nora
(Nora)
#1
Amplified Roles, Idealized Depictions: Women in the Book of Jubilees
on this matter by degree, as it is more heterogeneous. Enochic literature re
fers to a variety of works — for example, the anthology 1 Enoch — that
emerge from diverse contexts.^40 In some instances, like the Book of the
Watchers, individual works betray use of several sources. To further com
plicate the task of comparison, while certain interests or foci — for exam
ple, eschatological concerns — are found in many of these texts associated
with Enoch, the works also indicate development, as well as attempts to nu
ance and perhaps even to discount theological positions taken in others of
the writings.^41 Given the complexity of and diverse perspectives taken
within Enochic works, the portrayal of women in this literature not sur
prisingly also is varied.
Second, the temporal scope of Enochic literature — here I refer to the
aforementioned collection of texts in 1 Enoch as well as the Book of the Gi
ants (1Q23; 1Q24; 2Q26; 4Q203; 4Q530-533; 6Q8) — is considerably narrower
than Jubilees. With the exceptions of the Animal Apocalypse (1 En 85-90)
and the Apocalypse of Weeks (93:1-10; 91:11-17), both historical apocalypses,
the narratives of such Enochic texts are situated in the antediluvian world of
the patriarch Enoch. Though the literature frequently anticipates the time of
God's visitation at the end of the current era, other chapters of Israelite his
tory are not of interest. Thus, the women who appear prominently in these
texts are Eve (32:6; 69:6; 85:3-8); the wives of the watchers (especially 6:1-2;
7:1-2; 8:1,3; 9:8-9; 10:3,9,11,15; 12:4; 15:3; 19:2; 69:4-5); the wife of Enoch, Edna
(85:3); and the unnamed wives of Methuselah and Lamech (106:1). As the
portraits we do encounter are limited to antediluvian women, we will not
find a depiction of Rebekah, for example, to hold against that in Jubilees.
Like Jubilees, though, the women can serve as ciphers for assorted val
ues and concerns of the respective authors of Enochic literature. The litera
ture's concern for eschatological judgment and the antediluvian context in
which its hero, Enoch, lives are related to the literature's fascination with the
tradition of the fallen watchers. That tradition, even variously expressed, not
only serves to illustrate the result of disobedience, but it also communicates
40.1 am not suggesting a fixed canon of Enochic literature or that the booklets and
order of our contemporary 1 Enoch reflect a collection from the second temple period; I
simply refer to those texts from the second temple period in which Enoch and traditions as
sociated with the patriarch are especially prominent.
41. Cf. my "Adamic Traditions in the Parables? A Query on 1 Enoch 69:6" in Enoch
and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini, with
J. von Ehrenkrook (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 352-60 (here 359-60), and "Enoch, First
Book of," in NIDB (2007), 2:262-65 (here 264).
