Transcript for:
Exploring the Book of Jubilees

Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World is brought to you by the Star Quest production Network and is made possible by our many generous patrons if you'd like to support the podcast please visit sqpn tocom you're listening to episode 319 of Jimmy yin's Mysterious World where we look at mysteries from the Twin perspectives of faith and reason in this episode we're talking about the mysterious book book of jubilees I'm Dom bettinelli and joining me today is Jimmy Aken hey Jimmy howdy Dom throughout history there have been books that some people considered scripture and others didn't eventually Jewish and Christian groups identified stable collections of books that more or less agree with each other and they form what we think of as the Bible but what about the books that didn't make it in what about the books that some in the ancient world thought were scripture but that aren't that aren't in the Bible today one of these lost scriptures is known as the book of jubilees and that's what we'll be talking about on this episode of Jimmy Yen's Mysterious World and Jimmy why did you want to talk about the book of jubilees well I've been planning on doing episodes of mysterious World on various books like this for some time uh there are a number of books from the ancient world that were considered scripture by some but not others which makes them scripture for the the people who thought that they were holy books but they're not in the Bible that we recognize today which means very few people have known about them historically so you could describe them as lost to popular Consciousness in some cases they were even physically lost meaning that we didn't have any known copies of them and copies have only been rediscovered fairly recently some of these books are very interesting uh and they shed light on what different groups of Jews and Christians believed in the ancient world they can even shed light on how passages that are in the Bible can be understood so they're both mysterious and worth talking about off the top of my head there are several of these works that I know I want to devote episodes to for example I plan to do episodes on first Enoch the Ascension of Isaiah The Shepherd of Hermes and the infancy Gospel of James also known as the Proto evangelium of James so that's kind of an older title for it and there are others too jubilees happens to be the first uh out of the gate because I recently read it and was struck by how interesting it is and by the way it has nothing to do with the Marvel character this is not about X-Men so even though we're calling these Works lost scriptures that doesn't mean that they have the same Authority or accuracy as the books of the Bible does it oh absolutely not uh they are only scripture in the sense that some people thought or think that they were scripture but that doesn't mean that they were right uh and they are only lost in the sense that most people forgot about them uh this doesn't mean that they are divinely inspired or canonical which means that God isn't guarantee in what they say is true and it doesn't mean that you should believe everything they say in fact many of the things these books say are dead wrong both from the faith perspective and from the reason perspective however they're still interested and their primary historical value is not to tell us what actually happened but to tell us what some ancient Jews and Christians believed even then you have to be aware of which ancient Jews and Christians were talking about because neither early Judaism nor early Christianity was monolithic there were different groups in both including groups that would be considered heretical and just because some Jewish Heretics or Christian Heretics believed something does not mean that you should attribute it to all Jews or Christians that would be like someone in the year 4,000 finding a book written by Jehovah's Witnesses and thinking oh this is what Christians believed when in fact the Jehovah Witnesses are a fringe group today and they have many beliefs that are not shared by Christians so we don't want to make the same mistake by reading documents from 2,000 years ago so we need to keep in mind who was writing reading and using these documents and whether their views were or were not representative of other groups then let's talk about the book of jubilees what is it basically it's a book that goes back to what Scholars called the second temple era uh this is the period period after the Jews came back from the Babylonian exile about 586 BC and rebuilt the temple and it lasts up to the destruction of the second temple in ad70 so you can think of it as the last few centuries before Christ up to and including the first century jubilees in particular seems to have been written about 150 BC so basically a century and a half before Jesus just after the time of Judah makabe and his colleagues and their liberation of Israel from the forces of antia epiphanies it also goes by a number of names uh in addition to being called jubilees it's known as the book of the division of times because it has a special interest in chronology and it's also known as the little Genesis because of the time period it covers so does it cover the same general time period as the Book of Genesis yes uh jubilees is an example of a kind of writing that's sometimes called Rewritten Bible or Rewritten scripture this kind of writing involves taking an existing scriptural text and revising it to produce a new addition this new edition will bring out things that the author is interested in or leave out things that the author is not interested in as a way of communicating to his audience the things that are important for his purposes and this style of writing was rather common in the ancient world we even find it in the Bible itself you can think of the books of Chronicles as essentially Rewritten vers versions of the books of Samuel Kings and Ezra and you can think of Matthew and Luke as essentially Rewritten versions of Mark that bring out more of the story of Jesus and include things Mark doesn't contain with Matthew helping writing to help Jewish Christians appreciate Jesus from a Jewish point of view and Luke writing to help Gentile Christians appreciate Jesus from a non-jewish point of view and jubilees is essentially a form of Rewritten Bible covering Genesis and much of the book of Exodus down to the part where Moses goes up on the mountain to get the law of God if Matthew was written for Jewish Christians and Luke was written for gentel Christians who was jubilees written for you said that some people used to consider it scripture so who were they well we know they were Jewish but they weren't completely mainstream Jews at least not the ones we know about the first century Jewish historian says that in his day there were four major sects in Palestinian Judaism the Sadducees who were associate with the temple complex and the Pharisees who were more popular both of these groups we know about from the gospels but there were two other groups these were the ases who were kind of standoffish from other Jews and the zealots who instigated the war with the Romans well it's commonly thought that the ases were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls where were discover which were discovered at a site known as kumran in the 1940s and the authors of the Scrolls had apparently split off from the temple complex so they had some Roots connected with the Sadducees but they also held a lot of Pharisee beliefs like belief in angels and in the resurrection of the Dead well if it's true that the ases were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls then it appears that they definitely regarded jubilees as scripture in his book The Dead Sea Scrolls today scholar James vandercam writes to summarize the evidence regarding jubilees the book is presented on more copies than all but five biblical books at kumran it presents itself as divine revelation and references made to it as an authority in perhaps three places in kumran literature in addition several other texts have been called pseudo jubilees because they employ jubilees like language or concepts although they diverge somewhat from it jubilees then has all the traits that Mark a book as authoritative at kumran except the quality of having a commentary based on it so of the different markers that indicate whether a work was considered authoritative among the Dead Sea scroll Community jubilees fills multiple ones uh basically all of them except having a commentary written on it and it wasn't just the scenes that regarded the book of scripture vandercam writes later the book became canonical for some Christian groups including the abian church in Ethiopia the high esteem it enjoyed in Ethiopia ensured its preservation after the original Hebrew and the Greek translation based on it had disappeared so the Ethiopian Orthodox church has a larger Cannon than other Christians in fact it has the largest Cannon of any standard Christian group and they also include jubilees in their Canon however since they are a Christian group they weren't the original audience of jubilees so we'll be focusing more on how the work was received in j judism and while we know that the book was regarded as authoritative by the Dead Sea Scrolls Community it's likely that the book was also influential among other Jews which is why it likely became canonical in the Ethiopian church but we don't know much about who these other Jews would have been what do we know about the author of the book well not a lot uh like most of the Jewish authors in this period he doesn't identify himself so he doesn't tell us anything about himself uh like the authors of the books of Genesis and Samuel and Kings he keeps himself Anonymous so all we really know is that he was a literate Jewish adult around 150 BC he spoke Hebrew because that's the language the book was originally written in he appears to be a member of the Jewish tribe of Levi and he may well have been a priest himself but that's about it what does the book of jubilees contain you said it was a Rewritten version of Genesis and parts of Exodus yeah uh and it repeats a good bit of material from both of them it also leaves stuff out in order to make room for