Preface: The Enigma of Jubilees
and the Lesson of the Enoch Seminar
Gabriele Boccaccini
The early Enoch literature does not contain any reference to the Mosaic To-
rah and does not emphasize the distinctively Mosaic laws designed for Is
rael. At the time of the Maccabean revolt, the book of Dream Visions relates
the ascent of Moses to Mount Sinai but conspicuously omits either the
making of a covenant or the giving of the law. By contrast, Jubilees gives
room to both Mosaic and Enochic traditions within the Sinaitic revelatory
framework.
What should we make of such differences? Was the omission of any
reference to the Mosaic Torah in the early Enoch tradition purely accidental,
an unwanted consequence of the mystical literary genre or interests of the
text? Or does it reflect the reality of an ancient form of Judaism that devel
oped apart from, or even against, the Mosaic Torah? Does the book of Jubi
lees witness to the emergence of a new synthesis of Enochic and Mosaic tra
ditions, or does it testify to the mystical interests of the very same elites that
cherished the Mosaic Torah? Had the book of Jubilees anything to do with
the emergence of the Essene movement and of the Qumran community? If
so, then to which extent?
All these questions were at the core of the Fourth Enoch Seminar at
Camaldoli (8-12 July 2007). The meeting marks the largest conference of in
ternational specialists ever gathered to study the book of Jubilees, and possi
bly to address any Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. With James VanderKam,
Jacques van Ruiten, and George Nickelsburg were virtually all the major spe
cialists in the document, eighty-four scholars from seventeen countries
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