nora
(Nora)
#1
Amplified Roles, Idealized Depictions: Women in the Book of Jubilees
Jonathan; Gen 6:2) certainly make this point.^46 One observes that while the
wives could have been used to make points about eschatology within the
Enochic texts, as is the case with the watchers and their sons whose punish
ments are elaborated, there is only brief allusion to the fate of the women
(1 En 19:2), which most likely points to their demise and their relative lack of
importance to the Enochic authors.^47 This helps us to account for the fact
that the ultimate outcome of the wives has been curiously ignored in second
temple and late antique works that do offer colorful expansions of Enochic
texts and traditions concerning the fate of the fallen watchers.
There is a certain anxiety, however, about miscegenation and inter
marriage that is communicated through various Enochic works, and it is in
that regard that wives (and not only those of the watchers!) in this literature
receive much attention.^48 The Animal Apocalypse, drawing on traditions re
lated to both Shemihazah and Asael, takes up in allegorical fashion inappro
priate sexual activity that involves intermingling.^49 While calling attention
to the tradition of the forbidden union of the angels and mortal women, the
Animal Apocalypse seems also to hold Asael accountable for provoking in
termarriage between the Sethites and Cainites.^50 Moreover, 1 En 106-107, like
the Genesis Apocryphon, takes up the matter of sexual misdeeds and dem
onstrates some anxiety about miscegenation.^51 Given the baby Noah's other
worldly appearance (1 En 106:2-3,5; cf. also lQapGen 2-5), the paternity is in
question; Methuselah consults with Enoch, on his son's pleading, to deter-
46. On Syncellus's reading, see S. Bhayro, "The Use of Jubilees in Medieval Chronicles
to Supplement Enoch: The Case for the 'Shorter' Reading," Hen 31, no. 1 (2009), and my
"Decoration, Destruction and Debauchery: Reflections on 1 Enoch 8 in Light of 4QEnb,"
DSD (2008). On text-critical matters relating to 19:2, see my "What Becomes of the Angels'
'Wives'? A Text Critical Study of 1 En. 19:2," JBL 125 (2006): 766-80 (here 769 n. 15).
47. Bautch, "What Becomes," 778-79.
48. Concern with intermarriage may be expressed further in the story of the watchers
to the extent that the account is intended to be a parody that disparages priests who have en
tered into inappropriate marriages or engaged in prohibited sexual conduct. See D. W. Suter,
"Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Problem of Family Purity in 1 Enoch," HUCA 50 (1979): 115-
35; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, "Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper Galilee,"
JBL 100 (1981): 575-600; and E. Tigchelaar, Prophets of Old and the Day of the End: Zechariah,
the Book of Watchers, and Apocalyptic, OtSt 35 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 198-203.
49. Loader, Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees, 61.
50. See, for example, Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1,1:373; Loader, Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees, 61.
51. For a comparison of the two, see G. W. E. Nickelsburg, "Patriarchs Who Worry
about Their Wives: A Haggadic Tendency in the Genesis Apocryphon," in George W. £
Nickelsburg: An Ongoing Dialogue of Learning, ed. J. Neusner and A. J. Avery-Peck, JSJSup 80
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 177-212.
