mick silver
13th November 2013, 06:38 AM
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/jub/ ... The Book of Jubilees, probably written in the 2nd century B.C.E., isan account of the Biblical history of the world from creation to Moses.It is divided into periods ('Jubilees') of 49 years.For the most part the narrative follows the familiar account inGenesis, but with some additional details such as the names of Adamand Eve's daughters, and an active role for a demonicentity called 'Mastema'.The anonymous author had a preoccupation with calendar reform,and uses Jubilees as a platform for proposing a solarcalendar of 364 days and 12 months;this would have been a radical departure fromthe Jewish Calendar (http://www.sacred-texts.com/time/cal/jdate.htm),which is lunar-based.There are also a couple of messianic, apocalyptic passages, althoughquite a bit less than the Book of Enoch.The only complete version of Jubilees is in Ethiopian,although large fragments in Greek, Latin and Syriac are also known.It is believed that it was originally written in Hebrew.If at times one gets the impression that you are reading a firstdraft of Genesis, you are in good company.R.H. Charles, the translator, a distinguished academic Biblicalscholar, concluded that Jubilees was a version of the Pentateuch,written in Hebrew, parts of which later became incorporated into theearliest Greek version of the Jewish Bible, the Septuagint.