David R. Jackson
to counter demonic power and to live a lifestyle of purity without idolatry,
fornication, or self-destructive violence. This Enochic self-understanding
constituted a holy priesthood facilitating the return of all the descendants of
this chosen line to a right standing before God on judgment day. To them
alone was given the revelation needed to live that lifestyle and to maintain
that distinction. It was grounded in the perfection of the heavenly tablets,
communicated through a pure line of righteous elect living exemplary
lives^37 under alien and deviant regimes. Enoch saw these things firsthand in
the heavens. Holy angels dictated this information to him and to those who
came after him down to the time of the actual authors. This revelation in
cluded the correct calendar and restored the ability of the elect to synchro
nize the worship of the saints on earth with the holy ones in heaven. Depar
ture from ethnic, cultural, or liturgical purity, as defined by these exemplars,
placed one beyond redemption. The result was a passionate parenesis di
rected to second temple Jews based on the self-validating claim of the vari
ous tradents of this body of revelation that they were marked out as the
"Enoch" of their time before an impending judgment of greater proportion
than Noah's day. These claims may have been disputed by a variety of at
tempts to domesticate the paradigm, much as various disputes arose as to
the rightful identity of "the elect remnant" or "the Israel of God," all of
which, taken together, attest to the power of the construct to make sense of
the experience of the Jewish people in this period.
Jubilees represents a significant and groundbreaking stage of develop
ment in the early history of the use and adaptation of the Enochic paradigm.
In company with the Genesis Apocryphon and Aramaic Levi, it marks the
point at which the Enochic paradigm and exemplars were being applied to
the postdiluvian world. It traced and analyzed replications of the exemplars
up to the end of the Torah narrative and even back to the sin of Adam and
Eve. It provided a model for integrating the Enochic system and revelations
with those works variously accepted as first canon. These were not the arbi
trary impositions of an alien structure upon the Torah but a sincere and pe
dantic attempt to correlate the two texts exegetically.^38 In so doing, Jubilees
stimulated an exponential agenda that produced many of the works found
in the Qumran library and more. For scholars today it provides a direct and
- See Dorothy Peters, "Noah Traditions in Jubilees: Evidence for the Struggle be
tween Enochic and Mosaic Authority," Hen 31, no. 1 (2009). - See Carmichael, "The Integration of Law and Narrative in Jubilees," Hen 31, no. 1
(2009).