The Composition of Jubileescoined by Kugel, according to which multiple interpretive solutions to the
same problem were combined together in one composition,^28 because there
is no reason for these solutions to be consistently differentiated by their liter
ary genre. Moreover, the chronological contradictions, and especially the
case of the births of Jacob's sons (example 2), do not lend themselves to easy
explanation as the result of the conscious combination of exegetical tradi
tions, as one would expect a single author to weave together these alternate
traditions to form a cohesive and coherent story.
As a final point, the Watchers story (example 3) perhaps provides us
with a key to understanding this process of development. It should be noted
that the borrowing of 1 En 10-11 described above is limited to Jub 5:1-12. The
subsequent section, w. 13-18, emphasizes the legal aspects of the Watchers
story — each group described in that passage (Watchers, giants, people) re
ceives an appropriate punishment, as set out for them before they behaved
sinfully. This additional passage is marked by terminology similar to that
found in legal passages throughout Jubilees, and one can safely assume that
it is of the same provenance as the other legal passages. I suggest that Jub 5
can be taken as an empirical model for the literary development of the book
as a whole, based upon the following pattern: a rewritten biblical text (1 En
10—11) was adopted, placed within a new chronological framework (the addi
tion of the date in 5:1 — see above), and supplemented by a juxtaposed legal
passage.
In the case of Jub 5, a contradiction between the chronological frame
work and the rewritten narrative was identified, but no such tension is pres
ent between the story and the legal passage. However, the literary evidence,
and specifically the dependence upon an extant text, attests to the bound
aries of the borrowed material (Jub 5:1-12) and the contributions of the re
dactor (w. 13-18). In contrast to Jub 5, in most of the examples of contradic
tions listed above, there is no direct, literary evidence that Jubilees borrowed
from a specific composition. However, using this passage as a model for the
book as a whole, the notion of a redactor with halakic and chronological
emphases who incorporated extant rewritten texts can be used to explain the
presence of the contradictions between the rewritten narratives and the
other two genres. The differences between them are the result of their differ
ent origins, and they were combined as part of the compositional process of
the book of Jubilees.
- J. L. Kugel, In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (San Fran
cisco: Harper, 1990), 256-57.