Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Jonathan Ben-Dov

The fact that in the foremost opportunity for programmatic state­

ments on the calendar the author of Jubilees chose to ignore the numbering

of months and stressed the count of weeks instead reveals his extraordinary

indebtedness to the septenary scheme. One may note how this idea appears

again in Synchellus and Cedrenus, who were greatly influenced by Jubilees'

time reckoning. In their description of the order of times as revealed by Uriel

to Enoch, they revert to septenary terminology: ". .. Uriel ... revealed to

Enoch... that a year has 52 weeks."^13 Surprisingly, this report reflects Jub

6:30 rather than the Enochic AB!

The importance of the septenary principle in Jubilees is further under­

scored by two passages on Sabbath halakah, standing at the framework of

the book, in chaps. 2 and 50.^14

Despite all of the above, some reservations arise from a close analysis

of the narratives in Jubilees. First, throughout the dozens of dating formulas

in Jubilees there is not one case where the days of the week are mentioned.^15

This stands in striking contrast to the practice in Qumran literature, where

the days of the week are meticulously recorded in date formulas. The con­

trast is most evident when comparing the flood narrative of Jubilees to that

of the Commentary on Genesis 4Q252. While the two versions considerably

touch on chronology and date formulas, only in 4Q252 are the days of the

week added to the date formulas, and very thoroughly so. The same is true

with regard to dates and date formulas in 4Q317,4Q503, and all the Qumran

calendars (4Q319-4Q330,4Q394), as well as in Jewish deeds from the second

century c.e. onward.^16 It is also illuminating that Synchellus's account of the

flood, despite being indebted to Jubilees, adds the record of the days of the

week, an element absent from the account in Jubilees.

The absence of the days of the week from the accounts in Jubilees con­

spicuously distinguishes this book from other second temple literature. In

13. M. Black, Apocalypsis Henochi Graece, SVTP 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 12; W. Adler

and P. Tuffin, The Chronography of George Synkellos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),

45-

14. L. Doering, "The Concept of the Sabbath in the Book of Jubilees," in Studies in the

Book of Jubilees, ed. M. Albani et al., TSAJ 65 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 179-205.

15. Ravid, "The Book of Jubilees," 377; see already J. M. Baumgarten, Studies in

Qumran Law (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 106.

16. R. Katzoff and B. M. Schreiber, "Week and Sabbath in Judean Desert Documents,"

Scripta Classica Israelica 17 (1998): 102-14. A few centuries later this practice was attested in

the Zo'ar inscriptions of the late talmudic period (S. Stern, Calendar and Community: A His­

tory of the Jewish Calendar, 2nd Century BCE-ioth Century CE [Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2001], 87-97).