The Composition of JubileesIt is impossible to ignore this discrepancy of four days between the dates, be
cause the precedent for the law is based entirely upon these dates.^19
In addition, one can suggest an exegetical reason for why the sin in the
Garden is dated to the seventeenth of the second month, unrelated to Lev 12,
as this is the same date as the beginning of the flood (MT and SP to Gen 7:11;
Jub 5:23-24). The paradigmatic sin led to the paradigmatic punishment. The
emphasis on exactly seven years in the Garden is presumably intended to
emphasize a complete period of time.^20
- Did Judah sm.? According to the rewritten story of Judah and Tamar, Ju-
dah's sons had not consummated their marriages with her, and she was there
fore not legally considered Judah's daughter-in-law (Jub 41:2,5,27; cf. Lev 18:15;
20:12). He therefore did not sin when he had intercourse with her. In contrast,
according to the legal passage (w. 23-26), Judah indeed sinned, but repented,
and was therefore forgiven. The legal passage emphasizes the process by which
Judah was forgiven, and this atonement is possible only if he actually sinned. - The source for the method of Tamar's punishment. After Judah heard
that his daughter-in-law Tamar was pregnant, he decided that she should be
put to death by burning (Gen 38:24). The punishment of fire in cases of sex
ual impropriety appears only twice in the Pentateuch: "the daughter of a
priest who profanes herself through harlotry" (Lev 21:9), and "a man who
takes a wife and her mother" (Lev 20:14). In the rewritten story in Jub 41, Ju
dah wished to have Tamar killed on the basis of "the law which Abraham
had commanded his children" (v. 28). This apparently refers to Abraham's
warning in his testament to his descendants (or a similar tradition): "If any
woman or girl among you commits a sexual offence, burn her in fire" (Jub
20:4), an expansion of the prohibition and punishment of the priest's
daughter from Lev 21:9 to all Israelite women.
In contrast, the legal passage in Jub 41:23-26 preferred to derive this
punishment by means of exegesis according to which the punishment of
burning for intercourse with a daughter-in-law (expressly prohibited in Lev
18:15; 20:12, but without the method of punishment) is the same as that of a
mother-in-law ("a wife and her mother") described explicitly in Lev 20:14.
These two scenarios are symmetric situations, where the men and women
have interchanged roles.^21
- Pace J. M. Baumgarten, "Some Problems of the Jubilees Calendar in Current Re
search," VT 32 (1982): 485-89 (here 489 n. 8). - Cf. 12:15 — two weeks; 19:1 — two weeks, 12 — two weeks; 24:12 — three weeks;
47:9 — three weeks, 10 — three weeks. - As I suggested in Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 67-69, the legal logic behind this com-