Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Enochic and Mosaic Traditions in Jubilees

33:13-14; 41:25-26), this act is presented as a sin for which no atonement is

possible (30:13-16). Hence, it is perhaps telling that Jubilees stresses the fallen

angels' sexual sins and describes them as acts of fornication and impurity

(4:22; 7:21; 20:5-6) — two categories also paired in the description of inter­

marriage in 30:7-17. In Noah's testimony, their sin is called the "beginning of

impurity" (7:21); together with the bloodshed caused by the Giants, their

acts are said to defile the earth and necessitate the flood. Abraham's speech

similarly cites the destruction of the Giants to warn against fornication and

impurity: just as the fallen angels saw the Giants slain by God's sword in 5:9,

so the human children of fornication and impurity will be doomed to de­

struction by the sword (20:5-6; cf. 30:5).

In light of Jubilees' association of Israel with the angels, the possibility

arises that the sins of the fallen angels are meant to be paradigmatic of the

broader phenomenon of Jewish apostasy. Notably, the text's preoccupation

with intermarriage is just one expression of its recurrent concern with Jews

who abandon the covenant to follow Gentile practices (e.g., 1:8-11; 3:31; 6:35;

15:33-34; 21:22-23; 22:16-22). Here, moreover, Jews can be defiled, not just

through marriage to Gentiles, but also through contact with them and

through adoption of their practices (1:9; 21:23; 22:16). In this regard, it is in­

teresting to note the Watchers' punishment for their sins: they are "up­

rooted) from (positions of) authority" and bound in prisons beneath the

earth (5:6-7), just as Jews who do not circumcise their sons make "them­

selves like the nations so as to be uprooted from the earth" (10:33) ar>d just as

those who walk in the ways of the nations are "uproot(ed) from the earth"

(21:21).

One of the effects of Jubilees' Israel-angels/Gentiles-demons typology

is to depict the act of adopting Gentile practices as contrary to the cosmic

order that governs heaven as well as earth. When Jews adopt foreign worship

and festivals, marry non-Jews, and refrain from circumcising their sons, they

are committing sins with dire consequences: they align themselves with

Gentiles, thereby placing themselves under the rule of demons, dooming

their children to destruction, and exempting themselves and their children

from the special angel-like status granted to Israel.

The temptation to transgress, moreover, is poignantly expressed by Ju­

bilees' distinctive approach to the Watchers' earthly sojourn. Angelic sin is

here imagined, not as a breach of heavenly harmony (cf. Gen 6:1-2; 1 En 6:1-3;

15:3), but as a corruption that occurred during the prolonged earthly sojourn

of certain angels from heaven. They descended with good intentions (Jub

4:15), and they did not sin until after they had already spent fourteen jubilees