Preface: The Enigma of Jubilees and the Lesson of the Enoch Seminarxvunot expect to find here any shared solution to the Jubilees enigma. What
they will find in this volume is not a new coherent view of Jubilees spon
sored by the Enoch Seminar, but rather a lively debate among the most dis
tinguished international specialists, each struggling for a better understand
ing of a document whose Enochic and Mosaic elements seem to make it fit
poorly in any ancient or modern categories.
Yet the Enoch Seminar is much more than a neutral forum, where
problems are conveniently exposed in all their nuances and perhaps made
more intriguing by the competing solutions offered by different authors. We
do not share the answers but we all have come to agree that the key for un
derstanding the mysteries of second temple Jewish thought cannot be found
within the manageable boundaries of our own specialization alone, but only
through a mutually enriching experience of listening and comprehending
the achievements of one another.
Since its emergence in the sixteenth century, the field of Second Tem
ple Judaism and Christian Origins has been constantly on the verge of col
lapsing into the plurality of its subfields. In the past it was largely religious
concerns that created a clear separation between Christian and Jewish stud
ies and relegated the noncanonical literature to a subordinate status. Now
the problem seems to be primarily the high degree of specialization required
to master one subject or one body of literature, and the contemporaneous
process of democratization and globalization of knowledge that has multi
plied the bibliography into an untamable monster. As a result, the fragmen
tation of second temple Jewish studies has become endemic and scholars of
the field often appear reluctant to cross boundaries and venture into an
other's domain.
The international scholars who have joined the Enoch Seminar do not
resign themselves, and restrict their dreams, to the goal of finding a comfort
able niche for themselves. The experience of the Enoch Seminar has proved
to us the validity of the method of analysis that tears down the misleading
walls of separation that still divide our field of research, and counterbalances
the current fragmentation of the field, in its many subfields of specialization,
by recovering the unity and integrity of the period. In our view Enoch has
become much more than the hero of "Enochic Judaism." He has become the
symbol of our intercanonical and interdisciplinary effort, as he is present in
each and all of the canons and subfields that anachronistically divide the
sources and the scholarship of the period: Old Testament, Apocrypha,
Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish-Hellenistic literature, New Testa
ment, apostolic fathers, and the like.