Category:Book of Jubilees (text)

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The Book of Jubilees (see Online Text) is a Second Temple Jewish document, now included in collections of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and Dead Sea Scrolls.

< Editions: Ethiopic -- Latin >

< Translations: English -- German ... >

Overview

The Book of Jubilees is a 2nd-century BCE free reworking of earliest biblical history, as narrated in Genesis 1 to Exodus 12, from creation to the institution of Passover. The book also contains numerous references to the early Enochic literature, making a synthesis of both Enochic and Mosaic traditions. The document is now commonly regarded as a product of the early Essene movement.

The Book of Jubilees was known and quoted by the early Church Fathers but like the book of Enoch was "lost" around the 4th century, with the only exception of Ethiopia (where it was held as canonical by both Ethiopian Christians and Jews). The Ethiopic version of the book was "rediscovered" in the 19th century and first published by August Dillmann in the 1859. In addition, a large section of an Old Latin version was found by Antonio Maria Ceriani in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, and published by him in 1861. In 1895 Robert Henry Charles produced another edition of the Ethiopic text.

In the 1950s several fragmentary copies of the book of Jubilees were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, confirming the antiquity of the document and its original composition in Hebrew.

References

• Jubilees, Book of / Michael Segal / In: The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism (2010 Collins / Harlow), edited volume, 843-846

External links

• Wikipedia -- Early Jewish Writings

• The Online Critical Pseudepigrapha

Bibliography

Books

• 1850-1899

• • Smirnov, A. V. R. (1895). Kniga I'Ubileev. - Russian translation

• 1900-1949

• • Wirgin, W. b. (1965). The Book of Jubilees and the Maccabean era of shmittah cycles. Leeds [England], Leeds University Oriental Society.

• • Schwarz, E. (1982). Identität durch Abgrenzung : Abgrenzungsprozesse in Israel im 2. vorchristlichen Jahrhundert und ihre traditionsgeschichtlichen Voraussetzungen : zugleich ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des Jubiläenbuches. Frankfurt am Main [Germany], Lang.

• • F. Schubert, Tradition und Erneuerung : Studien zum Jubiläenbuch und seinem Trägerkreis. Frankfurt am Main [Germany] Lang, 1998)

Edited volumes

• Pierpaolo Bertalotto and Todd Hanneken (eds.), Enoch and Jubilees: Short Papers fron the Fourth Enoch Seminar, Henoch 31.1 (2009)