Jubilees, Book of
Book of JubileesA book reworking and adding to the material found Genesis 1.1 to Exodus 15.22, claiming to be a book of law and history written by Moses while Moses was on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights.
In fact it seems have been written by a strict Jew somewhere between 500 to 1 BCE who wished to relate material known to him which was not found in the Biblical texts and to show that many of the laws of the Torah were first given to the patriarchs. Life after death is forseen.
This is the earliest surviving work to tell the story that Abraham's father was a maker of idols. Its title refers to the chronological preocupation of its writen who dates events in repect to Jubilee periods of 50 years.
Only an Ethiopic translation survives complete or almost complete as the book is considered part of the canon in the Ethiopic church.
But about one-fourth is extant in Latin and there are fragments in Greek and fragments found in Hebrew among the Dead Sea Scrolls and one Hebrew fragment from Masada.
This book was also known among Christians as The Little Genesis and The Book about the Daughters of Adam.
Some links to web editions of R. H. Charles's English translation: