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JUBILEES, BOOK OF
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JUBILEES, BOOK OF
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the lioly city (comp. Amort, De origine, progressu, va- lore ac frucUi indulgent, i, 87 scj.). Paul II finally or- dered in 1470 that thenceforward every twenty-fifth year should be held as jubilee, an arrangement which has continued ever since to regulate the ordinary jubi- lee. As the indulgences could, by the payment of given sums and the contribution to ecclesiastical purposes, al- ways be obtained at the home of the penitent, the pil- grimages to Kome gradually iliminished in frequency ; but tlie observance itself has been punctually maintain- ed at each recurring period, with the single exception of the j'ear 1800, in which, owing to the vacancy of the holy see and the troubles of tlio times, it was not held. For the excesses committed in the sale of indidgences, see Indulgences. The extraordinary jubilee is order- ed by the pope out of the regular period, either on his accession, or on some occasion of public calamity, or in some critical condition of the fortunes of the Church ; one of the conditions for obtaining the indulgence in such cases being the recitation of certain stated prayers for the particular necessity in which the jubilee orig- inated. See Herzog, ^ca7-7ift(7/yZ;fo/?. vii, 117; Cham- bers, s. v. ; Walcott,'-!>'ac. .1 rdue'ol p. 334. (J. II. W.) Jubilees, Book of. This apocryphal or llagadic book, which was used so largely in the ancient Church, and was still known to the Byzantines, but of which both the original Hebrew and the Greek were after- wards lost, has recently been discovered in an Ethiopic version in Abyssinia.
I. Title of the Booh, and its Signification. — The book is called ra 'Iwj8»;\oIa = n'lP31'^n IBO, "fAe Jubilees" or '-the book of Jubilees" because it divides the period of the Biblical history upon which it treats, i. e. from the creation to the entrance of the Israelites into Ca- naan, into fifty jubilees of forty-nine years each, equal to 21:50 years, and carefully describes every event ac- cording to the jubilee, sabbatical -year, or year in which it transpired, as stated in the inscription: "These are the words of the division of the days according to the law and the testimon_y, according to the events of the years in sabbatical years and in jubilees," etc. It is also called by the fathers >) \etzt>) VkvEaiQ, \nrri(Tyh'e- (TiQ, i^uKpoysveaig ; ra Xctttu FwiatuiQ = rT^UJS^i X— IT, i. e. the small Genesis, compendium of Genesis, be- cause it only selects certain portionsof Genesis, although through its lengthy comments upon these points it is actually longer than this canonical book (comp. Epipha- nius, Adi\ Hter. lib. i, tom. iii, cap. vi, edit. Petav. ; G. Syncellus, p. 8) ; or, according to Ewald's rendering of it, Til XtTrra (snbtilia, minuta') Ff I'errtc', because it di- vides thohistdrv upon which if tr^'afs into very minute and sniiill p^Tio' Is {i;, .■.■r/urhfr ,/,.. ];,//.>.< Israel, i, 271) ; it is calli"l liy St..lenjnie t/n ajinrriijihul (Icnesis (sec be- low, sec. o). anil it is also styled ?) roh MMVu'tioQ c'mo- KoXv^jiQ, the Apocah)pse of Moses, by George Sj'ncellus and Ccthenus, I)ecauso the book pretends to be a revela- tion (if (iiiil ti) Moses, and is denominated " ?/«e book of the diri<i<iii ,;/',/ (//<" f)y the Abyssinian Church, from the first words of thr inscription.
II. Design and Contents of the Book. — This apocry- phal book is designed to be a commentary on the ca- nonical books of Genesis and Exodus. (1) It fixes and arranges more minutely the chronology of the Biblical history from the creation to the entrance of the Israel- ites into Canaan; (2) Solves the various difficulties to be found in the narratives of these canonical books; (3) Describes more fully events which are simply hinted at in the sacred history of that early period; and (4) Ex- patiates upon the reUgious observances, such as the Sabbath, the festivals, circumcision, sacrifices, la;vful and unlawful meats, etc., setting forth their sacred charac- ter, as \vell as our duty to keep them, by showing the high antiquity of these institutions,' inasmuch as they have been sacredly observed by the patriarchs, as may be seen from the following notice of these four points.
a. In its chronological arrangements we find that it
places the deluge in A.M. 1353 (Jubil. vi, Gl), and the exodus in the year A.M. 2410 (iv, 10). This, with the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness, yields fifty jubi- lees of forty-nine years each from the creation to the entrance into Canaan, i. e. 2450, and also allows a new jubilee period to commence immediately upon the en- tering of the Israelites into the Promised Land. Though in the calculations of this period the book of Jubi- lees agrees in its particulars with the Hebrew text of Genesis and Exodus, yet it differs from the canonical text both as to the time of the sojourn in Egypt and the years in Avhich the ante and post-diluvian patri- archs begat their children. Thus Jared is said to have lived G2 instead of 102 j'ears before Enoch was born, Methuselah was G7 instead of 187 at the birth of La- mech, and Lamech again was 53 instead of 182 when he begat Noah , agreeing partly with the Samaritan Pen- tateuch, and partly with the Septuagint in their state- ments about these antediluvian patriarchs. In the chro- nology of the post-diluvian jiatriarchs, however, the book of Jubilees deviates from these versions, and says that Arphaxad begat Cainan when 74-75 ; after the deluge, Cainan begat Salah when 57, Salah begat Eber when 67, Eber begat Peleg when G8, Peleg begat Keu when 61 ; the birth of Serug is omitted, but Serug is said to have begat Nahor in the year 116 after the birth of Reu, and Nahor begat Terah in his G2d year (compare Jubil. iv, 40, etc.). The going down into Eg\']it is placed about A.M. 2172-2173 (Jubil. xlv, 1-3), so tiiat when we deduct it from 2410, in which year the exodus is placed, there remains for the sojourn in Egypt 238 years. In the description of the lives of Noah, Abraham (xxiii, 23), Isaac (xxxvi, 49-52), Jacob (xlv, 40-43), and Jo- seph (xlvi, 9-15), the clironology agrees with the He- brew text of Genesis.