Imagine opening a ‘lost book of the Bible’ and reading this. Satan, not God, tells Abraham to sacrifice his son. Jacob kills his twin brother Esau with an arrow. And anyone who uses the moon to plan God’s feasts is breaking God’s eternal law.
This book is real. It is called the Book of Jubilees. Many videos online say church leaders ‘banned’ it or ‘removed’ it from the Bible to hide the truth.
Is that true? Did the church throw away a book that God wrote?
The answer is no. Jubilees was never part of the Bible. Nobody hid it. God’s people simply never heard God’s voice in it. In fact, when you place it next to the Bible, it argues with the Bible. Let us see why.
KEY WORDS IN THIS POST
- Scripture: the books that are ‘breathed out by God’ (2 Timothy 3:16). Together they make up our Bible.
- Canon: the list of books that belong in the Bible. The word comes from a Greek word for a measuring rod.
- Pseudepigrapha: ancient Jewish writings that falsely claim a famous Bible figure, such as Moses or Enoch, as their author. ‘Pseudo’ means false. Jubilees is one of these books.
- Apocrypha: extra books, mostly written between the Testaments. Roman Catholics accept them; Protestants do not.
What’s the Book of Jubilees?
Jubilees is an ancient Jewish book. It retells the Bible’s story from creation (Genesis 1) to the time when Moses met God on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24). Because it covers so much of Genesis, early Christians called it ‘Little Genesis’.
Its name comes from the way it counts time. It divides all of history into ‘jubilees’—blocks of 49 years (seven times seven years).
The book also makes a bold claim about itself. It says an angel, called ‘the angel of the presence’, read it to Moses on Mount Sinai from ‘heavenly tablets’ (Jubilees 1:27–2:1). In other words, it claims to be a secret second book from Moses.
But the American scholar James C. VanderKam, who has spent decades studying Jubilees, dates it to about 160–150 BC. That is more than a thousand years after Moses. Jewish writers at that time often retold Bible stories to answer the questions of their own day.
The Book of Jubilees at a glance
| QUESTION | ANSWER |
|---|---|
| Other names | ‘Little Genesis’; in Ethiopia it is called Kufale, meaning ‘division’ |
| When it was written | About 160–150 BC |
| Who really wrote it | An unknown Jewish writer, more than 1,000 years after Moses |
| Where the full text survives | Only in Ge’ez, the old church language of Ethiopia |
| Who accepts it as Scripture today | Only the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) |
Was Jubilees Ever in the Bible?
No. To see why, ask a simple question: who first received the Old Testament? Paul answers: ‘To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God’ (Romans 3:2). An ‘oracle’ is a message from God. God gave the Old Testament to Israel to keep safe. And Israel never accepted Jubilees. Three facts make this clear:
- Jesus’ Bible had three parts. After he rose from the dead, Jesus spoke about ‘everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms’ (Luke 24:44). This is the three-part Hebrew Bible that Jews still use today. Jubilees is not in any of these parts.
- Jesus’ Bible had a first page and a last page. Jesus spoke of righteous blood shed ‘from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah’ (Matthew 23:35). Abel’s death is in Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible. Zechariah’s death is in Chronicles, the last book in the Hebrew order (2 Chronicles 24:20–22). Jesus was saying, ‘From the first page to the last.’
- Prophecy had stopped. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (around AD 95) wrote that Israel had 22 holy books—the same as our 39, counted in a different way. He said nothing written after the Persian king Artaxerxes (around 400 BC) had the same authority, because no true prophets had come since then.
Jubilees was written about 250 years after that door had closed. The English scholar Roger Beckwith, in The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, argued that Israel’s list of holy books was already settled by then. Jubilees arrived too late.
A Book That Claims a Voice It Never Had
Jubilees does not just retell Genesis. It says, in effect, ‘This is what the angel told Moses.’ That claim is false. Moses lived around 1400 BC. Jubilees was written about 1,250 years later.
This matters a great deal. God ‘never lies’ (Titus 1:2). His Spirit cannot be the source of a book that falsely claims to come from Sinai. God’s law warned Israel about this very danger: ‘the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak … that same prophet shall die’ (Deuteronomy 18:20).
