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MRS. WALTER MAUNDER, ON ASTRONOMICAL 



The Book of Jubilees. 



It is undeniable that St. Jucle and Pseudo-Enoch quoted the 

 same prophecy, but it by no means follows that either took the 

 prophecy from the other. .St. Jude seems to infer that the 

 prophecy is known to all Jews. Of Pseudo-Enoch it cannot 

 be gainsaid that he did not scruple to adopt without acknowledg- 

 ment, for his own astrological purposes, the Iranian traditional 

 latitude ; have we then any reason to expect, that for theological 

 purposes — to clothe himself with orthodoxy in the eyes of his 

 Jewish clients — he would refrain from adopting in the forefront 

 of his Book a well-known prophecy which had come down from 

 the Patriarch who " walked with God." 



With regard to the date of the Book of Jubilees, Dr. Charles 

 says : — 



"The Book of Jubilees was written in Hebrew by a Pharisee 

 between the year of the accession of Hyrcanus to the high priest- 

 hood in 135 and his breach with the Pharisees some years before his 

 death in 105 B.C. . . . His object was to defend Judaism 

 against the attacks of the Hellenistic spirit . . . and to prove 

 that the law was of everlasting validity." — (Book of Jubilees, 

 Introduction.) 



But that Law enjoined solemn feasts celebrated in the 

 Tabernacle or Temple, dependent on the observation of the 

 new moon and of a luni-solar year. Yet the writer of Jubilees 

 ordains, not the feasts as commanded through Moses, but four 

 feasts on the 1 st, 4th, 7th, and 10th " new moons " as "days 

 of remembrance, the days of the seasons for the four divisions 

 of the year." But these "new moons" had no connection 

 whatever with the moon, they were simply the " quarter-days," 

 for each division had thirteen weeks, and there : 



" were 52 weeks also exactly in the year : — Command thou the 

 Children of Israel that they observe the years according to this 

 reckoning — 364 days. . . . For there will be those who will 

 assuredly make observations of the moon — now (it) disturbs seasons 

 and comes in from year to year ten days too soon. . . . 

 They will confound all the days, the holy with the unclean, and 

 the unclean day with the holy; for they will go wrong as to the 

 months and sabbaths and feasts and jubilees." — (Jubilees, VI.)* 



* How little a pious and learned Jew of the very period to which 

 Dr. Charles assigns the Book of Jubilees would have been inclined to 



