Thematic comparison
The calendar and appointed festivals
Jubilees insists on a year of 364 days and warns that a different reckoning will disturb the festivals. Leviticus introduces appointed feasts, the Sabbath, Passover and Unleavened Bread, giving dates and observance instructions in this passage.
Read these as distinct passages with their own references. The columns compare a relationship between works; they do not align equivalent verses or highlight translation differences.
Ethiopian collection
R. H. Charles
Jubilees 6:29–38
29 And they placed them on the heavenly tablets, each had thirteen weeks; from one to another (passed) their memorial, from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, and from the third to the fourth.
30 And all the days of the commandment will be two and fifty weeks of days, and (these will make) the entire year complete. Thus it is engraven and ordained on the heavenly tablets.
31 And there is no neglecting (this commandment) for a single year or from year to year.
32 And command thou the children of Israel that they observe the years according to this reckoning- three hundred and sixty-four days, and (these) will constitute a complete year, and they will not disturb its time from its days and from its feasts; for everything will fall out in them according to their testimony, and they will not leave out any day nor disturb any feasts.
33 But if they do neglect and do not observe them according to His commandment, then they will disturb all their seasons and the years will be dislodged from this (order), [and they will disturb the seasons and the years will be dislodged] and they will neglect their ordinances.
34 And all the children of Israel will forget and will not find the path of the years, and will forget the new moons, and seasons, and sabbaths and they will go wrong as to all the order of the years.
35 For I know and from henceforth will I declare it unto thee, and it is not of my own devising; for the book (lies) written before me, and on the heavenly tablets the division of days is ordained, lest they forget the feasts of the covenant and walk according to the feasts of the Gentiles after their error and after their ignorance.
36 For there will be those who will assuredly make observations of the moon -how (it) disturbs the seasons and comes in from year to year ten days too soon.
37 For this reason the years will come upon them when they will disturb (the order), and make an abominable (day) the day of testimony, and an unclean day a feast day, and 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.
38 For this reason I command and testify to thee that thou mayst testify to them; for after thy death thy children will disturb (them), so that they will not make the year three hundred and sixty-four days only, and for this reason they will go wrong as to the new moons and seasons and sabbaths and festivals, and they will eat all kinds of blood with all kinds of flesh.
Biblical passage
World English Bible
Leviticus 23:1–8
1 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,
2 "Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, 'The set feasts of Yahweh, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my set feasts.
3 "'Six days shall work be done: but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation; you shall do no manner of work. It is a Sabbath to Yahweh in all your dwellings.
4 "'These are the set feasts of Yahweh, even holy convocations, which you shall proclaim in their appointed season.
5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, is Yahweh's Passover.
6 On the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread to Yahweh. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.
7 In the first day you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no regular work.
8 But you shall offer an offering made by fire to Yahweh seven days. In the seventh day is a holy convocation: you shall do no regular work.'"
Editorial reading aids
Context for the comparison
These selected verses of Leviticus do not specify the length of a year. Do not infer a full competing calendar from their silence. The pairing shows how calendar reckoning and the timing of worship become connected in Jubilees.
Questions for close reading
- Which measurements of time are explicit in each passage?
- What does Jubilees say is at stake when the calendar is miscounted?
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Text sources and editorial treatment
R. H. Charles's English translation as published in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913), transcribed by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Public-domain translation. Source chapter and verse numbering, including chronological annotations, is retained; editorial chapter summaries are omitted. This is a historic scholarly edition, not an official English translation of the Ethiopian Church.
Charles's Jubilees: full source · About World English Bible and the other Bible editions
Each panel displays the stored source text without rewriting it to resemble the other passage. Verse labels belong to that edition. The observations above describe these selected passages; they are not ancient text or a claim that all scholarly interpretations agree.