Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Hindy Najman

Suppose we characterize Jubilees as rewritten Bible. Then we are com­
mitting ourselves to the position that there was already an authoritative or
canonical Pentateuch in the second century, during which it was possible to
replace the Pentateuch with a text like Jubilees. As I argued in Seconding Si­
nai, I find the position very problematic:

Like the classification of texts as pseudepigraphic, the characterization

of Second Temple texts as "Rewritten Bible" is problematic. Use of the

term can suggest an anachronistic conception of a text — as a fixed set of

claims embodied in specific language, such that tampering with that

language is tantamount to interfering with an author's property. When

scholars who employ such a concept encounter biblical and extra-

biblical texts that recount biblical narratives with variations and inser­

tions, they may be tempted to infer that these texts aspire to replace an

older, authentic biblical tradition with a new version. Instead, we should

ask whether these biblical and extra-biblical writers shared our contem­

porary conception of a text. Although biblicists assume the existence of

a somewhat fixed biblical text as early as the Persian period, they ac­

knowledge the fluidity of biblical traditions. Even if it is still possible to

speak of rewriting, the distinction between the transmission and the in­

terpretation of biblical traditions was not as sharp as the term Rewritten

Bible implies.^2

We do not have evidence that entitles us to speak of a fixed and exclusive
canon at the time of Jubilees' composition. However, there is evidence for a
stabilized, circulating, and authoritative text much like what is eventually
called the Pentateuch. In addition, we know that Jubilees shares many tradi-

Covenant: The Notre Dame Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. E. Ulrich and J. C.
VanderKam (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 111-34. See also ear­
lier scholarship by G. Vermes, who coined the term "Rewritten Bible": Scripture and Tradi­
tion in Judaism: Haggadic Studies, 2nd rev. ed., StPB 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1973; 1st ed. 1961), 10,
and by C. Perrot on the notion of "texte continue": Pseudo-Philon: Les antiquites bibliques.
Tome II: Introduction litteraire, commentaire et index, SC 230 (Paris: Cerf, 1976). For a recent
discussion see M. Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology, and Theol­
ogy, JSJSup 117 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

2. H. Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Tem­
   ple Judaism, JSJSup 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 7-8. See also my discussion of why this term is
   deeply problematic in "Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubilees and Its Authority
   Conferring Strategies," /S/30 (1999): 379-410. 1 prefer to jettison the term altogether because
   it obscures more than it illuminates in the world of ancient Judean traditions.