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Before the Church · c. 160–150 BC

The Book of Jubilees

Anonymous

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What it is

Genesis and half of Exodus dictated to Moses by an angel and dated throughout by jubilees of forty-nine years, on a solar calendar of exactly 364 days. The patriarchs keep feasts that have not been given yet, Abraham refuses to celebrate his father's idols, and the watchers' fall is retold with the demons petitioning to keep a tenth of their number.

Why it lasted

Canonical scripture in the Ethiopian church, found in fifteen copies at Qumran, and the sharpest evidence that the calendar was a matter people would separate from the temple over.

Scripture it works from

Read it here

The full text is held here and can be read in the reader.

34 sections · complete, from Jubi (Online Critical Pseudepigrapha).

Elsewhere

Part of this work is held here; the rest can be read at the archives below.

These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.

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