Latest / Walk Talk: Faith in Motion / 018: Jubilees
Transcript
- Randy: The Little Genesis, the book not included in your Bible. That's what we're going to talk about today on the Walk Talk solo edition. All right. So here's another solo edition of the Walk Talk. later this week, we're going to release a new episode where myself and my brother PJ get into a very long conversation, very interesting in-depth conversation regarding a book that is not included in most Bibles. matter of fact, it's only included in the Ethiopian Bible and that book is the book of Jubilees, also known as the Little Genesis. Now, why is it called the Little Genesis? Well, ⁓ I'm not sure how the length compares to the book of Genesis that is found in the Protestant Bible. However, I will tell you that it definitely comes across as a companion for Genesis and it's a book that is not included in the canon. It's not included in the Roman Catholic Bible. It's not included in the Protestant Bible. It's just not there. But if you go and you read the Ethiopian Bible, they seem to include a lot more books than what is typically found in most of our Bibles. Now, I'm not a scholar. I'm not the person here to say that I think it should be or shouldn't be included. Matter of fact, I really don't have a strong opinion about it either way. ⁓ But I do think it has a lot of good information in it that is probably true. ⁓ Whether or not it's considered to be the inspirer of God, all I can do is trust the early church fathers in their decision to keep it out of the canon. Now, we get into it in the full episode as to why some of those reasons are. But just to give a real concise overview, I'll go through some of those arguments for and against the Book of Jubilees with you all now. Let's start with some arguments for including the book of Jubilees in the canon. The first argument is there was strong second temple credibility. So in other words, the second temple Judaism, which that's basically the era in which Christ walked the earth, they saw credibility. They saw credibility in the book of Jubilees. They believed that if it wasn't inspired, word of God that at least it was accurate or it was true. was widely used in Jewish circles before and around the time of Jesus and it was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. So in other words, we know that at least some Jewish communities thought that it was authoritative. The next is it has theological alignment with parts of scripture. So it expands on Genesis 6, which talks about the Watchers, which we discussed when we talked about the Book of Enoch. But it also has similar spiritual framework to the Book of Enoch, which again is quoted by Jude. So Jude actually quoted the Book of Enoch. And the Book of Jubilees talks in a very similar manner about the spiritual realm, specifically about some of the angels, the Watchers, et cetera. Implications early Christians were at least comfortable with this worldview of agents ⁓ angels demons ⁓ and this cosmic conflict so I kind of feel like personally my personal opinion is I think that the modern church and really organized religion as a whole including the Catholic Church and mainstream product Protestant ism ⁓ if I could say that word kind of shies away from some of these topics a little bit, where we get into this real, ⁓ spiritual and, and cosmological view of the world and of the universe. ⁓ they tend to keep it very clean. There is this spiritual realm. There are something called angels, ⁓ and the ones who rebelled against God are called demons. And then there's humans and then there's animals and that's pretty much it, right? You got God, got angels and demons, and then you got humanity, and then below that you got animals. And that's pretty much it. Whereas some of these other books, like the book of Enoch and like the book of Jubilees, talks about unclean spirits being different than angels or demons. Because both of those books refer to those unclean spirits as being the spirits of the Nephilim, which were the giants, the offspring. of angels, fallen angels, watchers, and humanity. And even that, ⁓ I don't know. mean, were the watchers angels? Were watchers and angels the same exact thing? I don't know. I mean, we read even in the Bible that there seems to be several different types of angels that are identified. And I won't get into them now because we've talked about that in the past. But the fact that there are several different types of angels that are identified tells me that maybe there is more to the spiritual beings than just angels and demons. Maybe it's not that cut and dry. Another reason for it to be included would be the precedence. So the Ethiopian church, ⁓ the Ethiopian Orthodox, and I'm not going to say this right, ⁓ Tawahedo church does include Jubilees. in its canon. So the implication there is that some apostolic era traditions treated it as scriptures. So we have the Essians who are the ones responsible I believe for the Dead Sea Scrolls that they found in Qumran who treated it as scripture. ⁓ I believe the only copies, think the only books they found more copies of in the Dead Sea Scrolls was like Isaiah and Psalms and maybe one other book. ⁓ Beyond that it was like Jubilees I believe was like the next like in terms of number of copies that they found so they really had a lot of reverence for this book the Essians had a lot of reverence for this book that they had so many copies in Qumran okay so those would be the arguments for it and again I'm not a scholar I'm not a biblical scholar all I could do is trust that the early church fathers made the right decision in determining what was maybe ⁓ some historical books that were good for reference and for understanding the context and the culture and Jewish tradition versus what was actually the inspired word of God. And if the early church fathers said that despite these