Origins
The first biblical scholar to propose an origin for Jubilees was Robert Henry Charles (1855–1931). Charles proposed the author of Jubilees may have been a Pharisee and that Jubilees was the product of the midrash which had already been at work in the Old Testament Chronicles. However, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) at Qumran in 1947, Charles' Pharisaic hypothesis of the origin of Jubilees has been almost completely abandoned.
The dating of Jubilees has been somewhat problematic for biblical scholars. While the oldest extant copies of Jubilees can be assigned on the basis of the handwriting to about 100 BC, there is much evidence to suggest Jubilees was written prior to this date. For example, the author of Jubilees seems to be aware of 1 Enoch's "Book of Dreams"; of which, the oldest extant copy (DSS-13 4Q208) has been carbon dated to ca. 200 BC.
And yet, many scholars continue to subscribe to Robert Henry Charles's view that Jubilees could not have been written before the events of 1 Maccabees, due to perceived cryptic references within the text. As a result, general reference works such as the Oxford Annotated Bible and the Mercer Bible Dictionary conclude the work can be dated to 160–150 BC.
Read more about this topic: Jubilees
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)