Download pdf book of jubilees

Society for. Promoting Christian. Knowledge, London. Contents Start Reading. The Book of Jubilees, probably written in the 2nd century. Free PDF, epub, Kindle ebook. The Book of Jubilees, sometimes called Lesser Genesis, is an ancient Jewish religious work of 50 chapters.

Completing the head wrists and feet of Jesus. Anyhow, this was an informative book, that gives an interesting account r. Jubilees makes an incestuous reference regarding the son of R. Their hybrid children, the Nephilim in existence during the time of Noahwere wiped out by the great flood.

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Song of Songs Shir Hashirim. Almost lost over the centuries, the Book of Jubilees was retrieved from the Ethiopic language, translated into English by R. Charles, and was recently found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Nyland, published by Ancient Mysteries Publishing which was released on The Apocalypse of Moses was a popular early Christian-era work, that is believed to have originally been a Jewish texts, and was then adopted by the earliest Christians.

How did the books of the Bible come to be recognized as Holy Scripture? After nearly nineteen centuries the canon of Scripture still remains an issue of debate. Adept in both Old and New Testament studies, F. Bruce brings the wisdom of a lifetime of reflection and biblical interpretation. Home The Book Of Jubilees. If the author wished to asso- ciate these dates with a specific day of the week, this would have been stated explicitly.

This thesis, however, is crucial for Jaubert's under- standing of the ideology underlying the calendar of Jubilees. To determine the date of the Festival of Weeks, the Bible com- mands the Israelites to elevate the 'omer the first sheaf of the harvest on "the day after the Sabbath" Lev. The precise connotation of this phrase, and together with it the date of the Festival of Weeks or First Fruits , became a major bone of contention toward the end of the Second Temple period. According to the tradition underlying Rabbinic law, the word "Sabbath" is to be understood as denoting a holy day in gen- eral and refers to the first day of the Passover festival, so that the 'omer is to be offered on the 16th of the first month and the seven weeks reckoned from that date.

According to the opposing tradition, as reflected in Rabbinic writings, the "Boethusians" interpreted the word "Sabbath" literally, understanding it to mean the first Sabbath after the seven days of Passover, and accordingly offered the Omer on the first day of the following week m.

Since the festi- val was supposed to fall on the 15th of the third month, Jaubert counts. See also D. For a general survey of the treatment of the obscure phrase "the day after the Sabbath" in Qumran literature see J. Brooke; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, Talmon is typical:. In order that the "raising of the omer," and consequently also Pentecost, should always fall on the first day of the week, it is essential for the days of the month always to be attached to fixed days of the week, otherwise there could be no assurance that the The sect's calendar, which was shared by many of the pseudepigrapha, had the advantage, that its festivals did not "wander" as they do in other calendaric sys- tems.

The principles underlying this valuable arrangement were established by French scholar Mlle. Jaubert in a study of the calendar pertaining to the Book of Jubilees.

However, nowhere does the author of Jubilees ever mention the day of the week on which the Festival of Weeks should fall. Neither does he use the expression "the day after the Sabbath," nor require seven weeks to be reckoned up to the Festival of Weeks. In fact, it is only Jaubert's thesis that the Festival of Weeks in Jubilees will always fall on the first day of the week, and that seven Sabbaths weeks are to be counted from the 26th of the first month.

Contrary to Jaubert's argument, and indeed to the generally held scholarly view, the author of the. Book of Jubilees never states his position regarding the meaning of the expression "the day after the Sabbath"; so much so that one might think that dispute to have been beyond his historical horizon. Rather, he prescribes a festival to be celebrated "in the third month, in the middle of the month" Jub.

Zeitlin pointed out the following two verses: "For this reason.. Abram renewed the festival and the ordinance for himself for ever" Jub. So, writes Zeitlin, the Festival of Weeks in Jubi-. See also Y. Qimron and J. Strugnell eds , Qumran Cave 4.

