Amplified Roles, Idealized Depictions: Women in the Book of JubileesThe book of Jubilees is indeed a meaty text to explore for the scholar
interested in representations of women in second temple period texts. In this
rewriting of much of Genesis and Exodus, women appear more prominently
than they do in the biblical narratives.^3 Roles of women familiar from the
biblical texts are developed further or nuanced, or new female characters are
introduced altogether. Sometimes these metamorphoses and additions re
spond to exegetical concerns, sometimes to polemics; the rationales for such
revisions are not always mutually exclusive. As Halpern-Amaru demon
strates, female characters are significant for the book of Jubilees because of
the work's concern for endogamy and the proper lineage. In that respect one
has the opportunity to learn much as well about the view of sexuality that is
implicitly and explicitly presented in the text; such a study has in fact been
undertaken by Loader.^4
One might hope that Jubilees would shed light on women and their
status in various religious communities of the second century B.C.E. Per
haps, on occasion, the book delivers. The interjection of halakah into the
narrative and references to legislation, for example, are informative about
positions taken by the author on suitable marriage partners, intermarriage,
and views of purity and impurity that relate to women.^5 While one may not
be able to uncover as much as one would like about the lives of real women,
when we examine depictions of women against Enochic literature, we may
gain new insight as to how we should view the book of Jubilees within the
matrix of second temple period Judaism. I begin with an overview of how
brew Bible and Second Temple Literature, JSJSup 62 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 305-31, and
M. Knibb, "Which Parts of 1 Enoch Were Known to Jubilees? A Note on the Interpretation of
Jub. 4.16-25," in Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of Da
vid J. A. Clines, ed. J. C. Exum and H. G. M. Williamson, JSOTSup 373 (London: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2003), 254-62. For a counterview, see J. T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, "A Literary
Dependency of Jubilees on 1 Enoch: A Reassessment of a Thesis of J. C. VanderKam," Hen 26
(2004): 205-9.
- 1 use the word "biblical" to identify those texts we associate with the Hebrew Bible
today; I do not imply that such works were part of a fixed canon in the early second temple
period. Texts like Genesis and Exodus clearly had great appeal to certain communities and
were understood by these as authoritative. See also VanderKam, "Biblical Interpretation in
1 Enoch and Jubilees," in From Revelation to Canon, 276-304 (here 277-78). - W. Loader, Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees on Sexuality: Attitudes towards Sexuality in the
Early Enoch Literature, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Book of Jubilees (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2007). - On such matters, see the contribution of L. Doering ("Purity and Impurity in the
Book of Jubilees") to this volume, and that of W. Loader ("Jubilees and Sexual Transgres
sion," Hen 31, no. 1 [2009]).