Jubilees: The Hermeneia Translation

Introduction

Preface

The Book of Jubilees is a narrative work by a Jewish author who composed it in Hebrew around the middle of the second century BCE. In it he reframed and rewrote the Book of Genesis and the first parts of the Book of Exodus. His second edition, as it were, of the stories from creation to Sinai has the distinction of being the oldest sustained commentary on the Genesis-Exodus narratives. It was probably written before there was a separated community of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it was influential for that group and eventually for some other Jewish and Christian writers.

The translation of Jubilees that appears in the present book is the one found in my Jubilees: A Commentary in Two Volumes (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018). That translation is, in turn, a revision and updating of the one I published in The Book of Jubilees (2 vols.; Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 510-11, Scriptores Aethiopici 87-88; Louvain: Peters, 1989) vol. 2. Most of the Hebrew fragments of Jubilees from the Qumran caves were published after the appearance of the 1989 volumes; the evidence from those copies was incorporated into the translation in the 2018 commentary. The only changes to the translation in the commentary that I have introduced here—and there are very few of them—involve matters of punctuation, apart from replacing one word in 39:10 (bolt instead of door) and altering some paragraphing to accommodate insertion of section titles. (In the commentary itself, they, other than the titles for chapters, appear in the commentary proper, not in the translation.) A couple of section titles in chapter 32 were also changed. The textual notes in the present volume, which were purposely kept to a minimum, are a small selection from and rewriting of ones in the commentary. They draw attention to noteworthy differences between the early witnesses and offer brief explanations of problems in the text.

I wish to express thanks to the editorial board of Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible for permission to publish the translation in this format. I am grateful to Sidnie White Crawford, a board member, for encouraging the project and to Fortress Press, especially Will Bergkamp, for the invitation to prepare the volume. It has again been a great pleasure to profit from the skilled work of Maurya Horgan and Paul Kobelski of the HK Scriptorium in the preparation of the book.

James C. VanderKam

University of Notre Dame

Abbreviations and Sigla

chap.	chapter
Eth	Ethiopic
frg(s).	fragment(s)
Heb	Hebrew
Lat	Latin translation of Jubilees
lit.	literally
LXX	the Septuagint
ms(s)	manuscript(s)
MT	the Masoretic Text
n(s).	note(s)
OL	Old Latin translation of the Bible
pl.	plural
sing.	singular
SP	the Samaritan Pentateuch
Syr	Syriac
v(v)	verse(s)
vol(s)	volume(s)
Symbols in the Translation
( )	The enclosed words are added for a smoother English translation
[ ]	The enclosed words are probably part of the text but are missing from the textual witness(es); brackets surrounding a blank space indicate that a Hebrew fragment has room for more text but that the text is not preserved. Brackets also surround dates from creation, the equivalents of the year dates that Jubilees expresses in its system of jubilee periods, weeks, and years
italics	The word or expression is an emendation
underlining	The letters/words underlined are preserved on a Hebrew fragment
{{ }}	The enclosed words are preserved on a Hebrew fragment but are of uncertain textual status (only in 2:19).

Introduction

Contents of the Book of Jubilees

The fifty-chapter book is divided formally into two unequal parts, chap. 1 and chaps. 2-50. The first chapter supplies the setting for what follows. The author chose the scene at Mount Sinai described in Exodus 24 as the occasion when, on the sixteenth day of the third month, God and Moses conversed and God arranged for the Book of Jubilees to be revealed. The Lord predicts in the opening chapter that Israel will soon violate the laws of the covenant made the previous day and will eventually suffer heavy punishments culminating in exile. In the future, however, a proper relationship will be restored, when the Lord, living among them in a new sanctuary, will be their God and they will be his righteous people. Moses objected, asking that God give his people a pure heart to obey him now, but the deity insisted that history would have to run its preordained course. Although the Lord speaks directly with Moses in chapter 1, at its end he orders an Angel of the (divine) Presence to dictate to Moses from heavenly tablets the contents of the book—the rewriting of Genesis and, more briefly, the first half of Exodus.

In chaps. 2-50 the angel relates to Moses the story from creation (Genesis 1-2) until Israel’s arrival at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19). The writer at times omits material from the older books, e.g., the long story in Genesis 24 about getting a wife for Isaac (the 67-verse chapter in Genesis is summarized in one verse, Jub 19:10), and at other times adds sections (examples are accounts of wars fought against enemies by Jacob and his sons in Jub 34:1-9 and chaps. 37-38). He follows the general storyline in Genesis and Exodus but along the way introduces many changes that serve his purposes.

Themes of the Book of Jubilees

Some of the more important points that the author makes as he rewrites the older stories are these.

