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(Nora)
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Enochic and Mosaic Traditions in Jubilees
ity, so it utilizes Pentateuchal models. As Najman has shown, the text adopts
a stance akin to Deuteronomy, authorizing its own contribution with appeal
to the Sinaitic setting, Mosaic mediation, and divine revelation of
covenantal and priestiy Law as described in Exodus, Leviticus, and Num
bers.^31 In the process, Jubilees also defends the authority of the Pentateuch
against anyone who might assume that this anonymous writing is merely an
earthly creation: it begins by emphasizing the Sinaitic revelation as a privi
leged occasion for the transmission of heavenly knowledge to earth and,
throughout the narrative, reminds the reader of its angelic narrator. And,
lest anyone wonder why Israel's purportedly eternal and immutable laws
were revealed at such a suspiciously late date in human history,^32 it traces
some laws back to the distant past, reveals some as written on heavenly tab
lets, and parallels some to angelic practices in heaven. By describing Enoch
as penning multiple books on different topics during his sojourn with the
angels (4:17-19), the text also grounds the plausibility for its own claim that
multiple books on different matters came down to us from Moses and
Mount Sinai — not just the Pentateuch but also Jubilees itself.
Following Jubilees' own model of "authorship" and transmission, the
authority of the Pentateuch and Enochic literature is subordinated to the
heavenly writings from which Jubilees also draws its authority.^33 Does this
subordination imply a challenge to Mosaic authority and/or Jubilees' affilia
tion with a "Judaism" in which the Pentateuch was not always accepted as
authoritative? To make such an argument, one would need to assume that
the text of the Pentateuch was already accepted by other Jews, not just as an
authoritative source for law, wisdom, and history, but as revealed and au
thoritative in a unique sense not granted to any other books. Personally, I am
not sure whether our data can bear the weight of such an assumption. In
light of our evidence for the continued production and circulation of other
revealed literature — in the second century and well beyond — we may not
be able to assume that any book held a status akin to that of "the Bible" in
the later Jewish and Christian sense of that term (i.e., an exclusively privi
leged site for interpretation, the very text of which is sacred, immutable, and
omni-significant); for, indeed, the boundaries of scriptural authority re-
31. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 16-69.
32. On the broader cultural context of the impulse to "back-date" Pentateuchal law,
see J. C. VanderKam, "The Origins and Purpose of Jubilees," in his Textual and Historical
Studies in the Book of Jubilees, 19-22; Kvanvig, "lubilees," 257-58.
33. Najman, "Angels at Sinai," 317-18; Himmelfarb, "Torah," 27.
