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In Jubilees, the serpent tempts Eve on the seventeenth day of the second month, which is the same date when the flood begins in Genesis 7. Jubilees interprets the flood as an event directly related to the anniversary of humanity’s first disobedience.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 3:1
Hebrew Bible
1 Now the serpent was shrewder than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard; 3 but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’”
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Genesis 7:11
Hebrew Bible
10 And after seven days the floodwaters engulfed the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month—on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And the rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 3:17
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
16 And he cultivated (the garden), and was naked and did not know it, and was not ashamed, and he protected the garden from the birds and wild animals and cattle, and gathered its fruit, and ate, and put aside the rest for himself and for his wife [and put aside that which was being kept]. 17 And after the completion of the seven years, which he had completed there, seven years exactly [8], and in the second month, on the seventeenth day (of the month), the serpent came and approached the woman, and the serpent said to the woman, 'Has God commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?' 18 And she said to it, 'Of all the fruit of the trees of the garden God has said to us, Eat; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden God has said to us, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, so that you do not die.'
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The serpent approached Eve in the second month, on the seventeenth day, an ill-starred date, the same day on which the flood-waters began to fall (Genesis 7:11) ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 40.
* 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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