The Book of Jubilees: Full Text, History and Why It Isn’t in the Bible
Read the Book of Jubilees full text in R. H. Charles’s 1913 translation, also called Little Genesis, and why the major churches did not receive it. This page is the text, not a PDF. The chapter numbers follow Charles’s 1913 order.
On This Page
Background and History
The chapters above are R. H. Charles’s 1917 translation of Book of Jubilees. This essay is the setting of the book: how it was composed, which copies survive, how Jude uses one sentence from it, and why the major churches did not receive it as Scripture.
At a Glance
| Author | Set as a revelation to Moses by the angel of the presence. James C. VanderKam treats it as a later Jewish book. |
|---|---|
| Date | VanderKam, quoted on earlyjewishwritings.com, about 150 BC. Rost reports Charles’s 109–105 BC if Jubilees 30 is read as Hyrcanus taking Samaria. Those reports stay side by side. |
| Place | The complete text is Ethiopic. VanderKam reports Hebrew fragments from Qumran, and a lost Greek that stands behind the Latin and the Ethiopic. |
| Genre | A retelling of Genesis through the opening of Exodus, given as law to Moses on Sinai, with a 364-day year. |
| Chapters | 50 |
| Verses | 1306 in this Charles 1917 text |
| Key Verse | Jubilees 2:1Book of Jubilees 2:1 · R. H. Charles, 1917And the angel of the presence spake to Moses according to the word of the Lord, saying: Write the complete history of the creation, how in six days the Lord God finished all His works and all that He created, and kept Sabbath on the seventh day and hallowed it for all ages, and appointed it as a sign for all His works.Book of Jubilees 2:1 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source |
Composition and Date
The book is written as a history the angel of the presence speaks to Moses on Sinai. Jubilees 2:1Book of Jubilees 2:1 · R. H. Charles, 1917And the angel of the presence spake to Moses according to the word of the Lord, saying: Write the complete history of the creation, how in six days the Lord God finished all His works and all that He created, and kept Sabbath on the seventh day and hallowed it for all ages, and appointed it as a sign for all His works.
Book of Jubilees 2:1 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source (1) says that angel told Moses to write the history of the creation. Jubilees 1Book of Jubilees 1 · R. H. Charles, 19171:1 And it came to pass in the first year of the exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt, in the third month, on the sixteenth day of the month, [2450 Anno Mundi] that God spake to Moses, saying: 'Come up to Me on the Mount, and I will give thee two tables of stone of the law and of the commandment, which I have written, that thou mayst teach them.'
1:2 And Moses went up into the mount of God, and the glory of the Lord abode on Mount Sinai, and a cloud overshadowed it six days.
1:3 And He called to Moses on the seventh day out of the midst of the cloud, and the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a flaming fire on the top of the mount.
Book of Jubilees 1 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source (4) opens with that history spoken when Moses went up to receive the tables, and verse 29 has the angel of the presence, who went before the camp, take the tablets.
James C. VanderKam, in the passage quoted on earlyjewishwritings.com, says the original language was almost certainly Hebrew, because the fourteen or fifteen fragmentary Qumran copies are Hebrew. He dates the oldest of those copies, 4Q216, to about 125–100 BC, so the book was written before that copy. He says the author seems to know 1 Enoch’s Book of Dreams from the late 160s BC, and that a date around 150 BC seems likely. (5)
Leonhard Rost, quoted on the same page, reports R. H. Charles’s date of 109–105 BC if Jubilees 30 is read as John Hyrcanus taking Samaria. Rost says the Qumran fragments do not contradict that hypothesis. (5) The two dates stay side by side. This page does not pick one.
Copies
VanderKam says the Hebrew was translated into Greek, and possibly Syriac, and that the Greek was later lost until the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Greek, also lost, was the basis of the Latin and the Ethiopic. The only complete text is Ethiopic. He says a comparison of that Ethiopic with the Hebrew fragments shows a reliable rendition. (5)
The Catholic Encyclopedia says the book has come down complete only in Ethiopic, with Greek and Latin fragments, and that the Ethiopic name is Kufale. It cites Charles’s 1902 book for an original Hebrew. (6)
The Text on This Site
The chapters above are Charles’s 1913 translation, from the Joshua Williams transcription of The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. The numbers follow that edition. Editorial brackets in the translation are Charles’s.
Jubilees 1:8 and 1:9 are divided where the 1902 Clarendon scan breaks the sentence. Verse 9 begins “For they will forget.” That scan also numbers the angel-of-the-presence sentence as 1:29. The prologue of chapter 1 is printed before the verses.
What the Book Retells
James Charlesworth, quoted on earlyjewishwritings.com, describes 50 chapters and a revelation to Moses by the Angel of the Presence, and he describes the book as a midrash from Genesis 1:1 through Exodus 12:50. Raymond F. Surburg, quoted there, says that from chapter 2 the book parallels Genesis 1:1 to Exodus 14:31. (5) Those two spans are not the same.
