Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Betsy Halpern-Amaru

The Date of Pesah

Following the recollection are a series of commands stipulating when, how,

why, and where the postexodus Pesah is to be celebrated. A Jubilees flpn

riDSn composed from multiple biblical allusions, it selectively integrates di­
rectives for the Egypt Pesah with Torah commands relating to Pesah, thereby
clarifying the statutes in Exod 12:14 and i3:io^17 and precluding both the
Pesah Sheni instituted in Num 9^18 and the participation of the ger permitted
in Exod 12:43-49 an^ Num 9:14.^19 Within the statute the schedule of the
commemoration receives the most attention. It is the principal subject of six
commands — three directly involving date (49:7-9), three the time of day
(49:8-10) — and a secondary theme in five other commands (49:10, 14-18).
The three date-focused commands are structured to provide support for a
Pesah commemoration that spans two dates (the fourteenth-fifteenth) and
to explicitly proscribe a delay such as the Pesah Sheni permitted in Num 9:9-
14 or a deferment such as decreed by Hezekiah in 2 Chron 30:2,13,15. The ex­
clusion of Pesah Sheni may be unique to Jubilees, for the institutionalized
delay is referenced in both Qumran and rabbinic texts.^20

17. Standing between God's directives for the night of the plague and a prescription
    for eating unleavened bread, Exod 12:14 may he understood as relating to future commemo­
    ration of either Pesah or Massot. If the former, its context, like that of Exod 12:24, implies
    that the commemoration includes the blood rite of the Egypt Pesah. Equally problematic,
    the statute in Exod 13:10 lacks content.


18. As the following analysis will demonstrate, the case for the exclusion of Pesah
    Sheni in Jubilees is not simply an argument from silence. It is based on the Jubilees abstrac­
    tion of phrases from verses that explicitly involve Pesah Sheni in Num 9 and the placement
    of those phrases into contexts that expressly forbid any change whatsoever to the prescribed
    date for the commemoration of Pesah. The tactic is employed at a number of points in the
    legislation (Jub 49:7, 8, 9, 14, 16-17). In his paper, S. Saulnier reaches the same conclusion
    ("Jub 49:1-14 and the Second Passover: How (and Why) to Do Away with an Unwanted Festi­
    val," Hen 31, no. 1 [2009]). On the other hand, L. Doering, who attributes no significance to
    the multiple Jubilees injunctions against changing the date of the commemoration, cautions
    against such a conclusion ("Purity and Impurity in the Book of Jubilees," in this volume).


19. Exod 12:44, 48 permits only the circumcised ger to eat the pesah. Num 9:14 permits
    the ger, without qualification, to celebrate the pesah. I do not deal directly with the issue of
    the ger in this essay.


20. Pesah Sheni clearly appears in the Qumran mishmarot texts (4Q259 viii 1; 4Q320 4
    iii 4,14I iv 9; v 3,12; vi 7I; 4Q321 2 ii 5, 9; iii 8). An injunction against advancing or delaying
    festivals appears in several sectarian texts (lQS 1:13-15; 4Q266 2 i 1; 4Q268 i, 4), but the prohi­
    bition does not reference Pesah Sheni. If, as Yadin suggested, a command regarding Pesah
    Sheni appeared in the missing part at the top of col. xviii of the Temple Scroll, it would be