James C. VanderKam
He draws the information about the wives' names from Jub 4:9, 11, and Jub
4:10 mentions the nine additional sons. Epiphanius, in the sequel, speaks
about the necessity of marrying cousins in the next generations (7, 2), a
point made repeatedly by the author of Jubilees in chap. 4 (w. 15, 16, 27, 28,
33). Epiphanius does not introduce the material from Jubilees as scripture,
and Jubilees is not among the biblical books he names in his treatise Mea
sures and Weights; but the information in the book of Jubilees was reliable
enough for him to use in refuting a sect that attributed a different origin and
nature to Seth.
Measures and Weights (392): Though Epiphanius wrote his "Bible
handbook"^29 in Greek, the full text has not survived in the original but is
available in a Syriac translation. Fortunately, the section from Jubilees is
among the extant Greek sections. When discussing the scriptural measure
modius, he notes that it contains twenty-two xestai. "Now I speak of the 'just'
modius, as the Law is accustomed to say, according to the sacred measure.
For, O lover of good, God did twenty-two works between the beginning and
the seventh day, which are these:.. ." He then lists the twenty-two works of
the first week, obviously reproducing Jubilees' creation account, though he
does not here name his source (21-22; see also 23-24). The extent of the cita
tion and its precision (the twenty-two works are the same and are correctly
distributed over the six days) offer grounds for thinking Epiphanius had ac
cess to a Greek translation of Jubilees, not simply a work containing extracts
from it. He also reproduces Jubilees' connection between the twenty-two
works of creation until the sabbath and the twenty-two generations until Ja
cob (see also 3-4).
Other than Epiphanius, almost all the Greek citations from Jubilees
appear in Byzantine chronographies that date from several centuries later.
The earliest and most important of these was authored by George Syncellus,
who compiled his Chronograph)' circa 808-10. According to Heinrich Gelzer,
Syncellus took information deriving from Jubilees from sources such as
Panadorus and Annianus who were themselves dependent on the work of
Julius Africanus (ca. 180-ca. 250).^30 William Adler sees the tradition differ
ently. As Syncellus's work with the text of Jubilees does not always agree with
its employment in the Alexandrian chronographers, he seems not to have
- J. E. Dean, ed., Epiphanius' Treatise on Weights and Measures: The Syriac Version,
SAOC 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935), 3. - H. Gelzer, Sextus Julius Africanus und die byzantinische Chronographie, 2.1: Die
Nachfolger des Julius Africanus (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche, 1898).