new material as I pointed out before books in the ancient world were fantastically expensive since everything including the sheets of paper they were written on had to be made by hand so a single copy of the Gospel of Matthew would cost the equivalent of more than $2,000 this meant that there was price pressure to keep books down to a certain length basically the length of a single scroll otherwise even the rich wouldn't have been able to afford them so if you wanted to rewrite a text like the author is doing here then you usually needed to leave out some of the material from what the original said in order to include the new bits that you want to introduce one of the interesting things is that the jubil as we may call him does is introduce a chronological scheme so he tells you the years in which the different events in Genesis Exodus took place he does this by saying which Jubilee they took place in and what part of the Jubilee they took place in not everyone may be familiar with that term what is a jubilee it's a concept that ancient Israel used to keep track of time as people will know the Israelites observed a weekly Sabbath they could only work for six days and then they had to rest on the 7eventh well they did the same thing with years they were supposed to work the land for 6 years but but then they were supposed to let it Li let the land lie fallow in the seventh year so in addition to having a Sabbath every seven days they also had a Sabbath year every seven years you can think of this as being the year of rest in each week of years and they didn't stop there because you could also hold a special Sabbath every 49 years so what you do is count seven ye sabbaths of years or 49 years since 49 is 7 time seven or seven weeks of years and then you'd have a special Sabbath in either the 49th year or the 50th year that special Sabbath is known as a jubilee and in this year they did a number of special things they returned land that had been leased from other people they forgave debts that were owed to them and they liberated slaves who had been sold into slavery to pay debts well because they're basically half a century long you can use jubilees to count off longer stretches of time and so the jubil will tell us when things happened in what Jubilee starting with the creation of the world for example he says that Adam and Eve were tilling and garden the Garden of Eden during the first week of the first Jubilee that means they were in the garden for the first seven years uh the first seven years or weeks of years in the first Jubilee period in any event that's why the book is called jubilees because it uses the 49e per periods to provide a chronological framework and since jubilees are divisions of time that's why the book is also called The Book of the division of times how far does he go in tracking the jubilees how long is his chronology the last event that he dates like this is 49 jubilees one week and two years after creation so that's 49 * 49 or 241 years plus another 7 years for the one week of years plus another two individual years which brings us up to a total of 2,410 years and he indicates that this was the year The Exodus occurred but he says there will be another 40 years before the Israelites enter the promised land so that would take place uh 2450 years after creation how does that compare with other calculations that people have made it's in the same general ballpark as the other calculations in contemporary Judaism they sometimes use an era known as ano Mundi or the year of the world which uses the abbreviation am as opposed to the Christian ad anodin or year of the Lord Jesus era and in the Jewish anom Mundi system the the year of the Exodus is commonly understood to be am 2,666 which isn't too far off from Jubilee's Reckoning of a as am 2410 so it's about 250 years off in the Usher chronology proposed by Anglican Archbishop James Usher the date's even closer according to Usher The Exodus took place in a2513 which is just 103 years off from Jubilee's estimate of am 2410 so how do you want to proceed looking at jubilees in today's episode basically I'd like to walk through it in a chapter by chapter manner note how what it says corresponds or doesn't correspond to what's in Genesis and exodus so we'll be referring to many familiar Bible stories but we'll also be noting how what it says is different from the biblical account and observing what it tells us about the beliefs of the jubil and the people who regarded the work as authoritative in particular we're going to be looking at the part of jubilees that covers the primordial history in Genesis that's the first 11 chapters before the appearance of Abraham on the scene this part contains some of the most interesting material in the book and the parts that will be the most familiar to the listeners since it contains some of the most famous bible stories we may cover the rest of the book of jubilees in future episodes but it's the primordial history that we'll be focusing on today and then finally we'll have a few words to say from the faith perspective and before we get to all that we'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons who make it possible that make this show possible including Mary K Jesse G Gary D the waxwood tree and Kyle F their generous donations at sqpn tocom make it possible for us to continue Jimmy yakin's Mysterious World and all the shows at StarQuest and you can join them by visiting sqpn [Music] docomo world is also brought to you by deliver contacts.com offering top brand contact lenses at always low prices with free delivery visit deliver contacts.com and byy the Ascension app never leave home without a trusted Catholic translation of the Bible download the Ascension app today and you'll have the full text of the Great Adventure Bible the catechism and answers to more than a thousand frequently asked questions about the Bible available at your fingertips the Ascension app is the best place to listen to Bible in a year with father Mike schmidtz and watch video Reflections on the daily Mass readings from hundreds of top Catholic evangelists download the Ascension app today at www. ascensionpress.com Jimmy yaken so Jimmy let's start at the beginning of jubilees how does it begin the first chapter of the book begins with a framan narrative that sets up the rest of the story Moses is up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments and God gives him a preview of what's going to happen to Israel in its future this preview covers how the Israelites will disobey him they will turn to foreign gods they will murder the prophets they will be driven from the land but they will eventually be brought repent and be brought back to the land so it basically covers Old Testament history up through the return from the Babylonian exile Moses then prays for the people and he asked God not to let the spirit of bear rule over them to accuse them before you Bellar is uh is originally a term that meant wickedness but by the 150s BC when the book was written it had come to be used as a personal name for the devil and St Paul uses it that way in second Corinthians 6:15 where he rhetorically asks what Christ has to do or has in common with balar and here in jubilees Bellar is understood to accuse the people of sins before God which is something that John speaks of Satan doing in Revelation 1210 though he says that at that point the accuser has been thrown down so he can't really do that anymore back in jubilees God responds to Moses by giving him a preview of the future beyond the Babylonian exile and he says that when the Israelites repent he will circumcise the forkin of the heart and the forkin of the heart of their descendants so that they will be pure and obey his Commandments leading to a time of blessing God then tells Moses to write down everything he's about to reveal to him on the mountain and announce it so this is Moses's commission to write the book of jubilees which was which is thus presented as a revelation that was given to Moses while he was up on the mountain God then turns the microphone over to an angel who talks to Moses for the rest of the book and this is a very special angel he's referred to as the angel of the presence meaning the presence of God and we're told that he was the angel that would lead the Israelites through the desert here's how that part of the text begins and the angel of the presence who went before the camp of Israel took the tablets of the division of years from the time of the creation of the law and testimony according to their weeks of years according to the jubilees Year bye throughout the full number of jubilees from the day of creation until the day of the new creation when the Heaven and Earth and all of their creatures shall be renewed according to the powers of heaven and according to the whole nature of Earth until the sanctuary of the Lord is created in Jerusalem upon Mount Zion and all of the lights will be renewed for healing and peace and blessing for all of the elect of Israel and in order that it might be thus from that day and unto all the day days of the earth so this gives us another preview of the future indicating that there will be a new creation in which Heaven and Earth will be renewed and there will will be a final version of the temple on Mount Zion the angel then backs all the way up to the creation of the world and he thus tells us the story of how the world began using the 7-Day structure from Genesis 1 and unlike the Bible he tells us when the Angels were created and what kinds of angels there are he says on the first day the Lord God created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all of the spirits which minister before him the angels of the presence and the angels of sanctification and the angels of the spirit of fire and the angels of the spirit of the Winds and the angels of the spirit of the clouds and darkness and snow and hail and Frost and the angels of resounding and thunder and lightning and the angels of the spirits of cold and heat and winter and Springtime and harvest and summer and all of the spirits of his creatures which are in heaven and on Earth so this is very interesting uh because it names seven different classes of Angels the first is the angels of the presence so the angel of the presence that is