Most people find it difficult to believe that biblical chronology can be measured from within the biblical text itself. Yet that is precisely the issue raised by the recovery of the complete Ethiopian text of Jubilees . One of the most important chronological expressions in that book is the wording used to identify the birth year of Abraham: “the seventh year of the second week in the thirty-ninth Jubilee.” That statement forced interpreters to ask a mathematical question: how should such language be reckoned? In attempting to answer that question, two dominant methods emerged, both drawing heavily from Leviticus 25. The chapter describes a seven-by-seven structure of years, forty-nine years in all, followed by a fiftieth year that stands distinct. From this, some concluded that Jubilee chronology should be measured on a repeating forty-nine-year framework, while others argued for a full fifty-year structure. Over time, both methods came under scrutiny from scholars and chronologists,...
