Purity and Impurity in the Book of Jubilees
six days for a daughter that the woman spends "in the blood of purification"
(westa dama nesh; Jub 3:10-11). This agrees with the periods mentioned in
Lev 12:4-5. The rationale for this link with Eden clearly is the notion of Eden
as sanctuary.^7 Lev 12:4 states that the woman during her period of purifica
tion may not touch any sancta (Pip) nor enter the sanctuary (WTpan), sim
ilarly Jub 3:13. There is a close parallel to the Jubilees passage in 4Q265 frg. 7,*
already referred to above.
However, a few questions remain open. How does the purification re
late to Adam's and his wife's entry into the Garden? It should be the mother
who needs to wait, but there is no mother here. One might perhaps reckon
with influence of a tradition extending the purification period to the male or
female child.' However, 4Q266 (=4QDa) 6 ii 11, in a similar context, men
tions a wet nurse that, according to some, was intended to prevent the child's
defilement, which would suggest that the child is not necessarily deemed im
pure like the mother; but the passage is too fragmentary to allow for a defi
nite answer, and this explanation of the presence of a wet nurse has recendy
been questioned altogether.^10 Ultimately, the link between the protoplasts
and later humanity is as symbolic as the one between Eden and the temple:
although not born from a mother, Adam and his wife represent human be
ings (construed as Israelites) confronted with the sanctuary and become
part of the life cycle entailing defilement (as we shall see presently, not
merely after the fall).^11 Unlike Lev 12:6, Jub 3 does not link the end of the pe-
7. Jub 3:12; 8:19; cf. 4Q265 7 14; iQH' 16 (8 Suk-):io-i3. Cf. B. Ego, "Heilige Zeit —
heiliger Raum — heiliger Mensch: Beobachtungen zur Struktur der Gesetzesbegrundung in
der Schttpfungs- und Paradiesgeschichte des Jubilaenbuchs," in Studies in the Book of Jubi
lees, ed. M. Albani, J. Frey, and A. Lange, TSAJ 65 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 207-19,
214: Eden and temple "stehen in einem symbolischen Reprasentationszusammenhang." Cf.
G. Anderson, "Celibacy or Consummation in the Garden? Reflections on Early Jewish and
Christian Interpretations of the Garden of Eden," HTR 82 (1989): 121-48,129-31.
8. Cf. I. M. Baumgarten, "Purification after Childbirth and the Sacred Garden in
4Q265 and Jubilees," in New Qumran Texts and Studies: Proceedings of the First Meeting of the
International Organization for Qumran Studies, Paris 1992, ed. G. J. Brooke with F. Garcia
Martinez, STDJ 15 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 3-10. A. Shemesh, in his contribution to this volume,
views 4Q265 as rewritten Jubilees, but it is not impossible that it draws on a tradition similar
or identical to Jubilees' source.
9. George Syncellus, Chronographia 9 [5 Mosshammer); perhaps Luke 2:22 (a) rjulpcn
TOO KaSapicuoO aurffiv). Cf. Baumgarten, "Purification," 5-6; H. K. Harrington, The Purity
Texts, Companion to the Qumran Scrolls 5 (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004), 62.
10. Cf. C. Wassen, Women in the Damascus Document, Academia Biblica 21 (Leiden:
Brill, 2005), 56-58.