nora
(Nora)
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Kelley Coblentz Bautch
Jubilees represents women and then compare these depictions to representa
tions of women in Enochic texts.
I. The Amplification of Women in Jubilees
Many of the female characters in Jubilees are presented in an idealized form,
shaped to speak to the concerns of the author, while communicating too little
about the lives of real women at the time of the work's composition. At the
same time, women are prominent within the book of Jubilees, and when
compared to Genesis and Exodus, their roles are amplified. The matriarch
Rebekah provides the most striking instance of a character whose story is sig
nificantly augmented and refined in Jubilees.^6 Not only is Rebekah's visibility
increased in Jubilees through the addition of material (Abraham entrusts
Rebekah with the news that Jacob will continue the patriarchal line and
charges her to guard him [Jub 19:16-30]; Rebekah is informed by Jacob about
Abraham's death and, in turn, tells Isaac [Jub 23:4]; Rebekah instructs Jacob
about marriage partners and blesses him [Jub 25:1-23; cf. Gen 26:35; 27:46;
28:1]), but also she is presented, in the words of Loader, "as an ideal woman."^7
Just as Jacob is valorized by Jubilees, so too is the mother who favors him.*
In recasting Rebekah, the book of Jubilees eliminates aspects of her
story that might be thought unflattering or unhelpful to the larger aims of
the work. There is no reference to Rebekah being barren and to Isaac en
treating God on her behalf, for example (cf. Gen 25:21); perhaps this could be
taken as an inauspicious introduction.^9 Likewise, Rebekah's part in the de-
6. See, for example, J. C. Endres, S.J., Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees,
CBQMS18 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1987), 51-84,173-76,
217-18; B. Halpera-Amaru, The Empowerment of Women in the Book of Jubilees, JSJSup 60
(Leiden: Brill, 1999), 37-42; and R. Chesnutt, "Revelatory Experiences Attributed to Biblical
Women in Early Jewish Literature," in "Women Like This": New Perspectives on Jewish
Women in the Greco-Roman World, ed. A.-J. Levine, Early Judaism and Its Literature 1 (At
lanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 107-25 (here 108-11). For a critical text of the book of Jubilees, I
refer to J. C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees: A Critical Text, CSCO 510 (Louvain: Peeters,
1989), and for translation, VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, CSCO 511 (Louvain: Peeters,
1989). For a survey of the scope, theology, and history of the book of Jubilees, see, for exam
ple, J. C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).
7. Loader, Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees, 260.
8. See Endres, Biblical Interpretation, 85-119, esp. 92.
9. Cf. Halpern-Amaru, Empowerment of Women, 56, and Loader, Enoch, Levi, and Ju
bilees, 255. Halpern-Amaru (34) observes that Jubilees also omits initial reference to the bar-
