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Jubilees links a northern land and five large islands to Japheth’s inheritance, and 1 Enoch presents the same features in its description of the world. Both follow a geographical tradition that preserves knowledge of distant regions and notable islands.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
1 Enoch 77:8
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
6 Two of these rivers come from the north and empty their waters into the Erythraean Sea in the east. 7 The remaining four originate from the north and flow into their respective seas; two into the Erythraean Sea and two into the Great Sea, with some ending in the desert. 8 I saw seven great islands, two on the mainland and five in the Great Sea.
Date: 300 BCE – 100 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 8:29
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
28 And it extends to the region of the river Tina in a northeasterly direction until it approaches the boundary of its waters toward the mountain Rafa, and it turns toward the north. 29 This is the land which was assigned to Japheth and his sons as the portion of his inheritance which he should possess for himself and his sons, for their generations forever; five great islands, and a great land in the north. 30 But it is cold, and the land of Ham is hot, and the land of Shem is neither hot nor cold, but it is of blended cold and heat.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... From here the border again reaches familiar territory, going “to the edge of the Tina River toward the northeast until it reaches the banks of its waters toward the mountain range of Rafa. It goes around the north” (8:28). The next verse adds that Japheth’s eternal inheritance includes “five large islands and a large land in the north.” Four great islands in the Great Sea are also mentioned as part of Japheth’s son Tiras’ allotment in Jubilees 9:13. Since Shem has already been allotted the “islands of Kaftur”, we may deduce that these four are likely Crete, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Based on a reference to “the islands and the shores of the islands” in the description of Madai’s portion (9:9), Hölscher and Alexander have suggested that the fifth great island of 8:28 is Britain, or the British Isles more generally. These islands were indeed known to the Ionians, making this identification plausible. (Charles, in The Book of Jubilees, p. 75, also noted the reference to islands in 1 Enoch 77:8) ..."
Daniel A. Machiela, The Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20): A Reevaluation of Its Text, Interpretive Character, and Relationship to the Book of Jubilees (University of Notre Dame, 2007), 243–244.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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