talking to Moses is one of a larger class there are other Angels who stand in God's Pres presence the second category is the angels of sanctification or Holiness and we'll learn later that these two classes of angels form a special Elite but there are also five other classes of angels that we hear about that are separate from these two when it comes to the lower classes of angels they deal with the running of things in the world one deal one class deals with fire another with wind another with clouds Darkness snow hail and frost another with thunder and lightning and finally one with cold heat winter Springtime Harvest and summer then at the very end it mentions that God also created all the spirits of his creatures which are in heaven and on Earth on the first day this means that Angels aren't the only kind of spirit that exists there are other Spirits out there besides angels and since the author says that some of these are spirits of his creatures on Earth well that would seem to include us you know man which may mean that the jubil believed in the pre-existence of souls that God created all of our individual spirits on the first day of creation before we were born what about things like the seraphim and the cherubim that we read about in Isaiah and Ezekiel or the Thrones powers and principalities that we read about in St Paul well we think of those as types of angels but the term angel was still fluid in this period and doesn't match up to one to one with the modern concept of an Angel since those entities are not in the jubil List's lists list of angels there are several possibilities one is that he didn't consider a Angels but other kinds of spirits so maybe he believed in cherubim but just didn't call them angels and thus grouped them as another kind of spirit or maybe he had mentioned in them because he groups them under one of the categories he names for example both the seraphim and the cherubim attend God's Throne so maybe they're what he calls angels of the presence since they regularly stand In God's Presence anyway the the angel of the presence then walks through the other days of creation concluding with the seventh the angel of the present says and he gave us a great sign the Sabbath day so that we might work six days and observe a Sabbath from all work on the seventh day and he told us all of the angels of the presence and all of the angels of sanctification these two great kinds that we might keep the Sabbath with him in heaven and on Earth and he said to us behold I shall separate for myself a people from among all the nations and they will also keep the Sabbath so here we see that the angels of the presence and the angels of sanctification are an Elite Class of angels they are supposed to keep the Sabbath but the other five classes of Angels the ones connected with running nature apparently don't have to keep the Sabbath presumably because they need to keep nature running even on the seventh day in the same way God is going to choose one people to consecrate for himself the Israelites and they will keep the Sabbath as a sign of their special consecration but other peoples on the earth aren't expected to these conclusions are underscored later in the chapter when the angel says on this seventh day we the angels of the presence and the angels of sanctification kept the Sabbath in heaven before it was made known to any human to keep the Sabbath thereon upon the Earth the creator of all blessed it but he did not sanctify any people or nations to keep the Sabbath thereon with the sole exception of Israel he granted to them alone that they might eat and drink and keep the Sabbath there upon the Earth in Chapter 3 The jubilus turns to the second creation narrative from Genesis and he says that at God's command the elite Angels brought all the animals including the fish before Adam to see what he named them I can just imagine you know Angels coming up to Adam with like a hack and saying what do you want to call this oh that's a hack um in any event this n in procedure took six days but Adam didn't find a helper among them so on the sixth day of the second week God caused Adam to fall asleep and he made Eve out of his rib he also tells us how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden and during the first week of the first Jubilee Adam and his wife had been in the Garden of Eden for seven years tilling and guarding it and we gave him work and we were teaching him to do everything which was appropriate for tilling and he was tilling and he was naked but he neither knew it nor was he ashamed and he was guarding the garden from the birds and beasts and cattle and Gathering its fruit and eating and he used to set aside the rest for himself and his wife and what was being guarded he set aside at the end of seven years which he completed there 7even years exactly in the second month on the seventh day the serpent came and Drew near to the woman so Adam and Eve spent s years in the garden before the fall and they were doing work they weren't just lazing around doing nothing eating fruit Genesis says that God put I mean Genesis says that God put Adam in the garden to till it and keep it and the jubilous agrees saying that Adam tilled the Garden of Eden so that when Adam's work gets cursed after the fall it is that he'd never tilled The Land Before It's that now it's going to be harder work than it had been and the jubil also o says that Adam kept or guarded the garden that's what keeping it means uh but he also tells us what Adam was Garden it from the birds and beasts and cattle the Garden of Eden was basically God's private park a pleasure garden and you wouldn't want all the birds and beasts coming in and eating all the fruit that was there for God's pleasure So Adam is serving as a human scarecrow to keep the birds and beasts away only since Adam is the one doing the work he does get to eat the fruit of the garden all you know all that agrees and fleshes out with what what's elsewhere in Genesis now you may Wonder in Genesis how the serpent is able to talk to Eve because you know serpents normally can't talk well according to the jubilus that didn't used to be the case in fact all the animals could talk up until the point that man fell and God drove everybody out of the garden on that day the mouth of all the beasts and cattle and birds and whatever walked or moved was stopped from speaking because all of them used to speak with one another with one speech and one language and he sent from the Garden of Eden all of the flesh which was in the Garden of Eden and all of the flesh was scattered each one according to its kind and each one according to its family into the place which was created for them but from all the beasts and the C attle he granted to Adam alone that he might cover his shame so the animals stopped talking they scattered from the garden to different locations on Earth and Adam was given the right to use animal skins to cover himself unlike the other animals which stayed naked and on the first of the fourth month Adam and his wife went out from the Garden of Eden and dwelt in the land of Elda in the land of their creation so the jubilus now tells us where Adam and Eve had been created it was in a land called Elda so after being kicked out of Eden they went back there unfortunately we don't know where the land of eldo would have been and Adam named his wife Eve they had no son until the first Jubilee but after this he knew her and he tilled the land as he had been taught in the Garden of Eden and in the third week in the second Jubilee she bore Cain and in the fourth she bore Abel and in the fifth she bore Awan his daughter so this has a bunch of interesting stuff in it first he gives us ranges of dates when Adam and Eve's first children were born uh Cain would have been born when Adam was between 64 and 7 years old which was also the age of the world Abel was born when he was between 71 and 77 years years old and their first daughter Awan was born when he was between 78 and 84 years old old and unlike Genesis we really do get the names of Adam and Eve's daughters in fact we get a lot of names for women who are Anonymous in Genesis so this is something that the jubil list was interested in when Cain kills Abel just like in Genesis and Adam and Eve have a new son named Seth though the jubilus tells us that they first mourned the death of Abel for four weeks of years or 28 years they then had marital relations and Seth was born when Adam was 130 that's something that agrees with Genesis then in the next s years they have another daughter named aora Cain marries the first daughter they had Awan and Seth marries aora so the jubil confirms the common historical view that Adam and Eve's children married their own siblings because there was apparently nobody else to marry he also tells us that in addition to these five children the three boys and two girls Adam and Eve also had nine more children uh we now come to a passage where Genesis 5:116 records a patriarch named mahalalel becoming the father of Jared and in jubilees the angel of the Angel of the presence tells Moses mahel took for himself a wife Dina the daughter of barakiel the daughter of his father's brother as a wife and she bore a son for him in the third week in the sixth year and he called him Jared because in his days the angel of the Lord who were called Watchers came down to the Earth in order to teach the sons of man and perform judgment and uprightness upon the Earth We're not 100% certain what the origin of the name jar it is but it may come from a Hebrew verb meaning to go down and that seems to be how the jubilus takes it since he links Jared's name to the going down of angels upon the Earth he tells us that these angels were called Watchers and that they were sent to execute judge judgment and uprightness on the earth so they had a positive Godly Mission but as we'll see that mission is going to go sideways the jubilus then starts telling us about the patriarch Eno who was the subject of a lot of interest in the second temple period as illustrated by the book of First Enoch which we'll talk about in a future episode The jubilus tells us that Enoch was the first man to learn writing a apparently having been taught how to do it by the angels and he wrote a book about the signs of Heaven for