The Book of Jubilees

Jubilees (also known as Lesser Genesis, Leptogenesis, or the Book of Division) is canonical scripture for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The only complete copies of Jubilees are available in Ge’ez (Classical Ethiopic), here used with permission by the Bible Society of Ethiopia.

The translation into English used here: Jubilees: The Hermeneia Translation. Translated by James C. VanderKam. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2020. with editorial alterations and additional translations to match the current text of the Tewahedo church by Masahiro Kubota.

eternity, forever, forever and ever

The Greek, Hebrew and Ge’ez that is typically translated as “eternity,” “forever,” or “forever and ever” in English are translated in Mairasi as “mashed out infinitely.” Lloyd Peckham explains: “Bark cloth required pounding. It got longer and wider as it got pounded. Similarly, life gets pounded or mashed to lengthen it into infinity. Tubers also get mashed into the standard way of serving the staple food, like the fufu of Uganda, or like poi of Hawaii. It spreads out into infinity.” (Source: Lloyd Peckham)

In Lisu the phrase “forever and ever” is translated as ꓕꓲꓽ ꓞꓲꓼ ꓕꓲ ꓑ — thi tsi thi pa, verbatim translated as “one – lifetime – one – world.” This construction follows a traditional four-couplet construct in oral Lisu poetry that is usually in the form ABAC or ABCB. (Source: Arrington 2020, p. 57f.)

In Makonde it is often translated as navyaka or “years and years.” (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific notes in Paratext)

See also forever, eternal life and salvation.

Learn more on Bible Odyssey: Concepts of Eternity .

law

The Greek, Hebrew, and Ge’ez that is translated in English as “Law” or “law” is translated in Mairasi as oro nasinggiei or “prohibited things” (source: Enggavoter 2004) and in Noongar with a capitalized form of the term for “words” (Warrinya) (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang).

In Yucateco the phrase that is used for “law” is “ordered-word” (for “commandment,” it is “spoken-word”) (source: Nida 1947, p. 198) and in Central Tarahumara it is “writing-command.” (Source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.)

In a 1922 translation into Chagatai, a precursor language of both Uzbek and Uighur, it is translated with the Arabic loan word shari’at (شريعت), originally meaning “(Islamic) law (Shari’a).” (Source: F. Erbay and F.N. Küçükballı in Acta Theologica 2025 45/2, p. 133ff. )

See also teaching / law (of God) (Japanese honorifics).