God, the almighty Creator, fashioned a world that operates according to definite laws (chap. 2). This is true of natural phenomena over which God placed angels with specialized areas of supervision. The sun regulates a fixed year lasting 364 days; among them some days are holy, that is, for the Sabbaths and festivals (chap. 6). These years of unchanging length are basic building blocks in a chronology whose larger units are weeks of years (seven years) and jubilees (49 years) by means of which the writer dates many events. It begins with creation and places the Israelite Exodus from Egypt in the year of the world 2410 and the arrival at Canaan in the year 2450, at the end of exactly fifty jubilee periods. At that time Israel would rightfully enter the land assigned to their ancestor Shem, Noah’s son, and later stolen by Canaan, a grandson of Noah (chaps. 8 and 10).
The one God, from the beginning, entered into a special relationship with the ancestors and thus with Israel, their descendants. God, the angels, and Israel observe the Sabbath (chap. 2) and jointly celebrate sacred festivals such as the one associated with the covenant, the Festival of Weeks (6:18). Circumcision was a rite ordained by God for Abraham and his descendants; Israelite males, like the two highest classes of angels—the angels of the presence and the angels of holiness—are to be circumcised (15:25-34). Israel, God’s firstborn son, was not to mingle with the nations, all of which worshiped idols, but was to remain separate from them, with no intermarriage between them. God did not reveal the law to his people all at once; rather, he began disclosing it to the first generations and gradually supplemented it over the ensuing ones. That growing body of legislation, communicated to and transmitted by an unbroken line of priests from Adam to Levi, was at the heart of the one covenant that God established with Noah and his descendants and renewed annually with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Israel. Starting with Enoch, the inventor of writing (4:17), that legal tradition took on written form. The pact at Sinai was only the latest in a series of renewals of the everlasting covenant. The entire law was inscribed on the heavenly tablets and thus was fixed.
God determined the course of history from the beginning. Events will take place as he determined, but the Lord’s relationship with his people will not end. Eventually, after the nations, who were divinely subjected to the evil spirits (15:31), punish Israel, they will be destroyed and an obedient Israel will rule (chap. 23). The dead will not rise but their spirits will rejoice at the great peace on earth that the living will experience. On the writer’s view, the eschatological age had already begun in his time.
The writer based his account on Genesis and Exodus, but he was anxious that his Jewish contemporaries not misunderstand the older stories about Israel’s ancestors. So, for example, it appears from Genesis that God revealed almost no laws to the patriarchs, apart from Sabbath (possibly; see Gen 2:1-3), the prohibition of consuming blood (9:4-6), and circumcision (Genesis 17), but in Jubilees Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses were the recipients of laws and lived in accordance with them. They were also at times the human inaugurators of practices (e.g., festivals) revealed by God/the angels. Already to the ancients the Lord had disclosed Sabbath and circumcision, but he also revealed to them the sacred festivals (Weeks [6:17-22], Tabernacles [16:20-31]) and several other important laws, e.g., sacrificial prescriptions (chap. 21) and the ban on intermarriage with other peoples (e.g., chaps. 22 and 30). In places where Genesis presents an ancestor in an unfavorable way, as, for instance, when Abram claimed that Sarai was his sister (Gen 12:13), the writer of Jubilees, as part of his effort to burnish their reputations, omits the embarrassing statement (see Jub 13:13-15). Or when Jacob deceived his father into blessing him by claiming to be his older son Esau (Genesis 27), he has Jacob admit only to being Isaac’s son and attributes Isaac’s confusion to divine leading (Jub 26:18, 19). For the author, Rebekah had acted properly to ensure that the blessing would be given to the correct son, not to the reprehensible Esau. The writer wanted to prove that the genealogical line leading from the patriarchs to Israel was pure, so he was careful to identify by name the wives married by the patriarchs and their family connections. He also emphasized that, though some of Jacob’s sons married outside the chosen line, the mistake was soon remedied (compare Gen 46:10 where Simeon is married to a Canaanite woman with Jub 34:20, 21).

Translation

The translation presented here rests upon the early textual evidence for the Book of Jubilees. The following are the witnesses to the text of the book in the various languages in which such material survives. For a fuller discussion of the sources, see VanderKam, Jubilees 1-21, 1-16.

First, the book was composed in Hebrew. No complete or even nearly complete copy of it in this language has survived, but fragmentary remains of fourteen manuscripts have been identified among the Dead Sea Scrolls: 1Q17 and 18, 2Q19 and 20; 3Q5; 4Q216-24, 176 frgs. 19-21; 11Q12. Among these copies, the oldest is 4Q216; it dates from approximately 125-100 bce. The readings from the Hebrew manuscripts are indicated by underlining in the translation.