counting time something that the text says the angels of the presence taught him and he saw what was and what will be in a vision of his sleep as it will happen among the children of men in their Generations until the day of judgment he saw and knew everything and wrote his testimony and deposited the testimony upon the Earth against all the children of men and their Generations this is a reference to what we find in the book of First Enoch so it seems that at least parts of first Enoch were known to the jubil he also says that Enoch was with the angels for nearly 300 years and he was therefore with the angels of God six jubilees of years and they showed him everything which is on Earth and in the heavens the Dominion of the Sun and he wrote everything and bore witness to the Watchers the ones who sinned with the daughters of men because they began to mingle themselves with the daughters of men so that they might be polluted and Enoch bore witness against all of them this is how the mission of the Watchers went sideways they started mingling with the daughters of men and sinned with them this is reflected in the beginning of Genesis 6 where it says that the sons of God who were understood in Old Testament books like job as Heavenly Angelic Figures were attracted to the daughters of men and married them given birth to Giants we talked about that in episode 87 on the Nephilim which you can go listen to at mysterious. fm7 we also talked about biblical Giants in episode 243 so you can go to mysterious. fm/ 243 for that this event is also recorded in more detail in first phenic as we'll hear in the future but while Genesis tells us that the sons of God saw the daughters of men and were attracted to them the jubil has told us how they got down here on Earth to see them they were sent by God during the life of Jared on a righteous and holy Mission but then they saw the daughters of men and this Mission went sideways more on that in a bit but first the jubil wants to clarify what happened to Enoch according to Genesis 5:24 Enoch walked with God until he was 365 years old but then it says this really strange thing and he was not for God took him a big question is took him where and the jubilus provides an answer the angel of the present States and he was taken from among the children of men and we led him to the Garden of Eden for greatness and honor and behold he is there writing condemnation and Judgment of the the world and all of the evils of the children of men and because of him none of the water of the flood Came Upon the whole land of Eden for he was put there for a sign and so that he might bear witness against all of the children of men so that he might relate all of the Deeds of the generations until the day of judgment so that's where Enoch was taken God took him from among the children of men and the angels brought him back to the Garden of of Eden and he's still there today he's writing down all the sins of the children of men so that he can relate all the Deeds of men on Judgment Day and to keep him safe during the flood God didn't send any of the Waters of the flood upon the land of Eden now we come down to the death of Adam and at the end of the 19th Jubilee in the 7eventh week in the sixth year Adam died and all of his children buried him in the land of his creation and he was the first who was buried in the earth and he lacked 70 years from 1,000 years for a thousand years are like one day in the testimony of heaven and therefore it was written concerning the tree of knowledge in the day you eat from it you will die therefore he did not complete the years of this day because he died in it so that in the jubils view is why God told Adam he would die in the day he ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil back in Genesis 21:17 and people have wondered ever since why Adam didn't drop dead as soon as he ate the fruit the jubilous solution is one that many others have proposed Psalm 90:4 says that a thousand years is like a day to God and so since Adam died at 930 and didn't live to be a thousand he did die within one day from God's perspective now that's clever but I prefer my solution which is is to note that in the day can be understood as meaning the same thing as in the time like when we say things like oh back in Napoleon's day they did this or back in Abraham Lincoln's day they did that well we don't mean a spec by referring to a day we don't mean a specific 24-hour period we mean a general time frame so in my view in the day you eat of it just means in the time after he eats the fruit Adam die without specifying anything further about when just in that time or in that day however I do like the jubil ist's image of Adam being buried by his children in the land of his creation meaning in the land of Elo that we heard about earlier the jubil also tells us Cain died one year after his father and he tells us how his house fell upon him and he died in the midst of his house and he was killed by its Stones because he killed Abel with a stone and with a stone he was killed by righteous judgment therefore it is ordained in the Heavenly tablets with the weapons with which a man kills his fellow he shall be killed just as he wounded him thus shall they do to him this is an example of a recurring theme in jubilees the angel is always talking about how things are written in the Heavenly tablets apparently they have tablets up in heaven that contain Heavenly decrees and notice that it's tablets and not Scrolls scrolls are flimsy things made out of Papyrus or animal skins the ink can wash off them and they can disintegrate with time like many of the Dead Sea Scrolls did but tablets with impressed writing on them are tough like the tablets they used in Mesopotamia where Abraham came from in fact we have thousands of copor tablets from Abraham's Homeland so the fact that God and the angels are using Heavenly tablets rather than Heavenly Scrolls and jubilees May indicate just How firm and fixed the Heavenly decrees on them are we now come to the lifetime of Noah and Noah's wife gets a name her name in jubilees is imara and she's the daughter of Noah's father's brother or his Uncle so she's his cousin as in the Bible she gives birth to Three Sons shim ham and japas but things are going really wrong on Earth back to our story about the Watchers who had come down and When the Children of Men began to multiply on the surface of the Earth and daughters were born to them that the angels of the Lord saw in a certain year of that Jubilee that they were good to look at and they took wives for themselves from all of those whom they chose and they bore children for them and they were the Giants notice that this confirms exactly what we said in the episode on the Nephilim the sons of God from Genesis 6 are angels jubilees identifies them as the angels of Yahweh he also calls them Watchers and the children that are born to them and their daughters and the daughters of men are giants and Injustice increased upon the Earth and All Flesh corrupted its way man and cattle and beasts and birds and everything which walks on the Earth and they all corrupted their way and their ordinances and they began to eat one another in first Enoch it talks about how the Giants began to eat all the food and even human beings and eventually each other but jubilees indicates that the problem was worse than that it says All Flesh began to eat one another and it defines All Flesh as Man and Cattle and beasts and birds and everything which walks on the earth so the criticism being made isn't just that the Giants were committing cannibalism it's the meat eating including cannibalism that is going on in general that's the problem why that's a problem is clarified if you remember the end of the flood narrative in Genesis at the end of the flood God gave Noah and man kind after him the right to eat meat just like Adam had gotten the right to eat plants for taking care of the Garden of Eden Noah gets the right to eat meat after taking care of the animals but that authorization hadn't been given yet so it in the jubilous view all this pre flood meat eating is usurping a right that God hasn't given yet not to mention the cannibalism therefore as the text sinks back up with Genesis and Injustice grew upon the Earth and every imagination of the thoughts of all mankind was thus continually evil and the Lord saw the Earth and behold it was corrupted and All Flesh had corrupted its order and all who were on the Earth had done every sort of evil in his sight and he said I will wipe out man and All Flesh which I have created from upon the surface of the Earth but Noah alone found favor in the sight of the Lord so God determines that he's going to send the flood which we talked about in episode 175 and again in episode 176 so you can go to mysterious. fm175 and mysterious. FM 176 hear about that but first God needs to deal with the Watchers and the situation that they created by breeding Giants with the daughters of man and against his angels whom he had sent to the Earth he was very angry he commanded that they be uprooted from all their dominion and he told us to bind them in the depths of the earth and behold they are bound in the midst of them and they are isolated so God had the angels of the presence go arrest the Watchers and find them in the depths of the Earth where they are currently isolated but there's still a problem of the Giants and against their children that is the Giants a word went forth from before his presence so that he might Smite them with the sword and remove them from under heaven and he said my spirit will not dwell upon man forever for they are flesh and their days will be 110 years and he sent his sword among them so that each one might kill his fellow and they began to kill one another until they all fell on the sword and they were wiped out from the earth now in Genesis 6 it says that man's days will be 120 years which you could understand to mean that the human lifetime will drop to 120 years but the problem with that is that that doesn't happen in the Bible man's life does drop but not to 120 years and it doesn't suddenly drop to 120 years at the flood so I think a more natural reading is that God is is designating a 120e period before the great flood happens and everybody dies however here it's 110 years