Jubilees and Enochic JudaismWe cannot be certain as to the limits of "first canon" within any part of
the Jewish community at this time. It is clear that there were canons govern
ing the faith of various communities and that the Torah^23 was widely recog
nized as canonical in this sense. The Enochic paradigm appears to have es
tablished its own two-canon system. Modern analogies would be the
Mormons and the Seventh-Day Adventists.^24 Where a two-canon system is
in place, it is the second canon that is seen as dominant by outsiders while
insiders usually affirm the equal authority of both. The second canon de
fines the group's elect identity and governs its interpretation of the first.^25
This second canon (and Jubilees in particular) seems to identify the
first canon as a work that Israel ignored and by which Israel will be judged,
giving the second canon a more prominent role in pointing to the way of sal
vation for the elect remnant of Israel in the last days. Himmelfarb notes that
"For the Damascus Covenant, the Torah of Moses contains commandments,
while Jubilees contains the history of Israel's failure to fulfill those com
mandments [CD 16:1-4]."^26
In Jubilees Abram becomes a particular model of how one born into a
world dominated by demonic idolatry could be saved. Abram goes through
a process of realization, separation, seeking, and revelation. This pattern
corresponds closely with the Damascus Document's recounting of the ori
gins of the Yakhad (CD-A 1:8-13, noting "they realized their iniquity... they
were like those who grope for a path... they sought him with an undivided
heart... raised up for them a Teacher of Righteousness.... And he made
known to the last generations what he had done for the last generation").
Nitzan has independently observed this pattern in the sequence of events
leading up to God's revelation of Jubilees to Moses on Sinai.^27
Hendrickson, 2002), 21-35. Where a "collection" of such texts constituted the basis for parenesis
and the subject of polemic, as did the Enochic second canon, it had to have been identifiable.
- Cf. the use of "in the Law" in 1 Cor 14:21 to cite Isa 28:11-12, and also John 10:34, a
use that renders "the Law" somewhat synonymous with the later concept of a canon. - See, for example, the statement from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (http://
http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/fundamental/index.html)) and the Mormon statement at http://
http://www.mormon.org/learn/0,8672,12 75-1,00. html. - See Grant Macaskill, "Priestly Purity, Mosaic Torah, and the Emergence of
Enochic Judaism," Hen 31, no. 1 (2009). - Martha Himmelfarb, "Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets: The Claim to Au
thority of the Book of Jubilees," in Multiform Heritage (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 23,
cited in James M. Scott, On Earth, 81-82. See also Calum Carmichael, "The Integration of
Law and Narrative in Jubilees: The Biblical Perspective," Hen 31, no. 1 (2009). - See also discussion in Endres, "Eschatological Impulses in Jubilees," in this volume.