Second, the book was translated into Greek. No copy of the translation is available, but it was quoted by several Christian authors (e.g., Bishop Epiphanius and the Byzantine historian Syncellus) and served as a basis for later translations.

Third, it is possible though perhaps not very likely that a Hebrew text of the book was translated into Syriac. If there was a full Syriac translation, it was more likely made from a Greek base text. No complete Syriac translation has survived, but sections of Jubilees in Syriac are cited in a world chronicle that ends with the year 1234 ce. There is also a Syriac text that lists the names of the patriarchs’ wives as found in Jubilees.

Fourth, a translation was made from Greek into Latin. One partial copy of that translation, dating to the fifth or sixth century ce, is available.

Fifth, a translation was made from Greek into Ge‘ez, the classical language of Ethiopia. Jubilees was regarded as a scriptural book in the Ethiopian (Abyssinian) Church and was thus preserved in many copies. Almost fifty are known today, with the oldest dating to the fourteenth century ce. The Ethiopic version is the only one that offers the complete text of the book, so the English translation is necessarily based on it alone in many places, but where possible the textual evidence from the Ethiopic manuscripts is supplemented by the information from the remains of the versions listed above.

Bibliography

If a book or article is referred to in the textual notes, it is indicated by the author’s name and the short title listed below at the end of the bibliographical entry for that author. The exception is the Hermeneia commentary on Jubilees; its two volumes are referenced by the short title alone, without the author’s name.

Berger, Klaus. Das Buch der Jubiläen (JSHRZ II.3; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus [Gerd Mohn], 1981). Jubiläen
Ceriani, Antonio Maria. Monumenta Sacra et Profana (2 vols.; Milan: Bibliotheca Ambrosiana, 1861-63).
Charles, R. H. Maṣḥafa Kufālē or the Ethiopic Version of the Hebrew Book of Jubilees (Anecdota Oxoniensia; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895). Ethiopic Version
Charles, R. H, The Book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1902). Jubilees
Davenport, Gene L. The Eschatology of the Book of Jubilees (StPB 20; Leiden: Brill, 1971).
Dillmann, August. “Das Buch der Jubiläen oder die kleine Genesis,” Jahrbücher der Biblischen Wissenschaft 2 (1850) 230-56; 3 (1851) 1-96. “Jubiläen”
Halpern-Amaru, Betsy. The Empowerment of Women in the Book of Jubilees (JSJSup 60; Leiden: Brill, 1999).
Hanneken, Todd. The Subversion of the Apocalypses in the Book of Jubilees (SBLEJL 34; Atlanta: SBL, 2012).
Kugel, James. A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of its Creation (JSJSup 156; Leiden: Brill, 2012).
Leslau, Wolf. Comparative Dictionary of Ge‘ez (Classical Ethiopic) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991). Comparative Dictionary
Petit, Françoise. La chaîne sur la Genèse: Édition Integrale I-IV (Traditio Exegetica Graeca 1-4 (Louvain: Peeters, 1992-96). La chaine
Ruiten, Jacques A. G. M van. Primaeval History Interpreted: The Rewriting of Genesis 1-11 in the Book of Jubilees (JSJS 66; Leiden: Brill, 2000).
Ruiten, Jacques A. G. M van. Abraham in the Book of Jubilees: The Rewriting of Genesis 11:26–25:10 in the Book of Jubilees 11:14–23:8 (JSJSup 161; Leiden: Brill, 2012).
Scott, James. On Earth as in Heaven: The Restoration of Sacred Time and Sacred Space in the Book of Jubilees (JSJSup 91; Leiden: Brill, 2005).
Segal, Michael. The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (JSJSup 117; Leiden: Brill, 2007).
Testuz, Michel. Les idées religieuses du Livre des Jubilés (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz and Paris: Librairie Minard, 1960).
Tisserant, Eugène. “Fragments syriaques du Livre des Jubilés,” RB 30 (1921) 55-86; 206-32.
VanderKam, James C. The Book of Jubilees (2 vols.; CSCO 510-11; Scriptores Aethiopici 87-88; Louvain: E. Peeters, 1989). The Book of Jubilees
VanderKam, James C. and J. T. Milik, “Jubilees,” in James C. VanderKam, consulting ed., Qumran Cave IV VIII Parabiblical Texts, Part 1 (DJD 13; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994) 1-185. DJD 13
VanderKam, James C. The Book of Jubilees (Guides to Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).
VanderKam, James C. Jubilees: A Commentary in Two Volumes (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018). Jubilees 1-21 and Jubilees 22-50
Werman, Cana. The Book of Jubilees: Introduction, Translation, and Interpretation (Between Bible and Mishnah; Jerusalem: Yiṣḥaq ben-Zvi, 2015 [Hebrew]). Jubilees