Book of Jubilees
Judaea · c. 160 – 100 BCE
A retelling of Genesis and Exodus on a strict 364-day calendar, preserved fully in Ge'ez.
What the document is
A Second Temple Jewish text found in fragments at Qumran and canonical in the Ethiopian tradition.
Why it matters
It shares source material with 1 Enoch and clarifies calendar disputes of the period.
How we treat this record
Attested in primary written sources that historians treat as reliable for this claim.
- Q01What is its dependency relationship with 1 Enoch?
- Q02How widely was its calendar used?
Documents that share themes, people, or historical periods with Book of Jubilees.
Dead Sea Scrolls
Documentedc. 250 BCE – 68 CE
Roughly 900 manuscripts that reset what scholars knew about Second Temple Judaism and textual transmission.
Shares Enoch and the Qumran community · calendar disputes · canon formation · Same period: Israel
Nag Hammadi Library
Documentedc. 350 CE (copies)
Thirteen codices that transformed the study of early Christian diversity.
Shares the Qumran community · canon formation · textual transmission
Josephus
Documentedc. 75 – 94 CE
The single most-used narrative source for first-century Judaea, written by a participant with obvious interests.
Same period: Israel
Epic of Gilgamesh
Documentedc. 2100 – 1200 BCE
The oldest surviving long-form literature, assembled across a millennium of tablet traditions.
textual transmission
Where Book of Jubilees connects to the rest of the ancient record — the worlds it belongs to, the chapters it sits in, the documents that record it, and the questions still open.