and the jubil seems to want to clarify that it in mankind as a whole that has 110 years but the Giants so he causes them to go to war with each other and the war wipes them all out however the horror of this judgment is even more intense because their parents also watched and subsequently they were Bound in the depths of the Earth forever until the day of great judgment in order for judgment to be executed upon all of those who corrupted their ways and their deeds before the Lord and he wiped out everyone from their places and not one of them remained whom he did not judge according to all his wickedness so the Watchers hadn't yet been bound in the depths of the Earth when the war between the Giants or giganto Maki occurred they were still around and they and possibly their human wives had to watch all their children exterminate each other only after that were the Watchers chained up deep in the Earth but the jubilus balances this with a message of God's mercy saying that he made for all his Works a new and righteous nature so that they might not sin forever and that he will have mercy to all who return from their eror once every year that's a reference to the Jewish Day of atonement or yam Kapur and this is another theme that we find in jubilees the jubil is interested in showing that the laws found in the Books of Moses actually go back to the age of the Patriarchs and that the Patriarchs also observed things later commanded by Moses so here he uses the he uses the giganto Maki as an occasion to introduce Yom Kapur but the Earth still needs to be cleansed first and so the great flood happens the jubilus says it took place in the 22nd Jubilee in the fifth week of years and in the sixth year that works out to ano Munday 1308 he then gives an abbreviated account of the flood and he gives us the name of the exact Mountain that the ark came to rest on Genesis only says it was one of the Mountains of Ararat but the jubilus tells us it was on the top of Mount lubar he also tells us where the water went after the flood he says that all the mouths of the deep of the earth were opened and the water began to go down Into the Depths below After the flood Noah celebrates the Feast of shavat or tab Tabernacles which is another anticipation of later Mosaic legislation and then the angel goes into something that was a source of controversy in the late second temple period perod in Jesus day the Jews at least the mainstream ones were using a lunar solar calendar meaning it was calculated using both the movement of the sun and the phases of our sister Planet the Moon it had 12 months in the year which at where each month began with the sighting of the new moon but the 12 annual cycles of the moon is only 354 days which is 10 and a quarter and a day shorter than the solar year so every few years the Jewish authorities would have to add a leap month just like we have a leap day on February 29th basically what they do was every few years they just decide to repeat the month of Adar so in most years you had just one Adar but in other years you had first Adar and second Adar it'd be kind of like us having first March and second March the result of of uh different the result was that different Jewish feasts would move around a bit for example if you celebrate Passover on the 14th of the month of Nissan but they proclaim a second Adar in a given year that's going to delay Passover by a month it all averages out in the long term but in a given year A Feast might move well not everybody was happy about that and this was one of the big disputes between the authority of the Dead Sea scroll between the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jerusalem Temple authorities the Dead Sea Scrolls Community thought that by moving the feasts the temple authorities were celebrating them on the wrong day and they were fundamentally corrupting the feasts of the Lord fortunately here in jubilees the angel of the presence is here to set us straight and tell us what God really wants and you Moses command the children of Israel so that they shall guard the years in this number 364 days and it will be a complete Year and no one shall corrupt its appointed time from its days or from its feasts because all of the appointed times will arrive in them according to their testimony and they will not pass over a day and they will not corrupt a feast so got that a year is going to be 364 days only none of that lunar nonsense where some years are 10 days shorter making them 354 days and then you have to have occasional years that are longer with a second AAR to balance things out the angel of the presence warns and there will be those who will examine the moon diligently because it will corrupt the appointed times and it will advance from year toe 10 days therefore the years will come to them as they corrupt and make a day of testimony a reproach and a profane day a festival and they will mix up everything a holy day is profaned and a profane one for a holy day because they will set arai the months and sabbaths and feasts and jubilees so none of that using the moon when you're calculating a year nonsense a year is exactly 364 days long Heaven has spoken Noah's family then gets busy repopulating the Earth so like The Incredibles they get busy and the wives of Noah's sons get names and ham built a city for himself and he named it after his wife na elama o and japheth saw it and was jealous of his brother and he also built a city for himself and named it after his wife adanes and Shem dwelt with his father Noah and built a city near his father on the mountain and he also named it after his wife Seda Tab and behold these three cities were near Mount lubar Seda tbab was in front of the mountain on its East and now elok was facing south and aatases was toward the west Noah also gives a speech to his family warning them against repeating the things that led to the flood he says that one of these things was the fornication that the Watchers committed with human women another was all the violence and cannibalism that resulted but he is concerned that similar mistakes may be made in the future because he tells them for I see and behold the demons have begun to mislead you and your children and now I fear for your sakes that after I die you will pour out the blood of men upon the Earth and you will be blotted out from the surface of the Earth and this is something something new up to this point the jubilus hadn't mentioned demons but here they are said to be misleading Noah's family and descendants and they're going to be more interesting than you might suspect so keep an ear peeled for references to them we also read about a child that was born into Noah's extended family named Kanan who actually appears in gen in Jesus's genealogy in Luke 3:36 here's what happened with Canan and the child grew and his father taught him writing and he went forth in order that he might seek a place where he could build a city and he found a writing which the ancestors engraved on Stone and he read what was in it and he transcribed it and he sinned because of what was in it since there was in it the teaching of the Watchers by which they used to observe the Omens of the sun and moon and stars within all the signs of heaven and he copied it down but he did not tell about it because he feared to tell Noah about it lest he be angry with him because of it so Kanan went out and found some writing that the ancestors had engraved on Stone Before the Flood told you things like tablets are more durable than Scrolls this won survived the flood and it contained secrets that had been given to the ancestors by the Watchers which amounted to a kind of astrology this would not be like modern astrology whereby people calculate what will happen based on future motions of heavenly bodies then they you know predict where the planets are going to go and then infer things from that instead this would have been the kind of astrology that they used in ancient Mesopotamia where you waited to see what the sun moon and stars did and then interpreted it as a sign or Omen of what's going to happen next still it's a kind of ancient astrology and it came from the watchers from Angels so you'd think that it would be good or at least accurate and the jubilus doesn't dispute its accuracy but we sense that the chosen people aren't supposed to be using it because Canaan is afraid to tell Noah about it anyway now that the human race is rebooting and Noah's family is growing they divvy up the land that each branch of the family will inherit this was at the beginning of the 33rd Jubilee or am 1569 for your listening pleasure shim the ancestor of the seites and thus the Israelites gets the middle portion of the earth and it includes Mount Zion Mount Si and the Garden of Eden ham the ancestor of the Africans gets the more southerly regions including the deserts and japeth the ancestor of the Europeans gets the Northerly regions the text notes that this land is cold and in the land of ham and the land of ham is hot but the land of shim is not hot or cold because it is mixed with cold and heat they also swear an oath against anyone who violates these boundaries which is foreshadowing because that's exactly what's going to happen as we'll see first though you remember how Noah spoke about the demons misleading his descendants well in the third week of that Jubilee the polluted demons began to lead astray the children of Noah's sons and to lead them to Folly and to destroy them and this time we get more information about the demons knowah praise to God saying and you know that which your Watchers the fathers of these Spirits did in my days and also these spirits who are alive shut them up and take them to the place of judgment and do not let them cause corruption among the sons of your servant oh my God because they are cruel and were created to destroy and let them not rule over the spirits of the living because you alone know their judgment and do not let them have power over the children of the righteous henceforth and forever for a modern listener this is quite startling today we think of demons simply as Fallen Angels which would put them in the same category as the Watchers who were angels that fell through their involvement with human women but the Watchers were locked up in the depths of the