Introduction

Summary

This book seeks to trace the appropriation of a particular “Old Testament pseudepigraphon” – the Book of Jubilees – in early Christian sources from the New Testament (NT) to Hippolytus (and beyond). More specifically, our study focuses on the reception of Jubilees 8–9, an expansion on the so-called Table of Nations in Genesis 10 (1 Chronicles 1). There are three primary motivations for undertaking such a study at this particular time. First, my previous work on the Table of Nations tradition has led me to the conclusion that Jubilees 8–9 had a powerful influence on geographical conceptions found not only in Second-Temple Jewish sources but also in early Christian writings. In order further to articulate and substantiate this thesis, the present study delves more thoroughly than before into some of the important primary source material. For instance, our study gives greater scope to a Hellenistic epigram that opens up the possibility of Jewish cartographic activity in the Second-Temple period (Chapter 1). The study also augments my previous work by reconsidering the relationship of Jubilees 8–9 both to the lost “Book of Noah” and to other writings of the Second-Temple period (Chapter 2). The study greatly expands our earlier discussion on the geography of Luke-Acts (Chapter 3) and penetrates more deeply into early Christian literature outside the NT (Chapters 4-6). Finally, the study ventures a foray into the medieval mappaemundi as possibly our earliest extant cartographic remains of the Jubilees 8–9 tradition (Chapter 7).