The Book of Jubilees, an ancient text which details the history of the division of the Laws of Moses, is presented here complete.
The text discusses the laws revealed to Moses and treats his character as a second creator of the world. Each chapter covers a range of history spanning 49 years, with Moses life story and other principal events told over a course of 2,410 years.
Perhaps most importantly from a theological perspective, the book discusses the angels and how these entities formed a vital component of the Earth's creation. Enoch was taught by fallen angels; through them, he discovered writing and history. We also hear that early man was formed from a mating of Earthly humans and fallen angels, but that these hybrids were killed during the Great Flood.
The status of the Book of Jubilees was not properly ascertained until the 20th century, with the famous discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prior to this, the only manuscripts of Jubilees that were available date to the 15th/16th centuries in what is today Ethiopia, which left scholars unsure of its true origins. Modern scholars agree that the text dates to approximately 150 BC. Today, the text is mostly held as canonical in Ethiopia, while the Protestant and Catholic churches consider the work pseudepigrapha.
Robert Henry Charles, the translator of this edition, was an Irish theologian and scholar who translated a range of Old Testament apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. Highly respected, he contributed entries pertaining to his field to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and spent his later years as the archdeacon of Westminster, London.