Charles’s own chapter headings go on through the destruction of the Egyptians at the sea in Jubilees 48, and Jubilees 49 cites Exodus 12 and Exodus 15:22. Jubilees 48Book of Jubilees 48 · R. H. Charles, 191748:1 And in the sixth year of the third week of the forty-ninth jubilee thou didst depart and dwell <in [2372 A.M.] the land of Midian>, five weeks and one year. And thou didst return into Egypt in the second week in the second year in the fiftieth jubilee.
48:2 And thou thyself knowest what He spake unto thee on [2410 A.M.] Mount Sinai, and what prince Mastêmâ desired to do with thee when thou wast returning into Egypt <on the way when thou didst meet him at the lodging-place>.
48:3 Did he not with all his power seek to slay thee and deliver the Egyptians out of thy hand when he saw that thou wast sent to execute judgment and vengeance on the Egyptians?
Book of Jubilees 48 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source and Jubilees 49Book of Jubilees 49 · R. H. Charles, 191749:1 Remember the commandment which the Lord commanded thee concerning the passover, that thou shouldst celebrate it in its season on the fourteenth of the first month, that thou shouldst kill it before it is evening, and that they should eat it by night on the evening of the fifteenth from the time of the setting of the sun.
49:2 For on this night -the beginning of the festival and the beginning of the joy- ye were eating the passover in Egypt, when all the powers of Mastêmâ had been let loose to slay all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh to the first-born of the captive maid-servant in the mill, and to the cattle.
49:3 And this is the sign which the Lord gave them: Into every house on the lintels of which they saw the blood of a lamb of the first year, into (that) house they should not enter to slay, but should pass by (it), that all those should be saved that were in the house because the sign of the blood was on its lintels.
Book of Jubilees 49 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source are those chapters. A Genesis or Exodus chapter that a heading names carries a Retold in Jubilees line on this site.
Calendar
Jubilees 6:32Book of Jubilees 6:32 · R. H. Charles, 1917And command thou the children of Israel that they observe the years according to this reckoning- three hundred and sixty-four days, and (these) will constitute a complete year, and they will not disturb its time from its days and from its feasts; for everything will fall out in them according to their testimony, and they will not leave out any day nor disturb any feasts.
Book of Jubilees 6:32 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source (2) commands a year of three hundred and sixty-four days. Jubilees 6:36Book of Jubilees 6:36 · R. H. Charles, 1917For there will be those who will assuredly make observations of the moon -how (it) disturbs the seasons and comes in from year to year ten days too soon.
Book of Jubilees 6:36 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source (3) says there will be people who observe the moon, and that it comes in from year to year ten days too soon. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes the book’s jubilee as a period of forty-nine years, and the same 364-day year. (6) VanderKam says a jubilee, as the author understood it, is a 49-year period. (5) Jubilees 50:4 counts forty-nine jubilees from Adam until the day of the speech. That count is not the definition of one jubilee.
Names
VanderKam lists three titles: the Book of the Divisions of the Times, from the opening words and from the Damascus Document; the Book of Jubilees; and Little Genesis. (5) The Catholic Encyclopedia says Little Genesis, or Lepto-Genesis, marks lesser authority, not a smaller book, and that Jubilees is larger than canonical Genesis. It also says a Decretum Gelasianum title, “Liber de filiabus Adae Leptogenesis,” is probably a combination of two titles. This page does not treat that decree as a certain naming of Jubilees. (6)
The Ethiopian Orthodox Canon
The church’s English list includes Jubilee, spelled Jublee, with Enoch. (7) Anke Wanger records a printed Ethiopian Bible that places Jubilees, then Enoch, after Chronicles, and another list that places them later. (8) Gebre-Mikael M. Mikre-Sellassie places Enoch and Jubilees in the narrower canon received in church practice, and he notes that the Fetha Negest list and its commentary omit them. (9) That narrower canon is the local exception. The Jewish canon and the major Christian churches did not receive the book.
Issues With This Book
The book speaks as law given to Moses on Sinai. The dates VanderKam and Rost report are centuries after Moses. (5) Charlesworth says the author takes considerable liberty with the biblical narrative, supplying names and softening acts. (5) Surburg’s endpoint, Exodus 14:31, and Charlesworth’s endpoint, Exodus 12:50, do not match, and Charles’s headings also include the sea and Exodus 15:22.
The 364-day year in Jubilees 6:32Book of Jubilees 6:32 · R. H. Charles, 1917And command thou the children of Israel that they observe the years according to this reckoning- three hundred and sixty-four days, and (these) will constitute a complete year, and they will not disturb its time from its days and from its feasts; for everything will fall out in them according to their testimony, and they will not leave out any day nor disturb any feasts.