four reasons, ⁓ they decided not to include it, all I could do is trust that. But let's talk about some of the arguments against including it, which ultimately won over since ⁓ it's not included in our canon. So. The very first reason is that it is not in the Jewish canon. So because it wasn't in the Jewish canon and it was a Jewish book, the early church fathers basically said, we're not going to include it either. They didn't include it. We're not going to include it either. By the time of Jesus and especially later, it really wasn't part of the Hebrew scriptures. So the Catholic logic was The Old Testament is rooted in what Israel recognized as authoritative. Therefore, was it recognized ⁓ ubiquitously? And I'm going to say that because obviously there were some sects of Judaism that did ⁓ believe it was authoritative, like the Essians, right? But because it wasn't ubiquitous, it wasn't part of that Second Temple tradition and included in their canon, the Jewish canon, therefore, It was left out of our Bible. ⁓ Rejected by early church consensus. the major canon list and councils do not include Jubilees. ⁓ It lacked the universal acceptance in the early church. So because it wasn't universally accepted, the books of the Bible that were included were universally accepted. There were some arguments for and against some of the books, but they were universally accepted, whereas the book of Jubilees was not. And then there's no direct New Testament citation. ⁓ So there's never a specific time where it is directly cited ⁓ in the New Testament. Could it be cited in the Old Testament? ⁓ Probably, because if you read it, you'll see that it's very similar to Genesis. There are certain stories ⁓ where you get more information in the Book of Jubilees than you do in Genesis, and actually it helps answer a lot of questions from my perspective. that I had just reading through Genesis. mean one of the questions that PJ and I talk about that I've heard throughout the years mostly from skeptics and atheists is where did Cain get his wives from? Where did he get his wife from? So we read the story of Cain, how God marks him ⁓ and then he goes out and says he takes his wife and they leave and they go and they end up founding a city and people ask where did get his wife because the Bible in Genesis doesn't really specify what the book of Jubilees does. ⁓ And what you'll see is it's kind of a, book of Jubilees is, it's mostly focused on the stories of Genesis with a little bit of Exodus thrown in there, but it more or less covers the book of Genesis just from a different perspective. A good way to look at it is the way you look at the four gospels. I mean, the four gospels are essentially telling the same story from four different perspectives. Now you got three of them which are considered the synoptic gospels which more or less, you know, stay in lockstep with each other with very slight deviations. ⁓ But it's very similar. In the book of Jubilees, you have basically the same stories. You get the story of creation, and Adam and Eve, and you get the story of Noah, you get the story of Abraham, ⁓ Isaac, Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Joseph. ⁓ But you get different details that Genesis don't include. And likewise, there are certain details that Genesis does include that are left out. And I was struggling to remember this point when PJ and I were talking, and you'll see when you watch the episode. But ⁓ for example, in the story of Joseph, when his interactions in the jail cell with, I believe, the cup bearer and the cook, I believe were the two... ⁓ dreams he interpreted, those dreams are told to us in Genesis. But in the book of Jubilees, we are told that he interprets their dreams, but it doesn't tell us what the dreams are. That's just one small example. But there are examples throughout Jubilees like that where you'll see there are certain key elements and details missing from some of the Bible stories that you'll probably remember. And then there's other details that are included. Okay, another reason why it was excluded or a reason against it being part of the canon, ⁓ besides the no direct ⁓ New Testament citations is just theological tension. So it says some elements raise concerns primarily because it heavily emphasizes the book of Jubilees heavily emphasizes a fixed calendar of 364 days and strong determinism. So history is divided into these rigid Jubilee periods, I believe of 50 years each. And then there's elevated roles of angels and intermediaries. And the Catholic concern was this could conflict with developing doctrines and ecclesial authority. So yeah, as you read through the book of Jubilees, you'll see that timing is everything. And it's very much focused on God's plan for humanity and certain events aligning to certain dates and times for various different reasons and it's all based on this Jubilee cycle which oddly enough is very similar I don't know enough to know if it's exactly what we follow today but it is based on the solar cycle whereas most of these religious calendars like the Jewish calendar for example falls or lunar cycle which is one of the reasons why you have you know different holy days ⁓ like the day of ⁓ Passover which falls on slightly different days every year. It's because they're following a lunar calendar versus a solar calendar. The book of Jubilees heavily emphasizes that we should all be following a solar calendar, which breaks the year into 364 days, four periods of 91 days, 13 weeks apiece. And that by doing so, certain events that God had planned throughout the history of the world would fall on the exact day, week, month. of the Jubilee cycle ⁓ that is recorded in heaven, that we'd be recording the same ⁓ timeframes and calendar events here on earth. So it's more of kind of syncing the heavenly calendar, if you will, with the earthly calendar. So it