Jonathan Ben-Dov
This aspect appears occasionally in Jubilees also outside the program
matic chap. 6. In chap. 29 Jacob sends agricultural products to his parents, as
described in 29:16: "to his mother Rebecca, (he sent goods) four times per
year — between the seasons of the months (md'kala gizeydtihomu la'awrdh),
between plowing and harvest, between autumn and the rain(y season), and
between winter and spring." The division of the year is here connected with
the agricultural tasks, as in Gen 8:22. The four cardinal days are considered
suitable for sending agricultural products as gifts. This notion may be con
nected with the special merit of the cardinal days for bringing tithes and
firstfruits (cf. chaps. 7 and 32). The phrase "between the seasons of the
months" in 29:16 is of special importance, since it places the cardinal days at
the end of each quarter (months 3, 6, 9,12) and before the beginning of the
ensuing quarter. This notion is not consistent with the practice of Jub 6:23-
29, where the cardinal days stand at the head of months 1, 4, 7,10. One may
infer that 29:16 reflects the original concept of the cardinal days, which are in
their nature "epagomenal," i.e., additional days, standing on the border be
tween fixed time periods.^38
By celebrating the first day of each quarter, Jubilees maintains the mo
dus operandi of the Aramaic Levi Document, where the times of birth of
Levi's children are given in such dates: the tenth month (Gershon), the first
day of the first month (Kehat), the third month (Merari), the first of the sev
enth month (Jocheved).^39 Clearly these four days win special importance in
ALD, an ideal that continued in Jub 28, where the dates for the births of Ja
cob's sons are given. Alongside insignificant dates for most of the sons, three
prominent figures receive portentous dates in Jub 28: l/I (Levi), 15/III (Ju-
dah), l/IV (Joseph). Other fortunate occurrences are dated to the beginnings
of seasons (see 3:32; 7:3; 13:8; 24:21; 27:19; 30:1; 31:3; 33:1; 45:i).^40 The placement
of favorable occasions at the beginning of a season makes more sense than
- Talmon underscored the liminality of the cardinal days, connecting it with the no
tion of pegu'im in nQPsa XXVII; see S. Talmon, "The Covenanters' Calendar of Holy Sea
sons according to the List of King David's Compositions in the Psalms Scroll from Cave 11
(nQPsa XXVII)" (in Hebrew), in Fifty Years of Dead Sea Scrolls Research: Studies in Memory
of Jacob Licht, ed. G. Brin and B. Nitzan (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2001), 204-19, here 215-19. - Chap. 11 according to J. C. Greenfield, M. E. Stone, and E. Eshel, The Aramaic Levi
Document, SVTP 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), i89ff. The above authors prefer the possibility that
Merari was born in the fourth month, according to a reading in 4QLevia. For the Aramaic
Levi Document as a source for Jubilees, see further the chapter by E. Eshel in this volume. - To resume the criticism of Jaubert's hypothesis, this point seems to indicate that,
when selecting dates for meaningful occasions, the author of Jubilees gave more attention to
key points in the year than to days of the week.