Jubilees, the Temple, and the Aaronite Priesthood
Jubilees thus affirms the sanctity of Mount Zion, which it sees as primordi-
ally established and eschatologically predestined. However, it questions the
legitimacy of its current priesthood and consequently of the current temple
occupying that site.
In sorting out the role of Mount Zion in the book, one must take ac
count of the fact that Jubilees seems to recognize a multiplicity of sanctuar
ies.^19 In the passage that pictures Enoch offering the evening incense, there
are four: Mount Sinai, Mount Zion, Eden, and the mountain of the east,
which will be places where God dwells at the end of days — an eschatologi
cal idea. Jub 8:19, on the other hand, mentions the existence of three sanctu
aries from creation, which will become part of the territory of Shem in the
division of land among the sons of Noah. They are the Garden of Eden,
Mount Sinai, and Mount Zion. Eden is treated as the Holy of Holies, the
dwelling place of God; Sinai as the center of the desert; and Zion as the navel
of the earth. The three places face each another, and the concept may be that
the three are the debt, the hekhal, and the 'ulam of one temple. Clearly Jubi
lees reflects a certain degree of creativeness in working with the Deuterono
mistic one-sanctuary rule. The passage in chap. 49 dealing with the Passover
as a temple festival emphasizes the role of the tabernacle located at various
places in the land as an anticipation of the temple on Mount Zion in Jerusa
lem. Perhaps the intent is to reconcile the multiplicity of places mentioned
in the Torah as dwelling places of God with the centrality of Zion.
It is also possible that the creativity reflected here needs to be coupled
with the roles of the antediluvians and the patriarchs in the evolution of
priestly sacrifice as an indication that Jubilees is seeking to make a statement
not about the priestly role of the laity who are contemporaries of the
writer^20 but about the role of priesthood, temple, and sacrifice as fundamen
tal to the order of creation. Here we can note George Brooke's discussion of
the ten temples of the Qumran literature, which would appear to support a
cosmological significance of the idea of temple in Jubilees by treating Eden
in that work as "the primordial temple."^21 For Brooke, the fact that Adam
and Eve are brought into the Garden of Eden forty and eighty days after their
19. It also appears to reject one location, Bethel, as a sanctuary. See J. Schwartz, "Jubi
lees, Bethel, and the Temple of Jacob," HUCA 56 (1985): 63-85.
20. See M. Himmelfarb, '"A Kingdom of Priests': The Democratization of the Priest
hood in the Literature of Second Temple Judaism," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy
6 (1997): 89-104.