Enochic and Mosaic Traditions in JubileesGentiles. Why would the author(s) choose to include sinful angels who blur
these boundaries?
In early Enochic literature, chaos and earthly evils are consistently as
sociated with angels who transgress their proper roles. The Astronomical
Book describes angels who deviate from their celestial duties and thus frus
trate human adherence to the correct calendar (l En 80:6-8; cf. 18:15).^18 The
first vision in the Book of Dreams blames both angels and humans for an
gering God (84:4). Likewise, the Animal Apocalypse alludes both to fallen
angels who came to earth before the flood (86:1-6) and to the angelic leaders
who were placed over all human nations, only to stray and commit violence
against their charges (89:59-90:25).
Even more striking is the function of angelic disobedience in the Book
of the Watchers. Whereas the Astronomical Book and Epistle of Enoch stress
human responsibility for sin (1 En 80:1; 98:4),^19 the Book of the Watchers
proposes that human sinfulness was precipitated by a breach in heavenly
harmony. The Watchers abandoned heaven, their appointed home (15:3, 7,
10). When they took on the human prerogatives of living on earth, marrying
women, and having children (15:4-5), their acts inverted the divinely set roles
in the cosmic order. The problem originated in heaven, and the results were
disastrous for earth: their teachings corrupted humankind, and their sons
slaughtered earthly creatures.
By contrast, Jubilees integrates Enochic traditions about fallen angels
into a cosmological and theodical framework that diffuses their power as
cosmic forces of chaos and rebellion. The reader is assured that no breach in
heavenly harmony brought evil to the earth. Here, human beings are far
from being unwitting victims of evils wrought by otherworldly forces. Sin
remains a strictly earthly phenomenon — even for the angels (Jub 4:15; 5:1).
Moreover, in place of the Book of the Watchers' emphasis on the corrupting
force of the fallen angels' teachings (1 En 7:1; 8:1-3; 9 ;6), we here find a stress
on the positive influence of angelic instruction throughout human history.^20
- Whereas the Book of the Watchers presents angelic rebellion as a cause of sin and
suffering on earth, the Astronomical Book depicts the corruption as spreading upward —
from earthly sinners (80:1) to the earth (80:2-3) to the luminaries (80:4-5) to the angels who
rule them (80:6). - On the departure from the Book of the Watchers' understanding of the fallen an
gels in the Book of Dreams and the Epistle of Enoch, see A. Y. Reed, Fallen Angels and the
History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 2005), 71-80. - Reed, Fallen Angels, 87-95.