Book of Jubilees 6:32 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source is the book’s own command. It is not the calendar of the churches that received the Law and the Prophets without this book.
Mikre-Sellassie’s narrower Ethiopian canon is the exception he describes, not a second canon for the churches that followed the Jewish list, Athanasius, Jerome, and the later Western councils. (9)
People Also Ask
What Is the Book of Jubilees?
The Book of Jubilees, also called Little Genesis, is a retelling of Genesis through the opening of Exodus, set as words an angel speaks to Moses on Sinai. R. H. Charles’s 1913 translation on this page has 50 chapters.
Why Isn’t the Book of Jubilees in the Bible?
The Jewish canon and the major Christian churches did not receive it. The Ethiopian Orthodox narrower canon is the local exception. The Fetha Negest list and its commentary omit it.
Where Is the Book of Jubilees Full Text?
The full text is the chapter list on this page, in R. H. Charles’s 1913 translation. This site does not offer a PDF.
What Is Little Genesis?
Little Genesis is another name for the Book of Jubilees. The Catholic Encyclopedia says the name marks lesser authority, and that the book is larger than canonical Genesis.
On This Site
- Book of Enoch (1 Enoch)
- Book of Jubilees
- Secrets of Enoch (2 Enoch, Slavonic Enoch)
- 3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch)
- What Is the Book of Enoch and Why Isn’t It in the Bible?
- How Was the Bible Canon Decided?
- The Lost Gospels: Thomas, Peter, Judas, and Mary
- Apocrypha
- How Was the Bible Canon Decided, and What Is the Apocrypha?
References
- Book of Jubilees, 2:1Book of Jubilees 2:1 · R. H. Charles, 1917
And the angel of the presence spake to Moses according to the word of the Lord, saying: Write the complete history of the creation, how in six days the Lord God finished all His works and all that He created, and kept Sabbath on the seventh day and hallowed it for all ages, and appointed it as a sign for all His works.
Book of Jubilees 2:1 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source (R. H. Charles, 1913. The angel of the presence speaks to Moses.) - Book of Jubilees, 6:32Book of Jubilees 6:32 · R. H. Charles, 1917
And command thou the children of Israel that they observe the years according to this reckoning- three hundred and sixty-four days, and (these) will constitute a complete year, and they will not disturb its time from its days and from its feasts; for everything will fall out in them according to their testimony, and they will not leave out any day nor disturb any feasts.
Book of Jubilees 6:32 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source (The year is counted as three hundred and sixty-four days.) - Book of Jubilees, 6:36Book of Jubilees 6:36 · R. H. Charles, 1917
For there will be those who will assuredly make observations of the moon -how (it) disturbs the seasons and comes in from year to year ten days too soon.
Book of Jubilees 6:36 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source (The moon is said to come in ten days too soon.) - Book of Jubilees, 1Book of Jubilees 1 · R. H. Charles, 19171:1
And it came to pass in the first year of the exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt, in the third month, on the sixteenth day of the month, [2450 Anno Mundi] that God spake to Moses, saying: 'Come up to Me on the Mount, and I will give thee two tables of stone of the law and of the commandment, which I have written, that thou mayst teach them.'
1:2And Moses went up into the mount of God, and the glory of the Lord abode on Mount Sinai, and a cloud overshadowed it six days.
1:3And He called to Moses on the seventh day out of the midst of the cloud, and the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a flaming fire on the top of the mount.
Book of Jubilees 1 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open source (The prologue and Jubilees 1:29. The angel of the presence takes the tablets.) - James C. VanderKam, Charlesworth, Surburg, and Rost on Jubilees, earlyjewishwritings.com (The page quotes VanderKam, An Introduction to Early Judaism, p. 97, and Outside the Old Testament, p. 111; Charlesworth, The Pseudepigrapha and Modern Research, pp. 143–144; Surburg, Introduction to the Intertestamental Period, p. 131; and Rost, Judaism Outside the Hebrew Canon, p. 132. This essay paraphrases those quotations. It does not reprint them.)
- Catholic Encyclopedia, Jubilees, Little Genesis
- Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, books (The English list spells the title Jublee and places it after II Chronicles.)
- Anke Wanger, The Biblical Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church
- Gebre-Mikael M. Mikre-Sellassie, “The Bible and Its Canon in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church”, The Bible Translator 44.1 (1993)
R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees, in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913). Public domain in the United States (published 1913). Charles died in 1931, so the book is in the public domain in the United Kingdom. The verse text is the Joshua Williams transcription at pseudepigrapha.com. Jubilees 1:8 and 1:9 are divided at the break in the 1902 Clarendon scan (archive.org bookofjubileesor00char), where verse 9 begins “For they will forget.” That scan also numbers the angel-of-the-presence sentence as 1:29. Editorial brackets in the translation are Charles’s.