Book of Jubilees

The Book of Jubilees is an ancient Jewish retelling of Genesis and the first part of Exodus. It organizes history into periods of forty‑nine years called jubilees, fifty of them from creation to Israel’s entry into Canaan. Scholars date it to the second century BC, most often to about 160‑150 BC. Its other common name is the Little Genesis. The Ethiopic title is Kufale.

Jubilees presents itself as a revelation given to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Angel of the Presence dictates the history to Moses from heavenly tablets (Jubilees 1:27‑29; 2:1). The book follows a 364‑day solar calendar and treats the Sabbath and the festivals as laws kept in heaven since creation.

The Qumran community prized the book. The Dead Sea Scrolls include fragments of about fifteen Hebrew copies of Jubilees, more than the community kept of almost any book outside the Hebrew Bible. The Damascus Document refers to it by name. The complete text survives only in Ge’ez. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church counts it as canon. Protestants and Catholics do not.

Jubilees agrees with the Book of Enoch that angels crossed the line. Jubilees 4:15 says the Watchers descended in the days of Jared to instruct humanity. Jubilees 4:22 says Enoch testified against the Watchers who sinned with the daughters of men. Jubilees 5:1‑2 gives the account of Genesis 6: the angels of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, took wives of all they chose, and the wives bore giants. Lawlessness increased (5:2‑3). God ordered the angels bound in the depths of the earth until the day of judgment (5:6‑10).

Jubilees names three races of offspring. Jubilees 7:21‑22 says the sons of the Watchers were of three kinds: the Naphidim, the Naphil, and the Elyo (Elioud). They were not alike. They devoured one another. The giants killed the Naphil, the Naphil killed the Elyo, the Elyo killed humanity, and one man killed another. The passage describes violence on the earth that filled it with blood and made it corrupt (7:23‑24).

Jubilees also records what happened to the offspring after their deaths. In 10:1‑6, evil spirits lead the children of Noah’s sons astray, and Noah prays about them. He calls the Watchers “the fathers of these spirits” and asks God to shut the spirits up in the place of condemnation (10:5). The prince of the spirits, Mastema, pleads for a tenth of them to stay under his rule, and God allows it (10:8‑9). The text gives the origin of the spirits as the offspring of the Watchers.

Jubilees and Enoch are separate works that agree on the angelic reading of Genesis 6. Jubilees knows the Enoch tradition and cites Enoch’s writings (4:17‑23), and it tells the story in its own way. Its Watchers descend to teach, and only later do they sin. It adds Noah’s prayer and the tenth of the spirits. Together they show that Jewish writers in the second century BC read the sons of God as angels.

R. H. Charles published the long‑standard English edition, The Book of Jubilees, or the Little Genesis, in 1902. James VanderKam’s critical text and translation (1989) is the modern scholarly edition.

## My View

I believe Jubilees and Enoch preserve the true reading of Genesis 6. I believe the sons of God were angels, the Watchers, and that the Naphidim, the Naphil, and the Elioud were their offspring.