It was not, therefore, a festival of weeks, nVIM0, but of oaths, Ml1:j. He offered as a new sacrifice on the altar the firstfruits of the food for the Lord-a bull, a ram, and a sheep; he offered them as a sacrifice to the Lord Jacob celebrated the harvest festival-the firstfruits of grain- with old grain because in all the land of Canaan there was not even a handful of seed If indeed, as Zeitlin claims, the festival of nInMtt should be under- stood as the Festival of Oaths, celebrating the renewal of God's covenant with Israel Jub.

This festival is twofold and of two kinds" Jub. The plural form of the words is spelled exactly the same in Hebrew: nlDM It is possible that for this reason, the Greek version of Jubilees which was translated from Hebrew '5 used the term "Festival of Weeks," and not "Festival of Oaths.

The "weeks" translation probably carried on from Greek. Our hypothesis-that the original name for the holiday in Jubilees meant "oaths"-seems preferable, relying as it does on the content of the text and the linguistic relationship between the two concepts. Whatever the case may be, the author of the Book of Jubilees did not count seven weeks or Sabbaths till the Festival of Weeks, and the invariable association of the festival with the first day of the week has no textual basis.

This in turn brings us back to the thesis that the cal- endar of Jubilees begins on the fourth day of Creation i. Had the calendar been reckoned from the first day, as logic and the plain meaning of the text imply, the "fixed calendar" theory would have proved that the Festival of Weeks should always fall on the fifth day of the week. Hence, Jaubert's argument that the festival always fell on the first day of the week left her no choice but to begin the calendrical reckoning on the fourth day of Creation.

In order to justify this thesis, she linked the calendar of Jubilees with the creation of the sun, in keeping with her theory that it was a solar calendar. In other words, the sun has been mobilized in support of the "fixed calendar" theory for one simple reason: to ensure that the Festi- val of Weeks would always fall on the first day of the week. It seems clear, however, that the Jubilees text, "The Lord appointed the sun as a great sign above the earth for days, Sabbaths, months, festivals, years, Sabbaths of years, jubilees, and all times of the years" Jub.

It simply interprets the text of Genesis: "God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times-the days and the years"' Gen. As has been demonstrated, there are numerous holes in Jaubert's theory. Nevertheless, I would like to investigate whether, on the basis of her own principles, she has indeed successfully placed the Festival of Weeks invariably on the first day of the week. To that end, we must first present yet another of her arguments that has been widely accepted in the scholarly literature, namely, that the author of Jubilees was acquainted with the calendar in 1 Enoch 72 and in fact copied the internal structure of his own calendar from there:.

The same distri- bution of days is found in the related book, the Luminaries of Henoch. As already noted, Chapter 72 in the book of 1 Enoch expressly states that four months of the year the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth contain 31 days, while the other eight contain only What are the practical implications of this subdivision for Jubilees?

There are several occurrences in the work of the term "the middle of the month" Jub. The covenant "between the pieces" was concluded in the middle of the third month Jub.

On the same day, Abraham and the members of his household were circumcised Jub. Sarah conceived Isaac in the middle of the sixth month-which accord- ing to Jaubert should have consisted of 31 days-and gave birth to him in the middle of the third month Jub. Jacob paused on his way from Canaan to Egypt on the 15th of the third month to celebrate the Festival of the First Fruits Jub.

On the next day, the 16th of the month, he continued on his way to Egypt Jub. Moses ascended the mountain of God on the 16th of the third month, because, like his ancestors, he too had celebrated the festi- val on the 15th of the month Jub. Abraham was apparently born and died on that date Jub. Judah was born on the 15th of the third month Jub. The author's dates are quite definite: "the middle of the third month" is identical with the 15th day of the month-this is undisputed in the scholarly world.

Now, according to Jaubert's theory, the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth months of the year each contain 31 days as in 1 Enoch Hence events that took place in the "middle" of a day month took place not on the 15th but the 16th day of that month. Mathematically speaking, the 15th day of such a month cannot be considered the "middle" of the month; that description fits only the 16th:. Thus, the association of the calendar in Jubilees with that of 1 Enoch 72, in which the third, etc.

