Gabriele Boccacciniwe know as Essene,"^47 as well as Lawrence Schiffman's statement that "the
high status accorded to this work by the Qumran sect" demonstrates that it
was composed by "circles the sect regarded as its spiritual forerunners,"^48 are
eloquent evidence of the current consensus in contemporary scholarship.
Jubilees is a key text in second temple Jewish history and literature as it testi
fies to the very beginning of the Essene movement.
What has changed and is changing in our understanding of these com
plex phenomena is a new, growing awareness of the Enochic roots of Jubilees
— an element that in the past was already suggested by the seminal yet then
isolated voices of Benjamin Bacon and Chanoch Albeck.^49 Garcia Martinez's
article, published in 1984 after James VanderKam's studies and Paolo Sacchi's
commentary, signals the turning point in contemporary research.^50 While
still honoring the then general consensus of a relationship between Jubilees
and the rabbinic concept of the oral Torah, Garcia Martinez highlighted with
equal vigor "the dependency of Jubilees upon the Enochic literature, from
which is derived the notion of the Heavenly Tablets as a Book of Destiny in
which is not only found the inscription of human evil or good, but the com
plete course of history."^51 In recent years the "Enochic perspective" has be
come the recognized starting point of any research in the interpretation of Ju
bilees, receiving new strength and meaning also by a new, growing awareness
of the role played by Enochic literature in Essene and Qumran origins.^52
We can now look with different eyes also at the testimony of Josephus
and Philo.^53 Not surprisingly, they say that the Essenes venerated Moses as
"the lawgiver" [Jewish War 2.145; Apologia pro Judaeis 1), thus emphasizing
— as in Jubilees — the primacy of the figure of Moses over against Enoch.
Second, Josephus claims that at the center of Essene thought was the concept
of historical determinism (Ant 13.171-172) while Philo maintains that they at-
- VanderKam, The Book of jubilees, 143; see already his Textual and Historical Studies
in the Book of jubilees (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977). - Cf. also L. H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Doubleday,
1995), 188. - C. Albeck, Das Buch der Jubilaen und die Halacha (Berlin: Scholem, 1930); B. W.
Bacon, "The Calendar of Enoch and Jubilees," Hebraica 8 (1892): 124-31. - J. C. VanderKam, "Enoch Traditions in Jubilees and Other Second-Century
Sources," in SBLSP (1978), 229-51; P. Sacchi, "Libro dei Giubilei," in Apocrifi ell'Antico
Testamento 1 (Turin, 1981), 179-411. - Garcia Martinez, "The Heavenly Tablets," 258.
- See Boccaccini, Enoch and Qumran Origins.
- For a detailed analysis of Josephus's and Philo's testimony on the Essenes, see my
Beyond the Essene Hypothesis.