From a Movement of Dissent to a Distinct Form
of Judaism: The Heavenly Tablets in Jubilees
as the Foundation of a Competing Halakah
Gabriele Boccaccini
1. Jubilees: Neither "Rewritten Torah" nor "New Torah"
In 1997 Michael Thomas Davis translated into English and made available to
the international audience a 1984 Spanish article by Florentino Garcia
Martinez, which still remains the most comprehensive study on the heavenly
tablets in Jubilees.^1 Garcia Martinez pointed out that the function of the
heavenly tablets in Jubilees could not be reduced to their being "the divine,
preexisting archetype of the [Mosaic] Torah."^2 In most cases "the instruc
tions contained in these tablets do not coincide with the biblical text" and
introduce "new halakhot."^3 Garcia Martinez concluded his analysis by af
firming that "in more than half of the cases in Jubilees. .. the Heavenly Tab
lets function in the same way as the Oral Torah ... in Rabbinic Judaism. The
Heavenly Tablets constitute a hermeneutical recourse which permits the pre
sentation of the 'correct' interpretation of the Law adapting it to the chang
ing situations of life."^4
- F. Garcia Martinez, "The Heavenly Tablets in the Book of Jubilees," in Studies in the
Book of Jubilees, ed. M. Albani et al.,TSAJ 65 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 243-59; in Span
ish: "Las Tablas Celestes en el Libro de los Jubileos," in Palabrasy Vida, ed. A. Vagas Machuca
and G. Ruiz (Madrid: Universidad de Comillas, 1984), 333-49. For an earlier treatment of the
subject, see R. Eppel, "Les tables de la Loi et les tables celestes," RHPR 17 (1937): 401-12. - Garcia Martinez, "The Heavenly Tablets," 243.
- Garcia Martinez, "The Heavenly Tablets," 251 and 255.
- Garcia Martinez, "The Heavenly Tablets," 248.