As a result, Jaubert's theory would seem to require that the Festival of Weeks, celebrated in the "middle of the month" , should fall each year on the second day of the week- the 16th of the month. In what follows, in my analysis of the calen- dar of the Book of Jubilees, I shall endeavor to show that each month consisted of exactly 30 days, so that the 15th of the month would indeed always be the "middle of the month. Once Jaubert has determined the specific day of the week on which each festival and event invariably falls, she argues that they take place on three fixed days, which therefore possess liturgical significance.

She also claims that the author of Jubilees planned the Patriarchs' peregrinations in such a way that they would never set out on the Sabbath day.

The difficulties in these theses have already been pointed out by Joseph Baumgarten, who, among other things, questions why the author of the book should have remained completely silent on this matter. The author of Jubilees does indeed jealously observe the sanctity of the Sabbath,'8 and indeed Jaubert argues, as has been noted, that none of the Patriarchs ever departed on a journey on that day.

Now, according to Jub. But in Jaubert's calendar see above table , the 16th of the second month was a Sabbath, implying that the prepa- rations for the coming "journey" were completed on the holy day.

This is surely inconsistent with the concept of the Sabbath that emerges from Jubilees. I have examined only the most central theses of Jaubert's theory of the "fixed calendar" in the Book of Jubilees. My analysis demonstrates serious lacunae in each of her basic assumptions.

These surely merit a reexamination of the calendar as expressed in that work. In the subsequent pages I wish to analyze the structure of the cal- endar in the Book of Jubilees, pointing out its problematic nature and proposing a new interpretation.

The author of the Book of Jubilees, as we know, adhered unequiv- ocally to a calendar of days. One might therefore expect his cal- endar to be simple and comprehensible, but that is not the case. The text in fact envisages two distinct modes of calendrical reckoning: by weeks or by months.

So they are ordained, and they enter them on the heavenly tablets. Each one of them consists of 13 weeks All the days of the commandments will be 52 weeks of days; they will make the entire year complete.

We shall call this in what follows the "weekly calendar. Among these are the dates of the various stages of the flood in Noah's time, which indicate the structure of the calendar:. The Lord closed it from outside on the seventeenth [of the second month] in the evening. The Lord opened the seven floodgates of heaven.

The floodgates began to send water down from the sky.. The waters remained standing on the surface of the earth for five months days Jub. On the first of the seventh month all the sources of the earth's deep places were opened On the first of the tenth month the summits of the mountains became visible, and on the first of the first month the earth became visible On the seventeenth day of the second month the earth was dry Jub.

There seems, therefore, to be an inner contradiction in the Book of Jubilees; as we have already seen, the text in Chapter 6 clearly reckons days to the year, in fact stating that figure quite explicitly: "Now you command the Israelites to keep the years in this number days" Jub.

In this respect, I agree with Jaubert that the year of the flood must necessarily have contained days rather than just as implied by the above calculation. However, her solution to the puzzle, based on the calendar of 1 Enoch 72, is, as we have seen, highly problematic. For my own solution, I first wish to examine the Ancient Egyptian "schematic calendar. Neugebauer made a study of the Ancient Egyptian calendar 3rd millennium BCE , which remained in use for many years and was in fact taken over by the Greeks who ruled Egypt from the time of Alexander the Great.

Observing that the tidal rhythm of the Nile was governed by the cycles of the solar year, they concluded that natural reality was governed by the sun. Nevertheless, they conducted their daily affairs on the basis of two different calen- dars: a lunar calendar with days to the year, and another, with days per year, which Neugebauer called the "schematic calendar.

The schematic calendar, however was an arbitrary construct, based on 12 months of 30 days each, to which five days, not included in the reckoning of months, were added annually, for a total of days.

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