The Book of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll
Lawrence H. Schiffman
Various approaches have been put forth since the discovery of the Dead Sea
Scrolls regarding their connection with the book of Jubilees.^1 It has been ar
gued, for example, that Jubilees is actually a "sectarian text,"^2 that is, a com
position of the Qumran community, a view that is very unlikely in light of
its use of proto-Masoretic Hebrew.^3 It has also been argued that Jubilees is
actually the first part of the Temple Scroll,^4 a view we attempted to disprove
on the basis of a careful comparison of the sacrificial calendar of the Temple
Scroll with Jubilees.^5 However, despite the ease with which these overstated
- Cf. L. H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the
Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication So
ciety, 1994), 185-88; J. C. VanderKam, "Jubilees," in EDSS, 1:434-38; see the detailed study of
D. Hamidovic, Les Traditions du Jubili a Qumran, Orients semitiques (Paris: Geuthner, 2007). - E.g., H. Lignee, "La place du livre des Jubiles et du Rouleau du Temple dans
l'histoire du mouvement Ess^nien: Ces deux ouvrages ont-ils &t6 ecrits par le Maitre de Jus
tice?" RevQ 13 (1988): 331-45. - See E. Schurer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.-
A.D. 135), ed. G. Vermes, F. Millar, with P. Vermes and M. Black, rev. ed., 3 vols, in 4 (Edin
burgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973-87), 111.1:311-14. - B. Z. Wacholder, "The Relationship between nQTorah (the Temple Scroll) and the
Book of Jubilees: One Single or Two Independent Compositions?" in SBLSP 24 (1985), 205-
16; cf. Wacholder, The Dawn of Qumran: The Sectarian Torah and the Teacher of Righteous
ness (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1983), 41-62. - L. H. Schiffman, "The Sacrificial System of the Temple Scroll and the Book of Jubi
lees," in Society for Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 1985, ed. K. H. Richards (Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1985), 217-33.