Some say the writer was only using Moses’ name as a style. But Jubilees’ whole authority rests on the claim that heaven dictated it. If that claim is false, the book cannot be God’s Word.
When Jubilees Rewrites Genesis
The Bible warns: ‘Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar’ (Proverbs 30:6). Jubilees adds to God’s words again and again. Sometimes it even ‘corrects’ them. First, meet one character. Mastema is Jubilees’ name for the chief of the evil spirits—a Satan-like figure.
The Bible compared with Jubilees
| TOPIC | WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS | WHAT JUBILEES SAYS | WHY IT MATTERS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who tested Abraham? | ‘God tested Abraham’ (Genesis 22:1) | Mastema asks God to test Abraham (Jubilees 17:16) | It shifts the act away from God |
| Who met Moses on the road? | ‘The LORD met him and sought to put him to death’ (Exodus 4:24) | Mastema tried to kill Moses (Jubilees 48:2–3) | Again, it changes who acted |
| Jacob and Esau | Esau ‘ran to meet him and embraced him’ (Genesis 33:4); later ‘his sons Esau and Jacob buried him’ (Genesis 35:29) | Jacob kills Esau with a bow in battle (Jubilees 38:2) | It invents a killing that clashes with the Bible’s story of peace |
| Abraham in Egypt | Abraham asks Sarah to say she is his sister (Genesis 12:11–13) | The lie is left out (Jubilees 13:11–15) | It cleans up its heroes |
Look at the pattern. The Bible does not hide its heroes’ sins, because its real hero is the God who saves sinners. Jubilees wants cleaner heroes, and it moves hard actions away from God. But Scripture does not need an editor. A book that tries to tidy up God’s Word cannot itself be God’s Word.
Moving Mount Sinai Back in Time
One of Jubilees’ biggest ideas is that Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob already kept the laws that Moses later received. In Jubilees, Noah keeps the Feast of Weeks (Jubilees 6:17–18). Abraham is the first to keep the Feast of Tabernacles (Jubilees 16:20–31). The Sabbath and the feasts are written on heavenly tablets as rules that last forever.
The Bible tells a different story. Moses told Israel: ‘Not with our fathers did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today’ (Deuteronomy 5:3). A ‘covenant’ is a binding agreement that God makes with his people. Paul says the same thing: ‘the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void’ (Galatians 3:17). First came God’s promise to Abraham. The law came much later. Abraham was made right with God by faith, not by keeping feasts.
GEERHARDUS VOS: REVELATION GROWS LIKE A TREE
The Dutch-American theologian Geerhardus Vos, who taught at Princeton Seminary, showed that God revealed his truth step by step. He wrote: ‘The organic progress is from seed-form to the attainment of full growth; yet we do not say that in the qualitative sense the seed is less perfect than the tree.’
‘Organic’ here means living and growing. Each stage was perfect for its time. Jubilees breaks this pattern. It takes the full-grown tree of Sinai and plants it back in Noah’s day.
The feasts were never the final thing: ‘These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ’ (Colossians 2:17). A shadow points to something real. Jubilees holds on to the shadow and calls it eternal.
The Battle over the Calendar
Jubilees cares deeply about calendars. It teaches that the true year has exactly 364 days, counted by the sun alone. It warns that people who follow the moon will celebrate God’s feasts on the wrong days (Jubilees 6:32–38).
But the Bible says God made the moon for this very job: ‘He made the moon to mark the seasons’ (Psalm 104:19; see also Genesis 1:14). Israel’s months began with the new moon (Numbers 28:11).
Jesus went up to Jerusalem to keep the feasts at the Temple (John 2:13; 7:10–14). The Temple followed a calendar that used the moon—the very calendar that Jubilees condemns. If Jubilees were right, Jesus himself would have broken God’s eternal law. But Jesus never sinned (Hebrews 4:15). So Jubilees must be wrong.
Paul warned believers who worried about sacred dates: ‘You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have laboured over you in vain’ (Galatians 4:10–11).
