Gabriele BoccacciniBesides, while it is true that the uniqueness of the Mosaic Torah is
somehow diminished in Jubilees, the same applies to the Enochic books; "no
writing, Enochic or Mosaic, is the exact transcript of the Heavenly Tablets;
the most that even Jubilees can do is to quote them occasionally."^27
3. Neither Mosaic nor Enochic:
A Synthesis of Mosaic and Enochic Traditions
We then meet in Jubilees a text that merges Enochic and Mosaic traditions, a
strange text in which Mosaic and Enochic elements appear side by side. If
Moses is the chief revealer, Enoch can be said to be the leading theologian. If
Moses is the speaker, Enoch is his ghostwriter. If Moses is the king, Enoch is
his eminence grise. Jubilees is indeed a puzzling text where, as Annette Reed,
in her paper presented at the conference, says, "persuasive arguments for the
superiority of one [Moses] can readily be matched by persuasive arguments
for the superiority of the other [Enoch]."
Maybe the problem of who prevailed (Enoch or Moses) is a false prob
lem. Were it a game, we would say it was a tie — no clear winner, no clear
loser. Is it not after all what we should expect from a well-conceived synthesis?
The Mosaic Torah is conspicuously absent in the early Enochic litera
ture. Many scholars have tried to solve the "mystery" of this absence. In his
paper presented at the conference, Helge Kvanvig is "hesitant" to infer ex
silentio "a deliberate denial of its legitimacy," and with George Nickelsburg
tends to see the lack of reference to the Mosaic Torah as a consequence of "the
special character of the Enochic revealed wisdom."^28 I find these arguments
persuasive and in no way contradictory to the idea that the Enochians were
indeed an anti-Zadokite movement of dissent. What appears inconceivable to
me is that a Zadokite priest — while offering the morning sacrifice in the
temple — could preach that this world was the perfect and eternal order reg
ulated by the Mosaic Torah and in the evening, simply to denounce priestly
endogamy, contradict himself and claim that the divine order had been irre
mediably corrupted by the sin of fallen angels. I do not see how with Seth
Schwartz we could reduce the entire apocalyptic literature to "the product of
- Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis, 89; see also Himmelfarb, "Torah," 28.
- See G. W. E. Nickelsburg, "Enochic Wisdom: An Alternative to the Mosaic Torah,"
in Hesed Ve-Emet: Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs, BJS 320 (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1998), 123-32.