James M. Scott
the land until the reentry into the land at the time of the restoration would
be two periods comprised of precisely 490 years, for a total of 980 years. The
notion that the time in exile corresponds to the time in the land could be a
reflection of the idea in 2 Chron 36:21 that the exile, which will last 70 years
as Jeremiah had predicted (Jer 29:10), will befall Israel because of its neglect
of the sabbatical and jubilee years (Lev 25:1-13). This presupposes that Israel
failed properly to observe the sabbaths of the land from the very outset.
Viewed through the lens of the interpretation of Jeremiah's prophecy in Dan
9:24, the compensatory punishment for Israel's missed sabbaths in the land
could have been reckoned as 490 years (70 x 7 = 49 x 10). The sabbatical logic
of this calculation would have cohered very well with Jubilees' own concern
for the proper observance of the sabbath, on which in fact the book ends
(Jub 50:1-13), and the other heptadic cycles of the sun.
The inherent plausibility of this reconstruction should not be missed.
There can be little question that the author of Jubilees would have consid
ered the date for the end of the exile and the beginning of the restoration ev
ery bit as important, if not more so, as the jubilee of jubilees that figures so
largely in the surface narrative of the book as a whole. For the author and his
community probably considered themselves as standing on the threshold of
the restoration, just as the Apocalypse of Weeks — the other heptadic chro
nology with a universal scope from creation to new creation — most likely
saw its community as standing on the threshold of the eighth "week," which
commences the protracted restoration period ("weeks" 8-10).
III. Conclusion
We have argued that although in some respects the chronologies in the Apoc
alypse of Weeks and the book of Jubilees differ substantially from one an
other, in other ways they are quite similar. Their similarity suggests a literary
relationship between the two writings, and the possible allusion of Jub 4:18-19
to the Apocalypse of Weeks seems to show the direction of the influence. If
this is correct, Jubilees was not uncritical of its source. For the period before
the exile, Jubilees goes its own chronological way, especially insofar as it evi
dently expects a much longer length of time from creation to the conquest.
For the period commencing with the exile, however, it can be credibly
argued that Jubilees tracks the Apocalypse to a remarkable degree. Evidently,
both writings expect the end of exile and the beginning of the restoration to
occur on the same date (3430 A.M.). Although Jubilees does not explicitly