A Different Message from the Gospel
Jubilees’ whole spirit also pulls away from the gospel:
- It builds a wall against Gentiles. (Gentiles are people who are not Jewish.) In Jubilees, Abraham tells Jacob: ‘Separate thyself from the nations, and eat not with them’ (Jubilees 22:16, Robert Henry Charles’s translation). That is exactly what Peter did in Antioch—and Paul opposed him for it: ‘when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party’ (Galatians 2:12).
- It demands death for mixed marriages. A man who gives his daughter or sister to a Gentile must be stoned (Jubilees 30:7–10). Yet God placed Rahab of Jericho and Ruth the Moabite in the family line of Jesus (Matthew 1:5).
- It turns the Sabbath into a trap. Jubilees orders death for sleeping with your wife, drawing water, riding an animal or even fasting on the Sabbath (Jubilees 50:8, 12). Jesus said: ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:27).
What the Early Church Said
Timeline: Jubilees through history
- About 160–150 BC: An unknown Jewish writer composes Jubilees in Hebrew.
- AD 30–95: The apostles write the New Testament. They quote the Old Testament hundreds of times, but they never quote Jubilees as Scripture.
- About AD 400: Jerome, the scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, calls ‘Little Genesis’ an apocryphal book—that is, not Scripture (Letter 78).
- Sixth century: A church list known as the Gelasian Decree places ‘Little Genesis’ among the books to be rejected.
- 1947 onwards: Pieces of the Hebrew original are found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Even the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, which accept the Apocrypha, never accepted Jubilees. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) says the Apocrypha are ‘no part of the canon of the Scripture’ (1.3). Jubilees sits even further outside.
Who Decides What Is Scripture?
Someone may ask, ‘Isn’t this just one church’s list against another church’s list?’ No. The church does not make a book Scripture. God does that, by breathing it out. The church’s job is to recognise his voice. Jesus said, ‘My sheep hear my voice’ (John 10:27).
JI PACKER: THE CHURCH RECEIVED THE CANON
‘The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. God gave us gravity, by his work of creation, and similarly He gave us the New Testament canon, by inspiring the individual books that make it up.’ (James I. Packer, God Speaks to Man, 1965)
The French pastor and theologian John Calvin said that Scripture ‘bears upon the face of it as clear evidence of its truth, as white and black do of their colour, sweet and bitter of their taste’ (Institutes 1.7.2). The Westminster Confession adds that our full confidence comes from ‘the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts’ (1.5).
The American scholar Michael J. Kruger, in his book Canon Revisited, shows that God’s books carry their own marks. Here are three simple tests:
3 tests for Scripture
| TEST | THE QUESTION TO ASK | THE BIBLE’S 66 BOOKS | JUBILEES |
|---|---|---|---|
| God’s marks | Does it agree with the rest of Scripture and show God’s power? | Yes | No. It clashes with Genesis, the Psalms and Galatians |
| True source | Does it come from a true prophet or apostle? | Yes | No. It falsely claims Moses and an angel |
| Received by God’s people | Did God’s covenant people receive it? | Yes | No. Israel never received it; the early church rejected it |
Answering 4 Common Objections
- ‘The Ethiopian Bible includes it.’ True. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has a larger list of 81 books, including Jubilees and 1 Enoch. But no church’s list makes a book Scripture. A book must carry God’s marks.
- ‘It was found with the Dead Sea Scrolls.’ Also true. About 15 copies were found at Qumran, near the Dead Sea, and the community’s Damascus Document treats it as an authority. But this group had broken away from the Temple—partly over Jubilees’ calendar. Popular does not mean inspired.
- ‘The church removed it from the Bible.’ You cannot remove what was never there. No Hebrew Bible, no Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint), no Latin Bible and no Protestant Bible ever contained it. Even the 1611 King James Bible, which printed the Apocrypha between the Testaments, did not include Jubilees.
- ‘It is older than Genesis.’ No. Jubilees copies and changes Genesis, so it depends on Genesis the way a sermon depends on its text.
Should We Throw Jubilees Away?
