nora
(Nora)
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Enochic and Mosaic Traditions in Jubilees
other debt to the Book of the Watchers. David Suter and George Nickelsburg
have shown how the Book of the Watchers' depiction of fallen angels (esp.
1 En 12-16) resonates with polemics against the impure marriage practices of
priests of their own times.^25 Jubilees may expand this polemic in a manner
consistent with its extension of priestiy prerogatives to all of Israel.^26 Rather
than symbolizing fallen priests, Jubilees' fallen angels may provide proto-
logical precedents for Jews who defile nation, earth, and sanctuary by choos
ing to align themselves with Gentiles. Inasmuch as they sin in the twenty-
fifth jubilee, it is fitting that Moses learns of them in the fiftieth, just prior to
the rebellious generation of the wilderness. It is also fitting that the au
thors) may write of them in years surrounding the Maccabean revolt, when
some Jews were engaging Hellenistic culture and dismissing the need for
separation from other nations (1 Mace i:n).^27
4. Angelology, Epistemology, and the Status
of the Pentateuch and Enochic Literature
What, then, might Jubilees' angelology and demonology tell us about its atti
tudes toward Enochic and Mosaic traditions? In my view, its representation
of angelic teaching may prove especially telling, allowing us to consider the
relative value of different earthly books from the perspective of Jubilees' own
epistemology.^28
Jubilees' epistemology centers on a view of heaven as the ultimate
source for all true knowledge. Angelic teachings are here cited to explain hu
man access to a rather dazzling array of information, including agricultural,
astronomical, and medicinal skills as well as laws, records of all human
deeds, predictions of the future, and information about astronomical, festal,
and eschatological cycles. According to Jubilees, selections from this knowl-
25. D. W. Suter, "Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Problem of Family Purity in 1 Enoch
6-16," HUCA 50 (1979): 115-35; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, "Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of
Revelation in Upper Galilee," JBL 100 (1981): 575-600.
26. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests, 51-84.
27. In dating Jubilees, recent scholarship has generally followed J. C. VanderKam,
Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees, HSM 14 (Missoula: Scholars Press,
1977)) 207-85. For a new approach to dating this text and explaining its preoccupation with
intermarriage, however, see Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests, 77-78.
28. On Jubilees' epistemology in relation to sapiential and prophetic approaches to
knowledge, see the contributions of B. Wright and H. Najman in this volume.
