Annette Yoshiko Reed
on earth. Just as Israel is likened to the angels, so the description of the
earthly corruption of the fallen angels resonates with its repeated warnings
to Jews about Gentile temptations to apostasy (1:19-20; 21:22-23; 22:16-23;
30:7-15). Their punishment (5:6-7) thus serves as an apt warning for Jews
who are tempted — particularly during periods of foreign rule (1:19) — to
follow the "ways of the nations" and/or to take foreign wives.
If I am correct to draw this connection, then the redeployment of
Enochic traditions may serve the important purpose of extending Jubilees'
angelological and demonological schema to speak to the problems of its
own time. Within its cosmology and theodicy, angel-like Jews will eventually
be saved, and demon-ruled Gentiles destroyed. Those who pose a problem
are the ones in between. Following the logic of Jubilees' purity regulations,^24
the acts of these Jews threaten all of Israel and defile the sanctuary. When
even a single Jewish man or woman intermarries, the whole people suffer
"blow upon blow, curse upon curse" (30:14-15).
From Jubilees' zealous warnings against the abandonment of Sabbath
observance (2:25-27; 50:8-9,12-13), circumcision (15:14, 25-26,33-34), and en
dogamy (22:20-21; 30:10-16, 22), we might infer that the text is particularly
concerned with Jews who are tempted to abandon the practices that differ
entiate them from non-Jews. As with the repeated warning against following
"the ways of the nations," this concern fits well with what we know about the
tumultuous decades surrounding the Maccabean revolt. In this regard, it is
perhaps not surprising that Jubilees describes "the evil generation" as ad
dicted to the sins of fornication and pollution (23:14; cf. 23:17; 50:5); before
the eschatological redemption and purification, the text warns that the earth
and the sanctuary will be defiled (23:18, 21) and that Israel will suffer "blow
upon blow, wound upon wound, distress upon distress, bad news upon bad
news, disease upon disease" (23:13).
If we follow this reading of the angelic descent myth, the fallen angels
emerge as an important element in Jubilees' sacred history. They are not par
adigms for human sin in any universal sense. Neither does their inclusion in
Jubilees suffice to signal its embrace of a cosmology in which supernatural
forces cause evil on earth. Rather, they serve as precursors, more specifically,
for an "in-between" category of special interest to the author, namely, mem
bers of the chosen nation who sin — or are tempted to sin — by embracing
non-Jewish ways and wives.
This interpretation also raises the possibility that Jubilees owes yet an-
- Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests, 61-72.