No. Jubilees is a useful window into Jewish thinking before Jesus. Read Galatians next to it, and Paul’s message of grace shines brighter. But the Westminster Confession says such books may be used only like ‘other human writings’ (1.3). Read it like a history book, not a Bible: ‘test everything; hold fast what is good’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Conclusion: God Has Not Hidden His Word
Jubilees was never lost, hidden or banned. It was a clever human book that claimed a voice it never had, rewrote God’s Word and taught ideas the apostles opposed.
‘Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son’ (Hebrews 1:1–2). We do not need a secret book from an angel. We have the Son, and we have the 66 books that point to him. That is a truth worth living for—and dying for.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
Is the Book of Jubilees the same as the Year of Jubilee in the Bible?
No. In Leviticus 25, God told Israel to treat every fiftieth year as a Year of Jubilee. Land went back to its original family, and Israelites who had sold themselves as servants went free. The Book of Jubilees simply borrows the word for its 49-year blocks of history. The true Jubilee pointed forward to Jesus, who came ‘to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:19). The Year of Jubilee is God’s gift; the book is a human writing that uses its name.
Does the Bible mention any lost books?
Yes. The Old Testament names the Book of Jashar (Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18) and the Book of the Wars of the LORD (Numbers 21:14). These were sources that the Bible writers used, a bit like reference books. Mentioning a book does not make it Scripture. The Bible never mentions Jubilees at all. We can trust that God has kept every book he meant his church to have.
How is Jubilees connected to the Book of Enoch?
Both come from the same period, and both are in the Ethiopian Bible. Jubilees knows the Enoch stories well and praises Enoch as the first man to learn writing (Jubilees 4:17). Jude quotes one line that is also found in 1 Enoch (Jude 14–15). But quoting a line is not the same as approving a whole book. Paul quoted Greek poets too: ‘For we are indeed his offspring’ (Acts 17:28). Neither Enoch nor Jubilees is Scripture.
What does Jubilees say about the Nephilim?
Jubilees says that angels called Watchers came down to teach mankind but then sinned with human women (Jubilees 4:15; 5:1). Their children were giants, and God made them kill one another before the flood (Jubilees 5:9). It adds that evil spirits linked to these giants were later led by Mastema (Jubilees 10:1–11). Genesis 6:1–4 says far less. Where Jubilees adds detail, it is guessing, not revealing. Read Genesis first, and test every extra story by it.
Did Paul get the idea of ‘the law given through angels’ from Jubilees?
Stephen says Israel ‘received the law as delivered by angels’ (Acts 7:53), and Paul says the law ‘was put in place through angels’ (Galatians 3:19). Some think this idea came from Jubilees, where an angel speaks to Moses. But the Old Testament already hints that angels were present at Sinai (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalm 68:17). Stephen and Paul were drawing on Scripture and on common Jewish teaching. Sharing an idea with Jubilees does not mean they treated it as God’s Word.
Which English translation of Jubilees is best?
For a free version, Robert Henry Charles’s 1902 translation is available online, though its English is old. Orval S. Wintermute’s translation appears in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth (1985). James C. VanderKam’s translation and his large two-volume commentary (2018) are the standard for scholars. Whichever you choose, keep your Bible open beside it.
Can Jubilees help us work out the age of the earth?
Jubilees dates every event from creation. It places the Exodus 2,410 years after Adam (Jubilees 50:4). This shows that ancient Jewish readers took Genesis as real history across a few thousand years. But Jubilees’ numbers do not always match Genesis, and it has no authority of its own. For dating, we should work from the family lists in Genesis 5 and 11 themselves. Jubilees is a witness to how people read Genesis, not a guide that can correct it.
Related Reads
- Wisdom of Solomon: Wise Words but Not Scripture
- Letter of Jeremiah: Why Protestant Bibles Leave It Out
- Shouldn’t the Book of Enoch Be In the Bible? Why Isn’t It?
- Is the Ethiopian Bible the Oldest and Most Complete Bible?
- The Truth About Apocryphal Books: Why They’re Not in the Bible
- Is the Biblical Canon Self-Authenticating?
- Who Compiled the Bible? How 66 Books Became One
