Benjamin G. Wright III
persons (i.e. is partial), and he is not one who accepts gifts when he says that
he will execute judgment on each one."^3 We find an identical sentiment in Sir
35:14 expressed in very similar language: "Do not offer him a bribe, for he will
not accept it; and do not rely on a dishonest sacrifice; for the Lord is the judge,
and with him there is no partiality." While we could catalogue such parallel
passages, I do not think any list would reveal much of substance about Jubi
lees and any relation it might have to sapiential tradition.
Jubilees does employ a variant of a literary strategy often found in wis
dom texts — the construction of the sage and disciple as father and son. In
wisdom literature the sage's use of direct address ("My son") constructs the
disciple as his child, and the sage thereby assumes the authority of the stu
dent's parent. At the same time, the "I" and "you" of the direct address func
tion as empty signs through which the vocatives and imperatives address the
reader, and in this way the text "recruits" its reader, who must respond.^4 The
texts in which we find this father-son discourse employ various discursive
tactics "to inscribe the reader's filial subjectivity and hence the authority of
the author's teaching."^5 One example is the metaphor of walking a path or
road, which constructs the student as a traveler traversing the acceptable
path of life (and which appears in Jub 21:22).
A variation of this father-son discourse appears in some narrative texts
where a father speaking to his children occupies a prominent place in the
narrative. Some passages, like Tob 14 or 1 En 82:1-4, constitute parts of larger
and more diverse works. In other texts, like the Testaments of the Twelve Pa
triarchs, the father-son speech constitutes the overarching framework. The
narratives often display some of the same features and topics as the "I-you"
discourse of the sapiential works in order to place the reader in the position
of the author's "son," but they accomplish the aim of engaging the reader a
bit differently. Rather than the second-person address of the sage that con
fronts the reader directly, a third-person father transmits teaching to his
son(s), which he commands that they teach their children and their children
and their children after them. The reader stands at the end of a long chain of
- Translations from Jubilees are from Wintermute in OTP.
- See my article "From Generation to Generation: The Sage as Father in Early Jewish
Literature," in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb, ed.
C. Hempel and J. M. Lieu, JSJSup ill (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 309-32. For much of the theoreti
cal discussion I rely on C. Newsom, "Women and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A
Study of Proverbs 1-9," in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. P. L. Day (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1989), 142-60. - Wright, "From Generation to Generation," 315.