Book of Jubilees (Ethiopic)

As I have done in my editions of other Ethiopic works, I wish to remind you here as well, kind reader, of one point. No importance should be placed on how punctuation is marked in manuscripts of a more recent age; for all who are experienced in Ethiopic manuscripts know well how absurd and truly contradictory the punctuation of the scribes tends to be.

Furthermore, the division of the book into fifty chapters, which I have noted in the margin, was made by me and transferred here from the German version in which I first proposed it. In manuscript T, no division of the text occurs at all, nor are the beginnings of individual parts indicated, except very rarely by small spaces left between sequences of words. In manuscript A, however, the scribe has written Me’raf|Ethiopic: ምዕራፍ, meaning "chapter" or "section" in red ink in many places, but he neglected to record the chapter numbers. Additionally, no consistent logic is apparent in this division; for example, between chapters V and XXI of our edition, not a single chapter is marked in that manuscript. Nevertheless, I did not want you to be unaware of at least those chapter beginnings that he did mark. Therefore, wherever his chapters do not align with mine, I have made their beginnings visible by inserting spaces in the text¹); the places where his chapters coincide with the start of mine are these: Chapters 2, 3, 5, 22, 24, 25, 26, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 45, 49.

Rarer words unknown to Hiob Ludolf original: "J. Ludolfo"; Ludolf was a 17th-century scholar regarded as the founder of Ethiopic studies in Europe which occur in Jubilees, I will explain in my Ethiopic lexicon, which I intend to send to the press next year. Some of these can be easily understood from the context and the sense of the sentences, or from my German translation; certain others are very obscure and, as far as I know, are found nowhere except in this book.

It is already evident that my German translation must be corrected and improved in many places based on this edition of the Ethiopic work. Indeed, to say nothing of those passages where T provides inferior readings, even some of those readings which have now been confirmed by manuscript A were [previously translated incorrectly] due to their corruption...

1. Also on page 5, line 3, at the words ze-we’etu wa-zentu|Ethiopic: ዘውእቱ፡ ወዘንቱ፡, meaning "this and that", the scribe began a new Me’raf, but since this was done through an obvious error, I have omitted marking it in my edition.