earth so why do we have demons roaming around Earth today the jubilous answer to this question is that the demons are something else they aren't pure Angels instead they are the spirits of the Giants their fathers were the Watchers but their mothers were the daughters of men Noah says that they are cruel and that they were created to destroy which is reflected in all the destruction they caused Before the Flood Noah asked God not to let them rule over the spirits of the living which means essentially his family so the angels of the presence tell Moses and the Lord Our God spoke to to us so that we might bind all of them God thus directed the angels of the presence to bind up the demons and put them in the place of judgment as Noah had asked however the chief of the spirits mastema came and he said oh Lord Creator leave some of them before me and let them obey my voice and let them do everything which I tell them because if some of them are not left for me I will not be able to exercise the authority of my will among the children of men because they are intended to corrupt and Lead astray before my judgment because the evil of the sons of men is great and now we have a new character enter the story Masta and this is the name of the chief or leader of the Demons it's the jubil ist's main name for Satan uh we'll see in a moment that he also calls him Satan and he's also referred to as Masta in the book of First Enoch which we'll talk about in the future Masta makes an appeal to God asking that some of the Demons be allowed to remain free and to obey him since without this he won't be able to exercise his authority and he is apparently allowed to do that because the evil of the sons of men is great and so he's allowed to corrupt some of them and bring out their true evil and lead them astray before the Judgment here's how God responds and he said let a tenth of them remain before him but let nine Parts go down into the place of judgment so God has 90% of the Demons bound and sent to the place of judgment with their fathers the Watchers but he lets a tenth of them remain on Earth and you can only imagine how bad it would be if we had 10 times the number of demons that we do now Roman the Earth God also has the angels of the presence helped the human race in other ways and he told one of us to teach Noah all of their healing because he knew that they would not walk uprightly and would not strive righteously and we acted in accord with all of his words all of the evil ones who were cruel we Bound in the place of judgment but a tenth of them we let remain so that they might be subject to Satan upon the earth and the healing of all their illnesses together with their seductions we told Noah so that he might heal by means of herbs of the earth and Noah wrote everything in a book just as we taught him according to every kind of healing and the evil spirits were restrained from following the sons of Noah and he gave everything which he wrote to Shem his oldest son because he loved him much more than all of his sons there's some interesting stuff here first the jubil indicates that demons cause diseases as well as Temptations but God had one of the angels of the presence teach Noah how to cure these using natural remedies or medicines and Noah wrote all these in a book that he gave to Shem now that's interesting enough in itself but it makes me wonder if the jubil list is referring to a lost work of Jewish literature specifically Jewish Medical literature I mean think about it um think about the other cases where we've encountered where it mentions someone writing something at the beginning of the book of jubilees Moses is told to write this book so that's jubilees itself a real book elsewhere we hear about Enoch writing a book about his Visionary experiences and that's first Enoch we also hear about Canan transcribing a text of astrological Omens and that might have been a real book that we just don't have anymore and here we read about Noah writing a writing a medical text so I wonder if there was a now lost medical text that was attributed to Noah and passed down among the seites or Israelites because the claim it was to shim sounds like it's communicating to the audience that that that's how we the Israelites got this book it's also interesting that we have confirmation here that the angels of the presence bound 90% of the Demons but they left 10% of them on Earth to be subject to Satan and here Masta is called Satan so we know they're both the same thing we now get up to the death of Noah and he's buried on Mount lubar where the ark came to rest the jubil also tells us that Noah was supremely righteous and that he was the greatest of the sons of men except for Enoch because Enoch's work is to be a witness to the generations of the World by reporting each of their deeds on the day of judgment we also now come to the Tower of Babel incident at this point the sons of Noah have left the land of Ararat because Noah is now dead and they've moved to the east of Ararat to a land called shinar which is the part of Mesopotamia that includes Bon so think modern Iraq they departed from the land of Ararat toward the East into shinar because they built a city and a tower saying come let us go up in it into heaven and they began building and in the fourth week they baked bricks in Fire and Bricks were for them like stones and the mud with which they plastered was bamin which came out of the Sea and the Springs of water in the land of Shar I I like how the jubiles tells us that bricks were like were for them like stones uh the first time I visited Israel I could see why stoning was the national form of capital punishment in the Bible they've got Stones lying all over the place it is a very Rocky country so they would naturally use stones to build structures such as houses but they don't have as many stones laying around in the flat plane of Mesopotamia which is dominated by winding rivers and is kind of swamp y uh so they would take mud and make bricks out of it and the jubilus lets his Jewish readers know that they use brick the way we use Stone he also mentions that they plastered the bricks in of the Tower with bidaman uh this is something that the Israelites would have been familiar with because you can find it in the southern Judean desert like around the Dead Sea but the jubil also lets the readers know where the Mesopotamian baman or asphalt came from it was from the sea and the Springs of water in the land and bidaman does indeed bubble up from the ground in Iraq as we heard in episode 308 on the Baghdad battery so you can go to mysterious. fm38 to hear about that now the building of the tower took a really long time and they built it 43 years they were building it its width was 203 bricks and the height of a brick was 1/3 of its length 5,433 cubits and 2 Palms its height rose up and 13 STS was its wall so wow 43 years to build this thing and because of the detailed measurements the jubil list gives us we can convert its height into modern terms basically it's 5433 cubits and two Palms in height and that would work out to it be in 1.5 mil tall which is really monstrous so God shares his views with the angels of the presence and the Lord Our God said to us behold the people are one and they have begun working now nothing will escape them behold let us go down and let us mix up their tongues so each one will not hear another's word and they will be scattered into cities and Nations and therefore one Council will not reside with them until the day of judgment and the Lord went down and we went down with him and we saw the city and the tower which the sons of men had built and he mixed up their tongues and therefore one did not hear another's word and so they ceased to build the city and the tower therefore all of the land of Shar is called Babel because there the Lord mixed up the languages of the sons of men and from there they were scattered into their cities according to each of their languages and Nations so the people now had multiple languages and had to divide up into groups but what about that massive Tower they'd been working on for 43 years and the Lord sent a great wind upon the tower and overthrew it on the earth and behold it is between Asher and Babylon in the land of Shar and he called it the overthrow so exit massive Tower stage left now you'll recall that when they divided up the land for Noah's sons Shem got the part that was in the middle and it included Mount Zion so that's the Holy Land Israel uh semites like the later Israelites were supposed to get that land and they even took an oath against anyone who violated the boundaries and as I said that was for shadoan because here comes the boundary violation ham and his sons went into the land which was his possession which he found in his portion in the land of the South but Canaan saw that the land of Lebanon as far as the river of Egypt was very good and he did not go into the land of his inheritance toward the west that is the sea but he dwelt in the land of Lebanon Eastward and Westward from the bank of the Jordan and from the shore of the sea and ham his father and Kush and misraim his brothers said to him you have dwelt in a land which is not yours nor did it come forth for us by lot do not do this because if you do this you and your children will fall in the land and be cursed with sedition because by sedition you have dwelt and by sedition your children will fall and you will be uprooted forever do not dwell in the dwelling of Shem because it came to Shem and his sons by lot you are cursed and you will be cursed more than all of the sons of Noah by the curse which we swore with an oath before the holy judge and before Noah our father but he would not listen to them and he dwelt in the land of Lebanon from hamath to the entrance of Egypt he and his sons until this day and therefore that land is called Canaan so got that the land was supposed to go to the seites like the Israelites but it was usurped by Canaan so it was called Canaan and that's how the Canaanites got there cons consquently in The jubils View when Abraham Isaac and Jacob or Israel came back into the land they were coming back into land that rightfully belonged to them that but that had been taken and when the Israelites come back from The Exodus they're reclaiming land