The Manuscript Tradition of Jubilees3rd ed. (Leipzig: F. Nies, 1853; reprinted, Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1967),
third part, pp. 155-56. It begins: "This is the book of remedies that the first
sages copied from the book of Shem, Noah's son, which was transmitted to
Noah at Mt. Lubar, one of the mountains of Ararat, after the flood." While
the first part of the short text looks very much like the section in Jubilees and
thus can, in some places, be used in evaluating some details in the text,^21 The
Book of Asaph does not constitute an extended quotation from Jubilees. The
writer presents the story in a somewhat different order and lacks parts of it
as it appears in Jubilees, for example, God's acceding to Mastema's request
that he be allowed to retain one-tenth of the demons. The author of The
Book of Asaph does not state the source for the story other than saying Noah
received it.
- Midrash Wayyissa'u: In the second half of the midrash, the war be
tween Jacob and Esau is recounted in a way parallel with the story in Jub 37- - Jellinek published this midrash as well in the third part of his Bet ha-
Midrash, 1-5. The situation with Midrash Wayyissa'u is reminiscent of the
one for The Book of Asaph: similar material is offered but the text reads far
differently than the parallels in Jubilees. The first section of the midrash de
tails Judah's wondrous military exploits against the king of Tappuach and
others by his brothers and father. There are several points of contact (e.g.,
the names of cities) between it and Jub 34:2-9.^22
There are traces of the influence of Jubilees elsewhere in Jewish litera
ture. These show that, in some form, information from Jubilees continued to
be of use to commentators on the text of Genesis and Exodus.^23
In Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees, I compared the
readings of the Hebrew fragments that had been published at that time with
the readings of the four Ethiopic manuscripts on which R. H. Charles had
based his edition. I found that the best Ethiopic readings and the Hebrew
- For examples, see VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, 2:58-60. R. H. Charles repro
duced the relevant part of The Book of Noah in his Ethiopic Version of the Hebrew Book of ju
bilees, Anecdota oxoniensia (Oxford: Clarendon, 1895), appendix 1 :179. M. Himmelfarb
translates the section in question and discusses it in "Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval
Hebrew Literature," in Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha,
ed. J. Reeves, SBLEJL 6 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 127-36. - Charles printed the latter half of the midrash as appendix II, 180-82, in his
Ethiopic Version of the Hebrew Book of Jubilees. See also VanderKam, Textual and Historical
Studies, 218-38. - For further information, see A. Epstein, "Le livre des Jubiles, Philon et le Midrasch
Tadsche," REJ 21 (1890): 80-97; REJ 22 (1891): 1-25; Himmelfarb, "Some Echoes," 115-41.