really emphasizes that. And that was one of the tensions, honestly, and that was one of the reasons that ⁓ there wasn't this ⁓ ubiquitous acceptance across the Jewish tradition and why you had different sects. that chose ⁓ Genesis versus Jubilees is because there was this tension between, we've already been kind of following this type of calendar. If we switch now, it's going to throw everything off. And there was some tension there. So that's another reason why it wasn't universally accepted. And then the last reason is it says it was likely later ⁓ composition, likely later composition. So it was probably written around second century BC. Obviously that would have been long after Moses, even though the book is attributed to Moses. And it's very interesting too, because the book of Jubilees, whereas most scripture, it's either, you know, written by the author in the first person or second person. ⁓ this book is written, ⁓ is basically being dictated by the angel of the presence. That's how it starts off. It's being dictated to Moses by the angel of the presence and Moses is essentially scribing this down. Which again, obviously this book, they're estimating it was written around second century BC, which is long after Moses. So if anything, maybe it was written down and we don't have any copies that are ⁓ older than second century BC. Maybe it was passed down orally and it was never written down. until second century BC. ⁓ It very well be either one of those things or it could be that ⁓ essentially there was Jewish tradition ⁓ had been passed down orally ⁓ that answered certain ⁓ regarding the book Genesis that was just maybe common in the culture, common knowledge, common traditionally ⁓ and someone in second century decided to finally put pen to paper ⁓ and document what of those things were. I don't know. I couldn't really find a clear answer to that. However, like I said earlier, I do believe that there's a lot of good information. It's probably true information regarding the patriarchs. ⁓ And it tells a lot more detail ⁓ in terms, it gives us a lot more detail in their story ⁓ and gives us a little bit more information. So we don't have to speculate as much. ⁓ If that's what the Jews at the time believed, I have no problem believing it myself. So overall I thought the Book of Jubilees was a good read. think you could find some good audio versions of it on YouTube to listen to, some of them that actually have some very ⁓ good imagery to go along with the narration. ⁓ It's pretty long though, the audio version is four to five hours depending on which one ⁓ you choose. So it's not short by any means, but it's also very, very consumable. some of the very interesting things to me that ⁓ myself and PJ noted as we had our discussion regarding the book of Jubilees was we had previously been talking about whether or not Satan's real name is Lucifer. And we both come to the conclusion that that is not the case, that Satan's name is not Lucifer. Satan is more of a title, ⁓ just means like adversary. And it's a title that is even ascribed at times to angels when they are doing battle. For example, I believe it was Michael who was fighting with the Prince of Persia and was held from talking to one of the prophets. And in that passage it describes one of these archangels as being a Satan, in other words, an adversary to this Prince of Persia. So we know that Satan itself is more of a title than a proper name. And we know that Lucifer is a Latin word that ⁓ originally ⁓ was meant to refer to Venus. And it means like enlightened one or brightened one or morning star or something to that effect, right? And again, that was not really ascribed to Satan as a name until much later. I think it was around 500 ⁓ common era where one of the popes basically said, hey, this is such. Satan's real name. It's it's Lucifer. Very unlikely in my opinion that his name is really Lucifer. ⁓ But reading through the book of Jubilees we get this word mastima which sounds like it probably is Satan's real name. You get this character who is basically an adversary. Sounds very similar to the same character that we hear about in the book of Job. The character that basically goes and accuses ⁓ righteous people in front of God who still has access to God's throne to go and accuse us. His character Mastema sounds very similar to the character of Satan in the book of Job. And there's times where it goes beyond just calling him Mastema, but it calls him Mastema, the Prince of Darkness. ⁓ Specifically when there's wars that are happening later on in the book and it talks about Mastema and his ⁓ unclean spirits essentially. influencing humanity for wars. Following up on the discussion of the book of Enoch where we talked about how some of these watchers in exchange for taking daughters as their brides also shared with mankind forbidden knowledge. Knowledge regarding how to work metals into weapons, knowledge of warfare, knowledge of the heavenly bodies and how the universe works, things like that. Well, it seems like after the flood, one of Noah's descendants, I think it was one of his grandsons, a name I'm gonna butcher, ⁓ Arpachad, ⁓ says that he found one of those pre-flood writings that was engraved on a rock after the flood and he inscribed it. So he actually took what he found on stone and he copied it. and shared some of that information that had been passed down by the Watchers and PJ and I talked about whether or not maybe some of the monoliths around the world was maybe created by these Watchers or at least at the direction of these Watchers maybe by the Nephilim during the years that Noah was building the ark maybe they knew this flood was coming and they were going to be wiped out and they were trying to ⁓ you know pass down their knowledge even further to give it even further generations which would make sense if that's ⁓ exactly what