The Manuscript Tradition of Jubileesderived the information directly from them but through other sources.
Adler notes, for instance, that Syncellus regularly claimed that traditions at
tested in Jubilees alone were from Josephus's Antiquities: "But his very regu
lar pattern of misattributing citations from Jubilees to Josephus' Antiquities
makes it clear that at a prior stage in the transmission of these two works,
material from the two works had become confused."^31 Adler thinks
Syncellus and other Byzantine historians used a certain kind of reference
work: "This was, as has been proposed, not a continuous chronological nar
rative, but rather a collection of source material. In a work of this sort
Josephus and Jubilees were regularly cited together, since, in the scope and
nature of the material treated, the two works were parallel."^32 Such epitomes,
which included excerpts from a number of sources regarding the issues and
passages under discussion, were the sorts of materials from which the
chronographers drew their information that derived ultimately from works
such as Jubilees; they did not use the sources themselves.
Milik argued that a series of even less well-known Byzantine historians
had drawn data from Jubilees and had taken them directly from the writings
of Julius Africanus. If so, this would trace the translation of Jubilees back to a
time no later than the early third century C.E.^33
Besides the Greek material that has been collected by several editors,^34
there is now additional evidence for the influence of Jubilees in Christian ex
egesis of Genesis. The Catena on Genesis, some of which has only recently
been edited, contains some passages that either mention Jubilees as their
source or reflect data from it. For example, #551 (Cain's wife was named
AoaouX), #585 (it lists the names of the wives of the patriarchs recorded in
Gen 5 along with their family affiliation, just as in Jub 4), #590 (on Gen 5:21-
24: 'Evtbx rrpwToc eua0E YpaMM^0 '™' Kal £YPaH>e T& oijueTa TOU oupavoO KCU
The, TpOTrac KCXI TOUC ufjvaq [Jub 4:17: "He was the first of mankind who were
born on the earth who learned (the art of) writing, instruction, and wisdom
- W. Adler, Time Immemorial: Archaic History and Its Sources in Christian Chronog-
raphy from Julius Africanus to George Syncellus, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 26 (Washington,
D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1989), 191. - Adler, Time Immemorial, 193.
- Milik, "Recherches sur la version grecque du livre des Jubiles," RB 78 (1971): 545-57.
- The largest compilation is still that of H. Rcinsch, Das Buch der Jubilaen oder die
kleine Genesis (Leipzig: Fues's Verlag [R. Reisland], 1874), 251-382, although he included
more than just Greek material. See also A. Denis, Fragmenta Pseudepigraphorum Quae
Supersunt Graeca, PVTG 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 70-102; I reproduced them in The Book of Ju
bilees, 1.