nora
(Nora)
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Tradition and Innovation in the Calendar of Jubilees
that it is hardly conceivable to trace its origin in the tripartite Egyptian calendar.
Further, one wonders whatever happened to the fifth epagomenal day of the
Egyptian civil year.^58 The epagomenal days are grouped according to the Egyp
tian calendar at the end of the year, while in the Jewish sources they are inter
spersed, one at the end of each season. Finally, the use of schematic 30 -day
months is not necessarily an Egyptian concept, since it could have equally origi
nated from the Babylonian schematic year of 360 days, as noted by Albani, and
recendy also by Ben-Dov and Horowitz. More generally, the Jewish 364DCT is
better understood as a branch of Mesopotamian science than of the Egyptian
one, since Mesopotamian teachings appear not only in AB but also in other
phases of the Jewish 364DCT, as well as in apocalyptic literature in general.^59
Since the present chapter is dedicated to the book of Jubilees in particu
lar, the issue of foreign influences is even less relevant than elsewhere. While
this question is worth pursuing when studying scientific treatises like AB or as
tronomical rosters like 3Q321, nothing in the calendrical conception of Jubilees
would point to a foreign influence on the author. Indeed, Jubilees reveals a
long list of peculiarities in the calendrical sphere, but there is no reason to
trace their origins to foreign sources. Rather, as noted above, the special traits
of Jubilees' calendar can be accounted for on inner-Jewish grounds, taking
into account the author's ideological and hermeneutical dispositions.
The conceptions of time in Jubilees are, on the one hand, unmistak
ably similar to traditional Jewish concepts from the Bible and second temple
literature. Jubilees used as sources a long list of extrabiblical writings, both
aggadic and halakic. On the other hand, Jubilees differs from traditional
Jewish literature, creating a highly original array of concepts on time reck
oning. This new conception is so intricate that it would be futile to trace this
element or another from it to foreign influences. Rather it is better to explain
them as stemming from unique ideology, as well as resulting from the liter
ary constraints placed on this author in the framework of retelling the Pen
tateuch from Genesis to mid-Exodus.
58. In an earlier presentation Ravid opted for the existence of another epagomenal
day, number 365, at the end of Jubilees' year (L. Ravid and J. Kugel, appendix to L. Ravid, "Is
sues in the Book of Jubilees" [Ph.D. diss., Bar-Ilan University 2001], 21). This idea is not
taken up in Ravid's DSD article.
59. H. Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Fig
ure and of the Son of Man, WMANT 61 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1988); J. C.
VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, CBQMS 16 (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984); J. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagina
tion, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 26-29.
