The Chronologies of the Apocalypse of Weeks and the Book of JubileesI. The Apocalypse of Weeks and the
Book of Jubilees as Apocalypses
The possibility that the Apocalypse of Weeks influenced the book of Jubilees
begins with the recognition that both works are apocalypses. An apocalypse
is "a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a rev
elation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing
a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschato
logical salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural
world."^7 There is no doubt that the Apocalypse of Weeks is an apocalypse, but
more needs to be said about Jubilees, since chaps, l and 23 are the only parts
of the book that are generally regarded as fitting the description of an apoca
lypse, containing special revelations to Moses through angelic mediation
from the testimony inscribed on the heavenly tablets (cf. 1:26-27;^23 : 32 )-
I have argued that these two chapters are so thoroughly integrated
within the chronological structure and message of the book that it is artifi
cial to isolate them as separate apocalypses. The apocalypse in the first chap
ter sets the stage for the rest of the book, and the final chapter recalls that
setting, providing closure for the whole book (50:2). Hence, the whole of Ju
bilees should be seen as one unified apocalypse, albeit a revelation that in
cludes, as part and parcel of its fundamental fabric, a copious amount of
halakic material and quasi-historical narrative. Indeed, if one of the main
purposes of the book was to teach the proper observance of halakah from
reworked primeval and patriarchal narratives, then special revelation of the
narrated events was absolutely essential to lend divine authority to the au
thor's interpretive moves.
In asserting the literary unity of Jubilees, I am, of course, assuming the
final form of the book more or less as we now have it. Although there have
been recent attempts to reconstruct the compositional history of the book,^8
- This is the widely accepted definition of the literary genre "apocalypse" in J. J. Col
lins, "Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre," in Apocalypse: Morphology of a
Genre, ed. J. J. Collins, Semeia 14 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979), 1-20 (9). Although the def
inition of an "apocalypse" is admittedly modern and somewhat arbitrary, it still serves the
useful purpose of grouping texts that exhibit a coherent and recurring pattern of features
constituted by the interrelated elements of form, content, and function. The discussion of
the literary genre "apocalypse" should not be abandoned in favor of other kinds of formal
comparisons between texts (e.g., Jubilees and wisdom literature). It is not a matter of
"either-or" but of "both-and." - Cf. C. Berner, Jahre, Jahrwochen und Jubilaen. Heptadische Geschichtskonzeptionen