Daniel and Jubileesthat apocalyptic ideas represent only one aspect of Jubilees' thought world,
and so the composition as a whole should not be called an apocalypse.^12
It may be helpful to begin by stating what Jubilees does not include.
There is no revelatory vision in Jubilees that so often is the preferred me
dium in apocalypses, nor is there a heavenly journey or any other form of
epiphany. Scholars who felt compelled to call Jubilees an apocalypse evi
dently did so not on formal grounds but rather because of the book's obvi
ous affinity with other apocalypses. The strongest case can be made for Jubi
lees' similarity to, and in several instances dependence upon, 1 Enoch. The
author of Jubilees was clearly familiar with the Enochian Book of the
Watchers and the Astronomical Book. Affiliations with other parts of
1 Enoch, particularly with the Book of Dreams, are equally obvious.
The first chapter of Jubilees introduces the reader to some key concepts
that will be foundational for the understanding of the book. One of them is
the story of how Jubilees was written. There we learn that when Moses as
cended Mount Sinai, he received much more than the Torah. God gave Moses
a historical overview from the beginning of time to its consummation, a sur
vey of "the divisions of all the times," and then commanded Moses to write
everything down in a book (Jub 1:4). The command is repeated at the end of
chap. 1 and thus forms an inclusio for the book's introduction. "Now you
write all these words which I tell you on this mountain: what is first and what
is last and what is to come during all the divisions of time which are in the law
and which are in the testimony and in the weeks of their Jubilees until eternity
— until the time when I descend and live with them throughout all the ages
of eternity" (1:26).^13 The passages aptly describe the eschatological horizon
within which the book wants to be read. The events Moses is commanded to
record do not fall within the boundaries of biblical history, let alone can they
be found in Genesis and Exodus, the two books Jubilees paraphrases, but they
cover all of history, "the weeks of their Jubilees throughout all the years of
eternity" (prologue). The book of Jubilees itself does not span all of history
from beginning to end but gives us only an excerpt of what was revealed to
Moses on Mount Sinai. But this in no way compromises the claim that the
book wants to be understood in a larger eschatological context.
- The verdict of M. Testuz, Les idees religieuses du Livre des Jubiles (Geneva: E. Droz,
i960), still holds true. "Ainsi, le Livre des Jubiles est un ouvrage de genre composite, qui tient
a la fois du livre historique, de l'ouvrage de legislation, du livre chronologique, de
l'apocalypse et du genre des testaments" (12; see also 165-77). - All translations are taken from J. C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, CSCO 510-11
(Louvain: Peeters, 1989).
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