Martha Himmelfarb
on earth. Its brief allusions to the heavenly temple make explicit an aspect of
the idea of the heavenly temple implicit in its function of prototype for the
earthly temple that other texts of the second temple period fail to exploit: it
has been there since the beginning. Jubilees' emphasis on the heavenly tem
ple as a venue for observances that take place on earth only after the emer
gence of the people of Israel and the giving of the Torah has a great deal in
common with the original understanding of the heavenly temple as a proto
type of the earthly: it serves to valorize the rituals of the earthly temple
rather than to criticize them.