Aksumite Empire's early adoption of Christianity gave the Ethiopian church a stability that allowed it to establish its traditions before Western councils began asserting universal authority. The Ethiopian church never fully accepted the idea that councils held in Rome or Constantinople had jurisdiction over it.
Third, the manuscript tradition in Ethiopia was deep and well-maintained. Ethiopian monasteries became centers of manuscript preservation — particularly in remote areas like the islands of Lake Tana and the rock churches of Tigray. These monasteries copied and recopied ancient texts century after century, maintaining what they had received.
The result is that Ethiopia became the accidental guardian of texts the rest of the world lost. When European scholars first encountered the complete Book of Enoch in the 18th century — through James Bruce's expedition — they were astonished. The text had been known from fragments and quotations. The complete version had survived only in one place: the libraries of the Ethiopian church.