that's rightfully theirs it's just that the Canaanites have been squatting on it for several centuries unfortunately the world was continuing to deteriorate and after Canaan took the land of Canaan mankind came up with a brand new invention War and the sons of Noah began fighting in order to take captive and to kill each other to pour the blood of man upon the Earth to eat blood to build fortified cities and walls and Towers so that one man will be raised up over the people to set up the first kingdoms to go to war people against people and Nation against nation and City against City and everyone will act to do evil and to acquire weapons of battle and to teach their sons war and they began to take captive a city and to sell male and female slaves so the evil of slavery is a product of the evil of war and it's true that in the ancient world many slaves were captives taken during wartime and that's how the jubil sees the institution getting started however there was also other stuff going on and Ur the son of C said built the city of UR of the caldes and he named it after his name and his father's name and they made for themselves molten images and everyone worshiped the icon which they made for themselves as a molten image and they began making graven images and polluted likenesses and cruel Spirits assisted them and led them astray so that they might commit sin and pollution and the prince memma acted forcefully to do all of this and he sent other spirits to those who were set under his hand to practice all error and sin and all transgression to destroy to cause to perish and to pour out blood upon the Earth so Masta or Satan used the evil spirits the 10% of the demons that he still had at his disposal to encourage all of this wickedness including instigating Wars on the earth and the making and worshiping of Idols now we come to the year anom Mundi 1876 nearly 1900 years after creation and this happens and in this 39th Jubilee in the second week in the first year terara took a wife and her name was Edna daughter of Abram daughter of his father's sister and in the seventh year of that week she bore a son for him and he called him Abram after the name of his mother's father because he died before his daughter conceived a son and the L began understanding the straying of the land that everyone went astray after graven images and after pollution and his father taught him writing and he was two weeks of years old and he separated from his father so that he might not worship the idols with him and he began to pray to the creator of all so that he might save him from the straying of the sons of men and so that his portion might not fall into straying after the pollution and Scorn so now Abram who will become Abraham is born and he turns to the true God and away from idols and one day through him Redemption will come to the world and this brings to a close the portion of the book of jubilees that you said we'd be focusing on today is there more interesting stuff in the book there is uh for people who are interested I'd suggest reading the rest of it in fact I'll briefly note three interesting things that occur in the book The First is in chapter 15 and it is so weird uh you'll recall that out of the seven kinds of angels that were created on day one two of them the angels of the presence and the angels of sanctification were a special Elite Class compared to the other five kinds of angels and they were specially consecrated to God for example they were the only Angels who kept the Sabbath so you kind of have like the equivalent of Israelite angels and Gentile Angels well in jubilees 15 Abraham circumcises his household something that we read about in The Parallel in Genesis 17 but in jubilees the angel of the presence then says that God instituted circumcision for Israel because the nature of all of the angels of the presence and all of the angels of sanctification was thus from the day of their creation and in the presence of the angels of the presence and angels of sanctification he Sanctified Israel so that they might be with with him and with his Holy Angels what this is saying is that the two classes of elite Angels the angels of the presence and of sanctification were circumcised from the day of their creation which might mean they're created circumcised it was a mark of their belonging to God in a special way and so God commanded that the Israelites be circumcised so that they would belong to God in a special way so yeah yeah there are angels who were created circumcised wow incidentally and that means there are other angels that weren't created circumcised incidentally this same chapter also confirms something else that we read about in the Bible as we discussed in episode 112 on God and the gods which you can listen to at mysterious. fm112 uh God put all the Nations under the authority of angelic princes after the Tower of Babel except for Israel which he kept for himself Deuteronomy 32: 8 and9 says when the most high apportioned the Nations at his dividing up the sons of humankind he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God for yahweh's portion was his people Jacob the share of his inheritance well the jubil confirms the same thing in different words saying he chose CH Israel that they might be a people for himself and he Sanctified them and gathered them from all of the sons of man because there are many nations and many people and they all belong to him but over all of them he caused spirits to rule so that they might lead them astray from following him but over Israel he did not cause any angel or Spirit to rule because he alone is their ruler and he will protect them and he will seek for them at the hand of his angels and at the hand of his spirits and at the hand of all of his authorities so that he might guard them and bless them and they might be his and he might be theirs henceforth and forever so just like Deuteronomy Jubilee says that Spirits rule the other nations but God kept the rule of Israel for himself you said that there was a third interesting thing that you also wanted to point out about jubilees before we get to the faith perspective what was that the third thing is something we've already encountered but I haven't pointed out its full significance yet you'll recall that in chapter 1 the book begins with God talking to Moses but this is a fairly short exchange and go God quickly turns the task of revealing things to Moses over to the angel of the presence presumably the leader of the that class you know the he's the leader of the angels of the presence presumably well the angel of the presence then starts narrating a bunch of material that in general terms will end up in Genesis and exodus so this is how Moses got a key part of the law furthermore the angel gives Moses a lot of legal instructions about things like feasts sacrifices circumcision and so on so the angel is a key part of how the law of Moses was instituted at Mount Si and we'll soon see why that may be significant then let's turn to the faith perspective what can we say about the book of jubilees from the faith perspective well the first thing is that it's not part of the Bible unless you're a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church consequently the vast majority of Christians do not regard it as a divinely inspired work and if so it shouldn't be relied upon as one that means that whatever the book says should not be taken as automatically true we can consider ideas from the book but they literally aren't gospel does this mean that we should ignore it when we read other books of the Bible no it doesn't mean that uh because jubilees does represent a prominent strain of Jewish thought we're not sure how widely shared that thought was as we've seen the book was considered authoritative in the Dead Sea Scrolls Community which likely means the ases but it likely would have been less influential among the Sadducees and the Pharisees the degree to which its ideas were accepted probably varied on an idea by idea basis some things that are mentioned in jubilees were likely widely shared like the idea that Adam and Eve's children had to marry their siblings or the idea that Israel was ruled directly by God and the other nations by spirits but other ideas were probably less common for example we know that the Jewish temple authorities in this time were using a lunar solar calendar and that meant that most Jews used this calendar they didn't use the 364 day strictly solar calendar that jubilees advocates so that was definitely a minority position a key principle of interpretation though is that we should look at any witness to what some people believed in a particular period as raising possibilities for how a text in the Bible might be understood so things in jubilees don't show us the meaning of biblical passages but they raise possibilities about how those passages were understood by the original audience at least for books written near or after the time that jubilees was composed since you said jubilees was composed around 150 BC that leaves out most of the books of the Old Testament most of them were composed well before that time but the New Testament is an entirely different story all of it was written after jubilees did jubilees have any influence on the authors of the New Testament the answer is a definite maybe there are certainly passages in the New Testament that endorse ideas that are found in jubilees uh this is why I made a point of mentioning the role of the Angel of the presence in the given of the Mosaic law because the role of the angels in this is something that is mentioned in the New Testament multiple times and it's something you otherwise likely wouldn't think of when you read the Old Testament it seems like the law is coming directly from God to Moses so it can come as a surprise when St Paul says why then the law it was added on of transgressions until The Descendant should come to whom it had been promised having been ordered through Angels by the hand of a mediator so the law of Moses had been ordered through Angels or ordained through Angels or given through angels in different translations similarly the author of Hebrews speaks of the law of Moses and says for if the word spoken through Angels was binding and every transgression and act of Disobedience