Jubilees, Qumran, and the Essenes
Eyal Regev
I. The Act of Comparison
Comparison is one of the theoretical tools of the study of history, and par
ticularly Religionsgeschichte. In the current stage of Qumran scholarship,
many scholars are engaged in comparing different documents, and in cer
tain cases, also comparing social phenomena, such as the Essenes, the yahad,
and the Damascus Covenant. To compare two entities a certain degree of
similarity is necessary, but comparison is provocative and insightful only
when one is able to point to significant differences.^1
II. Similarities
What, then, are the general similarities that enable us to compare Jubilees,
Qumran, and the Essenes? Jubilees and the Qumran sects (or rather, the Com
munity Rule and the Damascus Document) share a belief in predestination^2
- F. J. P. Poole, "Metaphors and Maps: Towards Comparison in the Anthropology of
Religion," JAAR 54 (1986): 411-57; R. A. Segal, "In Defense of the Comparative Method,"
Numen 48 (2001): 339-74; J. Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early
Christianities and the Religion of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Lon
don: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1990). - The belief in predestination in the Instruction of the Two Spirits corresponds to
Jubilees' conception that the future is written on the heavenly tablets (e.g., Jub 1:29; 23:32).