Benjamin G. Wright III
"upon the altar of the Lord," follow, and the "servants of the house of the
Lord" will eat anything left over. What looks like an anachronistic reference
to priests and the temple is essentially not, since the reader, for whom priests
and temple are a contemporary reality, has been included among the chil
dren addressed by the ancient figure.
Whereas Noah's speech creates ambiguity about the identification of
the "children" to whom the patriarch speaks, that identification is clearer in
the narrative about Abraham, and the work of constructing the reader as
one who falls in Abraham's line begins early. In 12:23, employing the lan
guage of Gen 12:3, God calls Abraham and promises to bless him and all the
nations. Then Jubilees adds, "And I shall be God for you and your son and
for the son of your son and for all of your seed." Thereafter, mention of
Abraham's "seed" must be read in the light of this statement, which the au
thor intended to include the reader. The author further circumscribes the
Jewish reader in the commandment to circumcise, which applies to "the
sons of Israel," another anachronism for the "Abraham" of the narrative, but
not for our author. When Abraham finally bids farewell to his children, he
commands them,
that they should guard the way of the Lord so that they might do righ
teousness and each might love his neighbor, and that it should be thus
among all men so that one might proceed to act justly and rightly to
ward them upon the earth, and that they should circumcise their sons in
the covenant which he made with them, and that they should not cross
over either to the right or left from all of the ways which the Lord com
manded us and that we should keep ourselves from all fornication and
pollution, and that we should set aside from among us all fornication
and pollution. (20:2-3, emphasis mine)By this time the reader is well prepared for this sudden shift in person. After
all, the members of Jubilees' audience are predisposed to seeing themselves
as children of Abraham. The rhetorical scheme exploits that predisposition
in order to make Abraham speak directly to all his children, both remote and
contemporary, via an extensive list of warnings and admonitions that in
cludes avoiding fornication, keeping away from idols, and properly worship
ing God.
A second strategy for forging the parent-child bond that places the
reader in the obliged position emphasizes the passing down of books from
the patriarchal father. The book that the reader possesses or hears is the