Lester L. Grabbe
The real question was whether Jubilees might have certain special tra
ditions or interpretations in common with the Samaritan tradition, and this
was the question investigated in the present paper. It was not an easy ques
tion to answer because many traditions in Jubilees seem to have no parallels
in the Samaritan tradition, which means that no comparison could be made.
Nevertheless, the two writings could be compared in several areas. The fol
lowing are the general results from the areas studied here:
- Both Jubilees and the Samaritan tradition have developed haggadic
material relating to the Genesis stories that add much interpretative
detail. Yet much of this does not correspond because one has haggadic
material where it is absent in the other. This means that comparison is
not always easy. - Where both traditions have comparable haggadic expansion, they gen
erally do not coincide in the details. For example, daughters are born to
Adam and Eve and become the wives of antediluvial patriarchs in both
traditions, but the names do not match in the two traditions. Similarly,
both talk of cities founded by the preflood figures, but again there is no
coincidence of detail. - Jubilees seems to have a similar reckoning of the chronology from cre
ation to the Noachic deluge, but there is hardly any agreement on the
exact figures for the antediluvian genealogies. From the flood on, Jubi
lees is quite different, with a much shorter chronology, differing from
the Samaritan by almost 400 years by the time of Abraham. Thus, the
approximate agreement up to Noah's flood does not appear at all signif
icant, but further study of the various chronological systems is needed. - The Jubilees reckoning of the ages of Jacob's sons is almost unique, but
a parallel is found in Demetrius the Chronographer. The two systems
do not agree, though. - The jubilee year is important to both Jubilees and the Samaritan
Tulidah. They use different ways of calculating the jubilee, however,
and there seems little correspondence in detail. - The Samaritan tradition, like the Jewish and Christian, had developed
a scheme of 6,000 years of human history before the eschatological
millennial "sabbath." It is not entirely clear that such a scheme can be
found in Jubilees, but 4:30 might hint at this concept. - The Samaritans use a luni-solar calendar, with much in common
with the traditional Jewish calendar, in contrast to the solar calendar
of Jubilees.