The Book of Jubilees
This work is based largely on The Book of Jubilees or The Little Genesis, translated and edited from The Editor's Ethiopic Text by R.H. Charles, D.D. and published in London by Adam and Charles Black in 1902. This book is in the Public Domain. Dr Charles is widely recognized as the leading authority of his time on Jewish apocalyptic literature and pseudepigrapha. A Professor of Biblical Greek at Trinity College Dublin and later a Canon at Westminster Abbey, he is best known for his definitive English translations and commentaries on texts like the Book of Enoch.
Dr. Charles also wrote some awesome commentary on Jubilees, as well as translations of other apocryphal or pseudopigraphal documents written during the Intertestamental Period. I hope to be able to create annotated versions of some of his other translations so that a modern audience can appreciate them.
To publish this work will be very time consuming as the most reliable public domain versions on line are largely page scans of the book that need to be reduced to text with meticulous attention to detail. I'm working on it chapter by chapter and verse by verse to ensure accuracy with Dr. Charles' translation. I will be adding commentary and cross references to my annotated text of Jubilees in a separate phase of this project.
THE BOOK OF JUBILEES (or The Little Genesis): Moses receives the tables of the law and instruction on past and future history which he is to insert in a book, 1-4. Apostasy of Israel, 5-9. Captivity of Israel and Judah, 10-13. Return of Judah and rebuilding of temple, 15-18. Moses’ prayer for 19-21. Gods promise to redeem and dwell with them, 22-25, 28. Moses bidden to write down the future history of the world (the Book of Jubilees 7), 26. And an angel to write down the law, 27. This angel takes the heavenly chronological tables to dictate therefrom to Moses, 29.
"Israel, This is the history of the division of the days of the law and of the testimony, of the events of the years, of their (year) weeks, of their jubilees throughout all the years of the world, as the Lord spake to Moses on Mount Sinai."
PROLOGUE. This short introduction gives an admirable account of the contents of this book. It is at once a history and a chronological system dominated by the sacred number seven. The history extends from the Creation to the legislation on Sinai, and thus embraces Genesis and part of Exodus. But the writer does not merely reproduce the portions of these books which serve his purpose; he rewrites from the standpoint of the strictest Judaism.