Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Gabriele Boccaccini

Following Garcia Martinez's work, in 1998 and 1999 Martha Himmel­
farb, Hindy Najman, and Gabriele Boccaccini — working independently of
one another — reached strikingly similar conclusions that, while confirming
Garcia Martinez's overall analysis of the heavenly tablets in Jubilees, pointed
to a different relationship between Jubilees and the Mosaic Torah.^5 We all
emphasized that, contrary to the rabbinic view of the oral Torah, Jubilees'
concept of the heavenly tablets was not meant to enhance the centrality of
the Mosaic Torah. In describing the attitude of the author of Jubilees, we
came to the very same conclusion, formulated even with the very same vo­
cabulary — as a result of the introduction of the concept of the heavenly
tablets, the "uniqueness" of the Mosaic Torah was "lost," "downgraded,"
"relativized," "undermined."

Gabriele Boccaccini (1998):

Jubilees claims that the Zadokite torah does not contain God's entire

will; it is only one of several incomplete versions of the heavenly tab­

lets.... The Zadokite torah does not even contain the entire revelation

given to Moses; it is only "the book of the first Torah" (6:22), with Ju­

bilees also claiming a Mosaic origin.... The centrality and uniqueness

of the Zadokite torah are lost in its being only one document in a

larger written tradition, including Enochic documents and Jubi­

lees.... The heavenly tablets are the only and all-inclusive repository

of God's revelation.^6

Martha Himmelfarb (1999):

The heavenly tablets serve as a source of divine authority that trumps

the authority of the Torah. Thus they put Jubilees and the Torah on a

similar footing. Both are subordinate to the heavenly archive that appar­

ently contains everything that appears in either of them and more as

well. From this angle of vision, then the existence of a heavenly proto­

type of the Torah serves not to strengthen the authority of the Torah but

5. G. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998);
   M. Himmelfarb, "Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets: The Claim of Authority of the
   Book of Jubilees," in A Multiform Heritage (Festschrift Robert A. Kraft), ed. B. G. Wright (At­
   lanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 19-29; H. Najman, "Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubi­
   lees and Its Authority Conferring Strategies," JSJ 30 (1999): 379-410.


6. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis, 90, emphasis added.