Martha Himmelfarb
would be difficult to deduce most of what Elior claims about the mystical
calendar from the Apocalypse of Weeks, while the idea of a succession of
ages is by no means obvious in Jubilees. Further, it is clearly Jubilees that
provides the key to understanding the calendar's significance. But the prob
lems in the assumption that Jubilees and the Apocalypse of Weeks share the
same understanding of calendar need not detain us here. What is most im
portant for us is that Elior calls attention to the connection between heaven
and earth built into creation through the institution of the Sabbath with its
ongoing implications that is central to Jubilees: "[Jubilees'] aim is to recount
the mythical, mystical, and angelic nature of the oaths and the covenants, to
demonstrate their cultic nature and the eternal validity of the command
ments associated with them, to indicate their relationship with the sevenfold
structure of the solar calendar, which links the heavens with the earth, the
angels ministering in heaven with the priests ministering on earth, through
the succession of weeks and sabbaths, sabbaticals and jubilees."^23
Despite my reservations about her harmonizing approach and her use
of terms such as "mythical" and "mystical" in the passage just quoted, I agree
wholeheartedly with Elior's understanding of the calendar of Jubilees as re
flecting the correspondence between heaven and earth. Yet Jubilees uses the
idea of the correspondence between heaven and earth, heavenly temple and
earthly temple, angelic service and human service, to very different ends
from other works in which these correspondences play a role.
The idea of heaven as a temple is widespread in literature of the second
temple period, but it has its roots in the Bible and the ancient Near East,
where the temples in which human beings worship are understood as repli
cas of the true house of the god, located on a distant mountain or, in the case
of the God of Israel, in heaven.^24 In the apocalypses of the second temple pe
riod, heaven is understood either as God's palace, as in the book of Daniel,
or as a temple, as in the Book of the Watchers; the two images are comple
mentary, two different ways of characterizing God's abode. In the Book of
the Watchers the picture of heaven as temple is important for the narrative
and crucial to the message of the work. In some later apocalypses, in which
heaven is represented as a temple, this fact is of little consequence for the
narrative or the message of the work; it is simply taken for granted.
While Jubilees never makes the idea of heaven as temple explicit, it is- Elior, Three Temples, 135.
- See the discussion of Torleif Elgvin, "Biblical Roots of Early Mystical Traditions
on the Heavenly Temple," Hen 31, no. 1 (2009).