Lawrence H. Schiffman
At this point, we wish to take up James VanderKam's disagreement
with our conclusions. He has set them forth in a careful investigation of the
festival calendar of the Temple Scroll and the book of Jubilees in which he
directly responds to my earlier-mentioned article.^58 VanderKam argues that
the differences that I have noted may be accounted for by taking into consid
eration a variety of factors, most notably the concentration of Jubilees on
the Genesis narrative, which lacks many of the halakic details that are dis
cussed in the Temple Scroll. I have reread this argument and still do not
agree. The very names of the festivals claimed by Jubilees to have been ob
served by the patriarchs are derived from elsewhere in the Torah. If these fes
tivals could be imported into the patriarchal narratives, why could not their
details have been as well? VanderKam wants to argue that despite some dif
ferences that he is willing to recognize, the festival calendars are essentially
identical. This argument may boil down to whether the glass is half empty or
half full, but I think on reflection that both of our earlier studies were some
what off the mark. I think we both assumed that what was under discussion
was the relationship of two disparate works to one another. Hence, we
sought large numbers of differences or general agreement to indicate affinity
or disagreement. Now we realize that affinity need only be among what we
might call a family, a tradition, that is, to what family of ancient halakah a
text belongs. Once we have placed the Temple Scroll and Jubilees in the same
family, whatever specific differences we may uncover may now be under
stood as testimony to the diversity within such sub-corpora of ancient Jew
ish legal thinking. Just as the Genesis Apocryphon and the book of Jubilees
need not agree in their "aggadic" understanding of Genesis, so the Temple
Scroll and Jubilees need not agree in their legal rulings to be part of the same
trend.
Conclusion
The relationship of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll is complex. The two texts
share a common calendar, but have different theologies, contents, in some
cases sacrificial laws, and express differing ideas about eschatology. This
does not, however, mean that the texts are unrelated. They both belong to
the common culture and tradition of a group of sectarian groups to which
our Qumran sectarians, the author of the sources of the Temple Scroll, and
- VanderKam, "The Temple Scroll," 225-31.