Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Reconsidering Jubilees: Prophecy and Exemplarity

history of fraud and tampering? Although Foucault is not primarily con­

cerned, in his discussion of the author function, with ancient texts, and

although he does not directly address the Hebrew Bible, one of his exam­

ples provides a useful contemporary analogue to the cases I am consider­

ing. It is the example of discourses that are inextricably linked to their

founders, such as Marxism or Freudianism. When someone proclaims

"Back to Marx!" or "Back to Freud!" she claims to represent the authentic

doctrine of Marx or Freud, although she may express it in different

words. Of course, today such people make known their own names, un­

der which they author books. But, in some ancient cultures, the way to

continue or return to the founder's discourse was precisely to ascribe

what one said or wrote, not to oneself, but rather to the founder.^25

In the above passage, I consider the claim that "Moses" wrote Deuteronomy

or Jubilees. If we are to take that claim seriously, what is involved? First, we

must seriously consider what it could mean in general — in the exilic and

postexilic periods — to attribute a tradition to a figure, to say, for example,

that Isaiah wrote Second Isaiah or that Moses wrote Deuteronomy or that

Jeremiah wrote the whole of Jeremiah.

Regardless of whether there is a historical Isaiah, what is important is

that the earliest traditions about Isaiah seem to have generated even more

traditions that would attach themselves to the earlier Isaianic traditions. Just

as we speak of Pythagorean texts — which are surely not physically or his­

torically produced by Pythagoras himself, but which participate in a dis­

course attached to a founder — and just as we speak of Marxist or Freudian

texts that were not written by either Marx or Freud, so we should perhaps

speak of Isaianic texts, participating in an Isaianic discourse. Between

founding figure and discourse there is a reciprocal and dynamic relation­

ship: ascriptions to the figure constitute the discourse, while developments

of the discourse constitute the figure's evolving identity.

What I want to argue is that Jubilees presents itself as part of the larger

corpus of revelatory literature insofar as it participates in an already inspired

discourse associated with a founder. These figures from the remote past keep

writing, or at least communicating to later writers, traditions that are said to

be part of a revered and inspired past.

I want to distinguish my position here from someone who might ar­

gue that there are analogues to Greco-Roman schools of philosophy in late

25. Seconding Sinai, 12.