Daniel and JubileesThe Antiochean persecution provided the apocalyptically minded with a
fresh momentum that led to the composition of a small yet diverse group of
apocalypses of which Daniel and Jubilees are part. And fourth, a little over
half a century after their composition, both Daniel and Jubilees found their
way into the library of the Qumran community. The unusually high number
of manuscripts discovered of both texts — no fewer than eight of Daniel and
fifteen of Jubilees^2 — may be seen as an indication that the books were held
in high esteem, and possibly even considered "authoritative" (CD 16:3-4), by
the members of the community. It is easy to see how Daniel's apocalyptic
outlook and Jubilees' priestly and legal concerns would have been highly
popular at Qumran. Moreover, the Qumran library yielded a number of var
ied writings that closely resemble both books, the so-called Pseudo-Daniel
(4Q243-245) and the Pseudo-Jubilees texts (4Q225-227). These hitherto un
known compositions show that there existed a very active continuous tradi
tion of composing stories and visions associated with Daniel and Jubilees.^3
While the two books have obvious affinities, some of which can be ex
plained by the common Maccabean milieu from which they stem, in many
other respects they diverge from one another. Their literary structures are
entirely different, for example, as are their theological foci. Most strikingly,
their reception history beyond Qumran took very different routes. Daniel
became part of the Western biblical canons, whereas Jubilees never did.
My comparison of these two writings revolves around three aspects
that also provide the structure for this essay: the authors' apocalyptic expec
tations, their use of biblical exegesis, and their chronological, specifically
their heptadic, calculations. Any one of these topics deserves a full-length
study of its own. What I hope to show in this brief comparative essay, how
ever, is that while all three aspects are of central importance to both Daniel
and Jubilees, they fulfill rather different functions in the two books. The is-
- The numbers are taken from J. C. VanderKam and P. W. Flint, The Meaning of the
Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Harper San Francisco, 2002), 149 and 197. - Scholarly literature on this matter has grown exponentially in recent years; on Jubi
lees, see J. C. VanderKam, "The jubilees Fragments from Qumran Cave 4," in The Madrid
Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid,
18-21 March, 1991, ed. J. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner, STDJ 11 (Brill: Leiden, 1992),
635-48; C. Hempel, "The Place of the Book of Jubilees at Qumran and Beyond," in The Dead
Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. T. H. Lim (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000), 187-96.
On Daniel, see P. W. Flint, "The Daniel Tradition at Qumran," and L. T. Stuckenbruck,
"Daniel and Early Enoch Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls," both in The Book of Daniel:
Composition and Reception, ed. J. J. Collins and P. W. Flint, 2 vols., VTSup 83 (Leiden: Brill,
2001), 2:329-67 and 368-86; E. Ulrich, "Daniel, Book of," in EDSS, 170-74.