The Book of Jubilees and the Temple ScrollThe Temple Scroll and the book of Jubilees agree that the paschal lamb
must be eaten within the temple precincts. Yadin suggests Deut 16:7 as the
source of this law and notes that the Karaites agree. The Tannaim, on the
other hand, allow it to be eaten anywhere in Jerusalem.^55 Both texts echo Lev
23:6-8 in describing the ensuing festival as a seven-day feast of unleavened
bread. Sacrifices are to be offered on each day according to both works. The
extensive ceremony for the Omer festival mentioned in Temple Scroll 18:1-10
has no equivalent whatsoever in the book of Jubilees.
The case of the Passover celebration affords an example of an area in
which some significant prescriptions of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll are in
complete agreement. Nevertheless, there are still some matters upon which
they offer different opinions.^56
The Judaism of the Second Commonwealth period was one of varie
gated sects and ideologies. That there was indeed some relationship between
these two texts is apparent from their inclusion in the library of the Qumran
community. We see the halakic traditions of these two texts as derived from
outside the community, perhaps from its antecedents that were followers of
the common Zadokite/Sadducean approach. The sect would have read and
studied these materials precisely because of the affinities they shared with its
own beliefs and principles. The book of Jubilees and the sources of the Tem
ple Scroll constitute part of the world from which the Qumran sect emerged
and in which it strove to attain its own spiritual ideals. Each of these texts
represents an independent view of the festival sacrificial cycle, based on exe
gesis of the scriptural texts and a certain shared common Zadokite/Saddu
cean heritage. There can be no possibility, however, of seeing the sacrificial
codes of Jubilees as based on those of the Temple Scroll or vice versa.^57
- m. Zevahim 5:8.
- Cf. J. Milgrom, "The Concept of Impurity in Jubilees and the Temple Scroll!' RevQ
16, no. 62 (1993): 277-84; M. Himmelfarb, "Sexual Relations and Purity in the Temple Scroll
and the Book of Jubilees," DSD 6, no. 1 (1999): 11-36; L. Doering, "Purity and Impurity in the
Book of Jubilees," in the present volume. - Our study of the sacrificial law of the Aramaic Levi Document indicates that its
law includes many aspects of the Zadokite/Sadducean trend that it has somehow combined
with Pharisaic-rabbinic prescriptions on other issues. Cf. L. H. Schiffman, "Sacrificial
Halakhah in the Fragments of the Aramaic Levi Document from Qumran, the Cairo
Genizah, and Mt. Athos Monastery," in Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts at
Qumran; Proceedings of a Joint Symposium by the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea
Scrolls and Associated Literature and the Hebrew University Institute for Advanced Studies Re
search Group on Qumran, 15-17 January, 2002, ed. E. G. Chazon, D. Dimant, and R. A.
Clements, STDJ 58 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 177-202.