John S. Bergsma
- From Neugebauer, "Astronomical" Chapters, 31.
- Translation from R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis (London:
A. & C. Black, 1902). - Different calendrical conflicts are reflected in the two books. AB is em
phatic about the truth of the 364-day calendar; however, it never inveighs
against proponents of a luni-solar or 365-day arrangement. Instead, AB's op
ponents are those who fail to count the four epagomenal days: "There are
people who err concerning them [the four epagomenal days] by not count
ing them in the reckoning of the year:... the year is completed in 364 days"
(1 En 82:5-6).^24 Apparently, then, AB reflects a conflict with advocates of a
360-day calendar.
The calendrical opponents of Jubilees are quite different. Jub 6:36-38
warns about those who "examine the moon diligently, because it [the moon]
will corrupt the times." Those who consult the moon will "not make a year
only three hundred and sixty-four days" (6:38). The modifier "only" implies
that the opposing moon-consultors lengthen the year. So surely what is being
opposed is a luni-solar calendar periodically intercalated to comply with the
actual (365.25) solar cycle.
- From the perspective of Jubilees, AB shows disappointingly little inter
est in superannual calendrical units (i.e., weeks of years and jubilee cycles). To
be precise, AB does not mention them at all. Of course, this does not prevent
the author of Jubilees from attributing the knowledge of weeks and jubilees
to Enoch: he "recounted the weeks of the jubilees, and made known to them
the days of the years, and set in order the months and recounted the Sab
baths of the years" (Jub 4:18).^25 It is possible that this is an allusion to the
Apocalypse of Weeks (AW), which mentions "weeks" instead of "Sabbaths"
or "jubilees." However, in AW the "weeks" are long epochs of variable length,
not strict seven-year sequences as they are in Jubilees. Moreover, AW does
not place its "weeks" within a jubilary cycle ("weeks of jubilees"), nor does it
discuss "Sabbaths of years." Therefore, it does not seem likely that Jub 4:18
reflects the contents of AW. Instead, this may well be the author's creative
and expansive redescription of the contents of Enoch's astronomical book.
Although it is to be doubted that the Aramaic form of AB known to the au
thor of Jubilees included anything about weeks of years and jubilees, none
theless the author of Jubilees is confident that this information was revealed
to Enoch and he wrote it down in texts that are no longer extant.