Tradition and Innovation in the Calendar of Jubileeslaws of reva'i (restrictions on consuming the fruit of new trees), Baumgarten convincingly
claimed that special place is given in it to the cardinal (memorial) days as harvest festivals.
Baumgarten, however, was not aware of the parallel in Genesis Apocryphon.
- M. Kister, "Some Aspects of Qumranic Halakhah," in The Madrid Qumran Con
gress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid, 18-21 March,
1991, ed. J. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner, STDJ 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 2:571-88. - See further the contributions of Esther Eshel and Michael Segal in the present
volume. - Kister ("Some Aspects," 585) implies that the author of Jubilees changed the dates
in the earlier narratives in order to fit his calendrical concepts: "The author of the Book of
Jubilees altered this tradition to make it conform with his own halakhic view: According to
its view, Noah observed the first day of the first month (i.e., Nisan), which is a holiday ac
cording to Jubilees, with the appropriate festival sacrifices." It would seem, however, that the
exact opposite is right: Jubilees uses the same dates as in the earlier source! Kister is right,
however, when claiming that the cardinal days (l/I and l/VII) carry special significance
when placed in their new literary context within the book of Jubilees. - In addition to the identical line in Jubilees and T, Pfann read a similar line in the
cryptic text 4Q324d (see Stephen Pfann, "Time and Calendar in Jubilees and Enoch," Hen 31,
no. 1 [2009]). This reading, however, is not included in previous transcriptions of the scroll
(as, for example, the transcription by M. G. Abegg in D. W. Parry and E. Tov, The Dead Sea
Scrolls Reader [Leiden: Brill, 2004], part 4, p. 54).
However, the case is more difficult than meets the eye. A very similar
story about Noah's vineyard appears also in the Genesis Apocryphon (col.
XII), including the very same dates for the harvest and consumption of the
new grapes and wine. Moreover, Menahem Kister noted how the story at the
beginning of chap. 7 contradicted the sectarian halakah proclaimed at the
end of chap. 7 with regard to the consumption of new fruit.^27 This matter
was carried further in the framework of M. Segal's comprehensive theory on
the composition of Jubilees. It seems that at the beginning of chap. 7, the au
thor of Jubilees used an external literary source, either the Genesis
Apocryphon or an earlier source common to both compositions.^28 In this
source, the dates of l/VII and l/I were recorded because of their significance
for the laws of Reva'i (the new orchard). However, when embedded in the
book of Jubilees, this old source gained renewed significance owing to the
centrality of the cardinal days in the calendrical conceptions of the author.^29
The author of Jubilees thus did not simply ignore the harvest festivals,
but rather seems to have fixed them on different times than those prescribed
in T. The author was undoubtedly aware of the laws in T (or a similar
source), since in his description of hag hasevu'im (6:21; cp. 22:1) he uses a
phrase quite similar to nQTa XIX 9:^30