happened. see. ⁓ Some other interesting things it says that besides angels teaching forbidden knowledge to mankind Noah actually receives medical knowledge from angels. So after the flood It says that Noah is taught how to use plants to heal diseases which were caused by demons or demonic presence. ⁓ Which is very interesting. Have you ever thought, well, how did we discover all these miniscidal ⁓ plants and learn about medicine? How did that get its start? According to the book of Jubilees, it was angels directed by God to teach Noah. There are some fun stories in the, in the book of Jubilees about Abraham's early life. ⁓ PJ and I didn't really get into it too much. ⁓ but still definitely worth the discussion. But one of the stories was how Abraham as a young man, he just thought it was so silly that people were worshiping these idols and his dad was actually an idol maker. And so he like smashed a bunch of idols with a hammer and then put the hammer in one of the idols. Hands and then when his dad asked him what happened he said he did it he blamed the idol and the dad was like What are you talking about? These are just idols are just idols made of wood and stone They don't have any power to smash anything and he said Abraham said well, then why are you worshiping these things? Why are we doing this if we know that they don't have any power? Then why are we worshiping these idols and it just talks about how from an early age, you know Abraham rejected the culture And how the culture was worshipping these false gods these idols and he wanted to seek after The one true God which he knew existed somehow I gotta imagine that people knew they knew the stories right they knew the stories going all the way back ⁓ from from Adam But that was a fun story Another thing that I thought was very interesting that PJ and I talked about is the fact that It says that Adam died in Genesis, it says Adam died about 900 and think he was 930 or 970 years old. I forget which one it was. You guys can correct me in the comments. But yeah, just short of one celestial day. So if God told Adam on the day you eat of the fruit, you will surely die. Well, we both believe that yes, his soul, his spirit did in fact die on that day. but obviously he lived 900 and something more years. And he lived just short of 1,000 years, which according to the book of Jubilees is one heavenly or celestial day. So I thought that was kind of interesting how, yeah, he spiritually died when he did this physical thing, but then he physically died in alignment with the spiritual day, which I just thought that was very poetic. ⁓ yeah, there's definitely some retellings of some of these stories that make the patriarchs look a little different than, ⁓ you know, maybe what we were traditionally taught. For example, ⁓ Jacob, Jacob is probably the biggest one. So I think most of us know Jacob as kind of like this cunning, ⁓ brother who, ⁓ more or less took Esau's birthright. ⁓ he traded him for a bowl of stew and, ⁓ you he's holding on to his brother's heel as they were born and he's kind of just seen as this guy who's just a little bit of you know someone who's just a little too clever for his own good and and he's kinda got like a negative portrayal in in the book of jubilees there's a different light that's shown on Jacob ⁓ and essentially what we hear is that Abraham thought that Jacob was the chosen one to carry on his lineage ⁓ So Jacob was the one who told, I'm sorry, Abraham was the one who told Jacob's mom, was it Rebecca? believe it was Rebecca. Forgive me if I'm wrong or correct me in the comments. He's the one who told Rebecca, hey, I know that Isaac prefers Esau, but I see Jacob as the one who the promise of God is gonna be fulfilled through. So it just shows this whole light, it changes the character and sheds new light on Jacob and makes you think that, maybe it wasn't so much Jacob being this shysty guy who was out there trying to steal a birthright. Maybe it was him just trying to reclaim in the most peaceful way possible what was actually his to inherit. And again, that might be controversial for some folks, but it... Go and read the book of Jubilees and see what you guys think for yourselves and see what you think ⁓ in terms of how it's recorded and if you see Jacob in any different light than what you might see him in today. But those were, for the most part, those were the key takeaways, the arguments for and against including ⁓ the book of Jubilees in our Bible. If you haven't read it, I think it's a great book to read. whether or not it's inspired word of God in my opinion doesn't necessarily mean it's true or not. definitely see inspired scripture and true history as being sometimes two separate things. Obviously I believe that things that are ⁓ considered to be the inspired word of God are also ⁓ true and accurate accounts of history ⁓ where it does include historical events but that doesn't mean everything that is a true historical event. needs to be considered the inspired word of God. ⁓ However, it is his story, right? It's history, it's his story for a reason. So, I don't know, take that for what you will, but I would recommend at least reading or listening to the audio version of the Book of Jubilees. If nothing else, then to just get a different perspective on the stories of Genesis. It was a great discussion, and this is not going to be the end of our discussion on books that are not in the Bible. Matter of fact, We're going to do one very soon, maybe even our next episode, on an even more controversial book. A book that no one would argue should be included in the Bible. A book, in fact, that is the antithesis of the Bible. But you're going to have to wait and tune in next time to hear us talk about that book and what that book is. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Walk Talk Solo Edition. Have a great day and God bless.