Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Reconsidering Jubilees: Prophecy and Exemplarity

spiritual practices also constitute contexts within which texts can be ren­

dered intelligible. Instead of constituting an obstacle, authorial self-

effacement should be an object of study. By considering the practices of

authorial effacement and pseudepigraphic attribution, we can come to

understand much about the way the unknown and unknowable authors

related to their own present.^13

In this particular case, we should try to understand how Jubilees under­
stands itself as building upon the expansion of Exodus that occurs already in
Deuteronomy, all attributed to the figure of Moses. It is an instance of what I
have elsewhere called Mosaic Discourse. At the same time, however, as I have
argued elsewhere, it is also angelic discourse, since it presents itself as a rec­
ord of what the angel of the presence said to Moses, which Moses dutifully
recorded.^14 As scholars, our task is not to judge the authenticity of Jubilees'
claim to be revealed. It is rather to contextualize that claim within the prac­
tices of late ancient Judaism. In what follows I want to develop my previous
work on Jubilees in two respects:

I. I want to develop the point, which I have already introduced, that
the book of Jubilees belongs to the corpus of books said to be revelatory, or
even prophetic.^15 Once we include Jubilees in this group, we see the claims
of the book in a very different light. The angelic revelation, the Mosaic in­
scription, and the record of heavenly traditions resonate with the better-
known biblical traditions. While scholars have emphasized that Jubilees is
part of the "Qumran Bible," or the "authoritative literature" of the second
temple period for some Jews, we must still explore the implications of that
claim. Our conception of Jubilees is altered, along with other known pro­
phetic works, once we consider these works to be representatives of a genre,
some of whose members later came to be classified as biblical.^16

II. In my earlier work I focused on Jubilees as an example of what I
called discourse tied to a founder — in the case of Jubilees, Mosaic Discourse.

13. H. Najman, "How Should We Contextualize Pseudepigrapha? Imitation and Emu­
    lation in 4Ezra," in Flores Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Hon­
    our oj Florentino Garcia Martinez, ed. A. Hilhorst, E. Puech, and E. Tigchelaar (Leiden: Brill,
    2007).


14. See my essay "Interpretation as Primordial Writing."


15. In my forthcoming study of ancient Jewish revelation, I discuss features that Jubi­
    lees shares with other members of the prophetic corpus. See "Defining Prophecy," in Pro­
    phetic Ends.


16. Cf. Kraft, "Para-mania."