The above conclusions are confirmed by a large mass of other evidence postulating the same date. We may, however, observe that our book points to the period already past—of stress and persecution that preceded the recovery of national independence under the Maccabees, and presupposes as its historical background the most flourishing period of the Maccabean hegemony.
Author.—Our author was a Pharisee of the straitest sect. He maintained the everlasting validity of the law, he held the strictest views on circumcision, the sabbath, and the duty of shunning all intercourse with the Gentiles; he believed in angels and in a blessed immortality. In the next place he was an upholder of the Maccabean pontificate. He glorifies Levi’s successors as high-priests and civil rulers, and applies to them the title assumed by the Maccabean princes, though he does not, like the author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, expect the Messiah to come forth from among them. He may have been a priest.
The Views of the Author on the Messianic Kingdom and the Future Life.—According to our author the Messianic kingdom was to be brought about gradually by the progressive spiritual development of man and a corresponding transformation of nature. Its members were to reach the limit of 1000 years in happiness and peace. During its continuance the powers of evil were to be restrained, and the last judgment was apparently to take place at its close. As regards the doctrine of a future life, our author adopts a position novel for a Palestinian writer. He abandons the hope of a resurrection of the body. The souls of the righteous are to enjoy a blessed immortality after death. This is the earliest attested instance of this expectation in the last two centuries B.C.
Literature.—Ethiopic Text and Translations: This text was first edited by Dillmann from two MSS. in 1859, and in 1895 by R. H. Charles from four (The Ethiopic Version of the Hebrew Book of Jubilees ... with the Hebrew, Syriac, Greek and Latin fragments). In the latter edition, the Greek and Latin fragments are printed together with the Ethiopic. The book was translated into German by Dillmann from one MS. in Ewald’s Jahrbücher, vols. ii. and iii. (1850, 1851), and by Littmann (in Kautzsch’s Apok. und Pseud. ii. 39-119) from Charles’s Ethiopic text; into English by Schodde (Bibl. Sacr. 1885) from Dillmann’s text, and by Charles (Jewish Quarterly Review, vols. v., vi., vii. (1893-1895) from the text afterwards published in 1895, and finally in his commentary, The Book of Jubilees (1902). Critical Inquiries: Dillmann, “Das Buch der Jubiläen” (Ewald’s Jahrbücher d. bibl. Wissensch. (1851), iii. 72-96); “Pseudepig. des Alten Testaments,” Herzog’s Realencyk.2 xii. 364-365; “Beiträge aus dem Buche der Jubiläen zur Kritik des Pentateuch Textes” (Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preussischen Akad., 1883); Beer, Das Buch der Jubiläen (1856); Rönsch, Das Buch der Jubiläen (1874); Singer, Das Buch der Jubiläen (1898); Bohn, “Die Bedeutung des Buches der Jubiläen” (Theol. Stud. und Kritiken (1900), pp. 167-184). A full bibliography will be found in Schürer or in R. H. Charles’s commentary, The Book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis (1902), which deals exhaustively with all the questions treated in this article.
(R. H. C.)
[1] In the Ethiopic Version in xxi. 12 it should be observed that in the list of the twelve trees suitable for burning on the altar several are transliterated Aramaic names of trees. But in a late Hebrew work (2nd century B.C.) the popular names of such objects would naturally be used. In certain cases the Hebrew may have been forgotten, or, where the tree was of late introduction, been non-existent.
JUBILEE YEAR, an institution in the Roman Catholic Church, observed every twenty-fifth year, from Christmas to Christmas. During its continuance plenary indulgence is obtainable by all the faithful, on condition of their penitently confessing their sins and visiting certain churches a stated number of times, or doing an equivalent amount of meritorious work. The institution dates from the time of Boniface VIII., whose bull Antiquorum habet fidem is dated the 22nd of February 1300. The circumstances in which it was promulgated are related by a contemporary authority, Jacobus Cajetanus, according to whose account (“Relatio de centesimo s. jubilaeo anno” in the Bibliotheca Patrum) a rumour spread through Rome at the close of 1299 that every one visiting St Peter’s on the 1st of January 1300 would receive full absolution. The result was an enormous influx of pilgrims to Rome, which stirred the pope’s attention. Nothing was found in the archives, but an old peasant 107 years of age avowed that his father had been similarly benefited a century previously. The bull was then issued, and the pilgrims became even more numerous, to the profit of both clergy and citizens. Originally the churches of St Peter and St Paul in Rome were the only jubilee churches, but the privilege was afterwards extended to the Lateran Church and that of Sta Maria Maggiore, and it is now shared also for the year immediately following that of the Roman jubilee by a number of specified provincial churches. At the request of the Roman people, which was supported by St Bridget of Sweden and by Petrarch, Clement VI. in 1343 appointed, by the bull Unigenitus Dei filius, that the jubilee should recur every fifty years instead of every hundred years as had been originally contemplated in the constitution of Boniface; Urban VI., who was badly in need of money, by the bull Salvator noster in 1389 reduced the interval still further to thirty-three years (the supposed duration of the earthly life of Christ); and Paul II. by the bull Ineffabilis (April 19, 1470) finally fixed it at twenty-five years. Paul II. also permitted foreigners to substitute for the pilgrimage to Rome a visit to some specified church in their own country and a contribution towards the expenses of the Holy Wars. According to the special ritual prepared by Alexander VI. in 1500, the pope on the Christmas Eve with which the jubilee begins goes in solemn procession to a particular walled-up door (“Porta aurea”) of St Peter’s and knocks three times, using at the same time the words of Ps. cxviii. 19 (Aperite mihi portas justitiae). The doors are then opened and sprinkled with holy water, and the pope passes through. A similar ceremony is conducted by cardinals at the other jubilee churches of the city. At the close of the jubilee, the special doorway is again built up with appropriate solemnities.
The last ordinary jubilee was observed in 1900. “Extraordinary” jubilees are sometimes appointed on special occasions, e.g. the accession of a new pope, or that proclaimed by Pope Leo XIII. for the 12th of March 1881, “in order to obtain from the mercy of Almighty God help and succour in the weighty necessities of the Church, and comfort and strength in the battle against her numerous and mighty foes.” These are not so much jubilees in the ordinary sense as special grants of plenary indulgences for particular purposes (Indulgentiae plenariae in forma jubilaei).