received a just penalty how will we escape if we neglect so great a Salvation which had its beginning when it was spoken through the Lord his argument is thus that the law of Moses was spoken through angels and was binding so if we neglect the Salvation spoken through the Lord Jesus we will be held even more accountable for our Disobedience and in Acts Luke twice pictures St Steven the first martyr as discussing this concept for example in his his defense before the Sanhedrin Steven says this you who receive the law by directions of angels and have not observed it here step is depicted as saying that the law of Moses was received by the direction of angels but even more to this point is the passage is this passage from the same speech where Stephen is reviewing the history of Israel and says this is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers this is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Si and who with our fathers received living oracles to give to us so here Steven doesn't just refer to the Mosaic law being given through angels in general instead he refers to one specific angel that spoke to Moses on Mount Si which is exactly what we have in jubilees that's the closest conceptual parallel to the material in jubilees in the New Testament there are other passages that also share ideas with the book beyond the Angels given the law idea but this one ex is exactly what jubilees envisions what do you make of these parallels do you think that they show the New Testament authors were familiar with or were using jubilees I think that what it shows is that they had ideas that were like those found in jubilees but it's harder to show that they were getting those ideas directly from the book ideas aren't just confined to the pages of a book that contains them they get into General circulation and without a direct quotation of a source which we don't have in any of the New Testament passages you can't prove that they were used in this specific book this is different than the situation with first Enoch first Enoch is directly quoted in verses 14 and 15 to the book of Jude he even names his source as Enoch so we know that Jude was used in the book of First Enoch but in none of the passages do the New Testament authors name jubilees or give direct quotations from it as a result some Scholars have tried to find other bases for the ideas that they're using for example Deuteronomy 332 says that God came from C and he came with myriads of holy ones at least that's how it reads in some translations other translations render the phrase myriads of holy ones in other ways if it should be translated this way it is likely it could be referring to God bringing angels with him from SI but all that would mean is that he had angels with him not that he gave the law through those angels people have also appealed to Psalm 68:17 and the Hebrew here is difficult but it could refer to God having thousands of Chariots with him at SI if so those would likely be references to Angelic chariots but it still would only show that Angels were with God not that he gave the law through them what do you make of these alternative suggestions I think that they're possible but kind of a stretch the parallels with jubilees are much closer and so I think it more likely that the New Testament authors shared ideas that are found in jubilees and they may have read jubilees but they also could have picked up the idea somewhere else since none of them name or directly quote the book are there other passages in the New Testament that jubilees Can Shed light on even if the New Testament authors aren't directly using the book there are uh particularly in Jude and second Peter for example Jude says the Angels who did not keep to their own domain but deserted their proper Dwelling Place he has kept in Eternal bonds under deep Gloom for the Judgment of the great day that's what jubilees reports happening the Watchers did not keep to their own domain the way they should they mingled with human women and so God had the good Angels chain them up in the depth in the Deep of the Earth for the day of judgment this is like what we read in jubilees in fact it's the same idea but I think that Jude is specifically thinking of first Enoch here because he says the disobedient Angels deserted their proper dwelling place and that that happens more clearly in first Enoch than in jubilees in jubilees God first sends the Watchers to Earth on a mission and only then do they get mixed up with human women but in Enoch the rebellious angels are apparently still in heaven and they look down and see these hot gorgeous human women and then go after them so Enoch makes it sound more like they abandoned their dwelling place and we already know that Jude was using first Enoch because he quotes it so I think Enoch is more is the more likely source of this passage in Jude similarly in a parallel passage in second Peter Peter says God did not spare the Angels who sinned but held them captive in Tartarus with chains of darkness and handed them over to be kept for judgment and did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah a proclaimer of righteousness and seven others when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly and condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction here also Peter is speaking of Angel sinon and then being chained in Tartarus for the day of judgment with Tartarus being the dark abyss in Greek mythology where the Titans were confined so that fits with what happened to the Watchers who were sort of like Titans in Israelite thought but notice that Peter also links this to two other cases where God didn't spare someone first he mentions how God didn't spare the Angels who sned then he mentions how they didn't spare the world in the time of Noah and then he mentions how he didn't spare Sodom and Gomorrah those three judgments happen in the same sequence in Genesis in Genesis 6 first the sons of God send with the daughters of men then the great flood occurs and then later after the great flood Sodom and Gomorrah are judged so that strongly suggests that he refers to the sin and chaining of angels that Peter is referring to the sin and chaining of Angels in these passages Peter is referring to the sin of the Watchers or sons of God I also think that jubilees strengthens the evidence that we have from other sources like first Enoch to help understand what passages like this are saying even though we can't show that the New Testament authors were thinking of or directly using jubilees they were still using the same world of ideas found in these books so Jimmy what's your bottom line on jubilees jubilees offers a fascinating look at what's some Jews believed in the time immediately before and during the time of Jesus it is very interesting to read but for the vast majority of Christians it is not regarded as a book of scripture and so you should not assume what it says is true it but it can play a useful role when trying to figure out what the biblical authors were thinking in some cases we just have to be careful and use what we know about the faith in general including all that God has made clear to us in the years since jubilees was written and Jimmy what further resources can we have offer for listeners and viewers we'll have a link to James Vander Cam's translation of jubilees also James charlesw Worth's Old Testament suit epigrapher uh which is two volumes and a link to James Vander Cam's large two volume commentary on jubilees also a shorter small commentary on jubilees and Vander Cam's book The Dead Sea Scrolls today and now it's time to hear from you what are your theories about the book of jubilees and what it says about the primordial history from Genesis you can let us know by visiting sqpn domcom or the Jimmy Akens Mysterious World Facebook page sending us an email to feedback mysterious. FM sending a tweet to _ World visiting the StarQuest Discord community at sqpn docomo feedback line at 619 73845 one5 that's 619 738 4515 and I want to say a special word of thanks to Oasis Studio 7 for the video and animation work on this episode you can check it out by going to my YouTube channel youtube.com/ jimy Aken and by the way um these days I have multiple videos per week so please do check it out uh while you're there like subscribe and share the videos so you can help the channel grow and please do subscribe and when you subscribe be sure and hit the Bell notification so that you'll always get a notification whenever I have a new video whether it's Mysterious World or one of the other videos that come out each week Jimmy what's our next episode going to be about next week we're going to be talking about one of the most popular paranormal authors today a man named Whitley streber who has extensively reported his experience with apparent alien abductions specifically we're going to be talking about what he reported in his best-selling book communion folks be sure to check out the Mysterious World bookstore at Mysterious World store.com for links to all the books and videos that Jimmy mentions in the show be sure to get your very own Mysterious World t-shirt mug or more in our merchandise shop at sqpn docomo resources from our discussion on our show notes at mysterious. fm/ 319 and remember to help us continue to produce the podcast please visit sqpn dcom /give Jimmy yakin's Mysterious World is also brought to you in part by Rosary Army featuring awardwinning Catholic podcasts Rosary resources videos and the school of Mary online community prayer and learning platform learn how to make them pray them and give them away while growing in your faith at rosary army.com and schoolof mar.com and by the Grady group a Catholic company bringing Financial Clarity to to their clients across the United States using Safe Money options to produce reasonable rates of return for their clients learn more at grgroup inc.com and by great lakes Customs law helping importers and individuals with seizures penalties and compliance with US Customs matters throughout the United States visit greatlakes Customs law.com [Music] until next time Jimmy yaken thank you for exploring with us our Mysterious World thanks Dom and once again I'm Dom bettinelli thank you for listening to Jimmy yens Mysterious World on Star Quest [Music] [Music]