Book of Jubilees

Contents

The Book of Jubilees is not part of the canonical Bible, nor is it mentioned by name anywhere in the biblical text. It retells the narrative from the Creation at the beginning of Genesis to around the time of the Exodus in the Book of Exodus. The book is framed as a revelation that the "Angel of the Presence" dictated to Moses while he remained on Mount Sinai. Because it rewrites Genesis, it has also been called "Little Genesis."

The book dates events by dividing history into cycles of seven times seven years, that is, units of forty-nine years called "jubilees," from which the book takes its name. Its other major themes include the following:

• It emphasizes observance of a 364-day solar calendar.
• It gives great importance to the Sabbath, circumcision, and the festivals.
• It portrays the patriarchs as keeping the festivals and ordinances even before the Law was given.
• Angels and Mastema, the chief of the evil spirits, appear throughout the narrative.

Background

Many scholars hold that the book was written in Hebrew in Judea around the second century BC. Several fragments of Hebrew manuscripts were found in the Qumran caves, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, and it is therefore commonly concluded that the Qumran community held the book in high regard. Scholars differ on the identity of the Qumran community and on its relationship to the Essenes. The complete text survives in an ancient Ethiopic (Ge'ez) translation, and portions of the text, along with quotations, also survive in Latin and Greek.

Relationship to the Bible as a Whole

The "jubilee" of the Book of Jubilees derives from the Jubilee institution described in Leviticus 25, although the book extends that institution into a timetable for all of history. The New Testament contains no direct quotation of Jubilees. In this respect it differs from the work known as the Book of Enoch, whose content is quoted in the Epistle of Jude.

Interpretation and Issues

• Canonical status: Protestant churches, the Catholic Church, and the Eastern Orthodox Church all exclude Jubilees from the canon. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, by contrast, includes it in its canon.
• Differences in terminology: Korean Protestants usually classify Jubilees among the "pseudepigrapha." Korean Catholics call the books that Protestants know as the Apocrypha "deuterocanonical," and they use the term "apocrypha" for the writings Protestants call pseudepigrapha.
• Value as a research source: Protestant scholarship does not regard Jubilees as carrying biblical authority. It does, however, study the book as a source that illustrates intertestamental Jewish understandings of the Law, calendar disputes, and methods of biblical interpretation.
• Distinguishing added material: Jubilees contains stories not found in the text of Genesis, such as the claim that Mastema instigated the testing of Abraham. Such passages represent the book's own interpretation and should be distinguished from the content of the biblical text.
• Confusion over the name: The Book of Jubilees is not a book explaining the Jubilee institution of Leviticus. It is also a separate work, distinct from teaching about the "Jubilee" as the term is used in the church.