Introduction

As we saw in Chapter 5, the second-century Greek Apologist, Theophilus of Antioch, may give us the earliest explicit reference to Greek Jubilees. There is also evidence that Greek Jubilees remained popular in the following centuries (cf. P. Oxy. 4365). This may be due in part to the growth of the Christian world/universal chronicles, which frequently incorporated Jubilees 8–9 material at the beginning of larger chronographies. While Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–340 CE) is often acknowledged as the first to establish the format and style of the Christian world chronicle, forerunners of his chronographic approach are found in the work of Sextus Julius Africanus and of Hippolytus, who wrote within fifteen years of one another (ca. 220–35 CE). Since we know relatively little about the lost Chronographies of Africanus, except through fragments that have come down to us in other authors, we will do well to concentrate on the Chronicon of Hippolytus, which survives basically intact.

Given the paucity of our direct textual evidence for the Greek version of Jubilees, it is surprising that Hippolytus' Chronicon (234/5 CE) has not been given more consideration as a source for that version, for the Chronicon contains a large section called the “Division of the Earth” (∆ɩαµερɩσμòς τῆς γῆς, §§ 44–239) which, like Jubilees 8–9, covers the parceling of the earth among the sons of Noah based on the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. The title of this section probably derives from Gen.