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The Book of Jubilees sets out a programme of resistance to the changes in Jewish life and polity advanced by Antiochus, Jason, Menelaus, and their supporters by offering a re-reading and re-presentation of the biblical books Genesis and Exodus 1–20 (Segal 2007). Thanks to the discovery of fragments of the text of this book among the Dead Sea Scrolls, we now know that it was almost certainly composed in Hebrew around the middle of the second century BCE, or slightly earlier (VanderKam 1989). Although it survives as a whole only in an Ethiopic version (made from a Greek translation of the original Hebrew), we may, thanks to the Qumran evidence, be reasonably certain that it faithfully represents the original Hebrew text. Jubilees urges Israel to be intransigently loyal to the book’s interpretation of Jewish ancestral law and custom as exemplified in its portrayal of the great fathers of the nation – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and especially Levi as the ancestor of the priests, to whom Jubilees pointedly ascribes precedence over Judah, the ancestor of the royal house of David. The priestly character of Israel is thus strongly marked in this book; and this necessitates its emphasis on ritual and moral purity, and the separation of the Jewish people from all sources of defilement (Himmelfarb 2006). Its reassertion of the primacy of the Torah of Moses in the life of the Jewish nation and the individual (Najman 2003) is reinforced by its claims to know the contents of “the heavenly tablets,” whose instructions steer Jews firmly away from Greek customs such as nudity in sport, avoidance of circumcision, consumption of foodstuffs containing blood, all of which were tolerated, even encouraged, in the days of Jason and Menelaus, along with an incorrect calendar. In this last concern, Jubilees joins hands with an earlier source already noted, the Astronomical Book of 1 Enoch: although details of the calendars in the two texts differ, both are unambiguous in their assertion that there is a correct calendar which is “in tune with heaven,” and which Jews are consequently obliged to follow (VanderKam 2000).