The above conclusions are confirmed by a large mass of other evidence postulating the same date. We may, however, observe that our book points to the period already past--of stress and persecution that preceded the recovery of national independence under the Maccabees, and presupposes as its historical background the most flourishing period of the Maccabean hegemony.
_Author._--Our author was a Pharisee of the straitest sect. He maintained the everlasting validity of the law, he held the strictest views on circumcision, the sabbath, and the duty of shunning all intercourse with the Gentiles; he believed in angels and in a blessed immortality. In the next place he was an upholder of the Maccabean pontificate. He glorifies Levi's successors as high-priests and civil rulers, and applies to them the title assumed by the Maccabean princes, though he does not, like the author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, expect the Messiah to come forth from among them. He may have been a priest.
_The Views of the Author on the Messianic Kingdom and the Future Life._--According to our author the Messianic kingdom was to be brought about gradually by the progressive spiritual development of man and a corresponding transformation of nature. Its members were to reach the limit of 1000 years in happiness and peace. During its continuance the powers of evil were to be restrained, and the last judgment was apparently to take place at its close. As regards the doctrine of a future life, our author adopts a position novel for a Palestinian writer. He abandons the hope of a resurrection of the body. The souls of the righteous are to enjoy a blessed immortality after death. This is the earliest attested instance of this expectation in the last two centuries B.C.
LITERATURE.--_Ethiopic Text and Translations_: This text was first edited by Dillmann from two MSS. in 1859, and in 1895 by R. H. Charles from four (_The Ethiopic Version of the Hebrew Book of Jubilees ... with the Hebrew, Syriac, Greek and Latin fragments_). In the latter edition, the Greek and Latin fragments are printed together with the Ethiopic. The book was translated into German by Dillmann from one MS. in Ewald's _Jahrbücher_, vols. ii. and iii. (1850, 1851), and by Littmann (in Kautzsch's _Apok. und Pseud._ ii. 39-119) from Charles's Ethiopic text; into English by Schodde (_Bibl. Sacr._ 1885) from Dillmann's text, and by Charles (_Jewish Quarterly Review_, vols. v., vi., vii. (1893-1895) from the text afterwards published in 1895, and finally in his commentary, _The Book of Jubilees_ (1902). _Critical Inquiries_: Dillmann, "Das Buch der Jubiläen" (Ewald's _Jahrbücher d. bibl. Wissensch._ (1851), iii. 72-96); "Pseudepig. des Alten Testaments," Herzog's _Realencyk._[2] xii. 364-365; "Beiträge aus dem Buche der Jubiläen zur Kritik des Pentateuch Textes" (_Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preussischen Akad._, 1883); Beer, _Das Buch der Jubiläen_ (1856); Rönsch, _Das Buch der Jubiläen_ (1874); Singer, _Das Buch der Jubiläen_ (1898); Bohn, "Die Bedeutung des Buches der Jubiläen" (_Theol. Stud. und Kritiken_ (1900), pp. 167-184). A full bibliography will be found in Schürer or in R. H. Charles's commentary, _The Book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis_ (1902), which deals exhaustively with all the questions treated in this article. (R. H. C.)