Last testaments in the Book of Jubilees

Dead Sea Discoveries

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 82-107

  Lambert, David ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 61949139587     PISSN: 09290761     EISSN: 15685179     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/156851704323017458     Document Type: Review

References (51)

1. For an up-to-date bibliography, see L. DiTomasso, A Bibliography of Pseudepigrapha Research 1850-1999 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 973-75
2. See also the review of scholarship on the "testament" genre by A.B. Kolenkow, "Testaments," in R.A. Kraft and G.W.E. Nickelsburg, eds., Early Judaism and its Modern Interpreters (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 259-67
3. See M.J. Bernstein, "4Q252: Method and Context, Genre and Sources: A Response to George J. Brooke," JQR 85 (1994) 63-65, for criticism of this general tendency in the interpretation of second temple literature
4. C. Werman, "The Story of the Flood in the Book of Jubilees," Tarbiz 64:2 (1995) (Hebrew), 183-84, expresses the opposite concern, that the discovery of the importance of the exegetical not lead scholars to ignore the variously-motivated outright reworkings to which second temple authors such as Jubilees subject the biblical narrative. Few though would claim that a work such as Jubilees is "pure exegesis," and the tendency among scholars to focus on the theological over the exegetical would seem to be a far greater ever-present concern
5. G.W.E. Nickelsburg, "The Bible Rewritten and Expanded," in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (ed. M.E. Stone; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 97. This general scholarly approach is most readily evident in the interpretations offered of particular passages. Some of these interpretations will be noted below
6. For this label, see J.L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 867
7. For this formulation, see J. Endres; Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees (CBQMS 18; Washington: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1987), 28-30
8. For instance, b. San. 56a
9. See, for instance, Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 225 and 769
10. and N.G. Cohen, "Taryag and the Noahide Commandments," JJS 43 (1992) 51-53
11. G. Anderson similarly points to this problem in "The Status of the Torah Before Sinai," DSD 1 (1994), 3-4 n. 4
12. Traditions of the Bible, 32
13. For a discussion of the form of Jubilees' last testaments, see K. Baltzer, The Covenant Formulary (trans. D.E. Green; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 137-41
14. Cf. J. Kugel's "The Jubilees Apocalypse," DSD 1 (1994), 322-37, according to which even chap. 23 of Jubilees, sometimes thought of as a separate "apocalypse" within the book, constitutes in large part an interpretation of Psalm 90
15. Note A.B. Kolenkow's distinction between "blessing-revelation testaments" and "ethical testaments" in "The Genre Testament and Forecasts of the Future in the Hellenistic Jewish Milieu," JSJ 6 (1975) 57-71
16. See the recent discussion of D.M. Carr, Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 159-61
17. See also C. Westermann, Genesis 12-36 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1985), 288-89
18. and H. Gunkel, Genesis (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1997), 201-2. Similar verses include Gen. 22:15-18 and Gen. 26:3b-5
19. and Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew Language [Leiden: Brill, 1982], 45, 131-32.) This shift also would have encouraged viewing the instruction as a discrete, future event
20. The Book of Jubilees or The Little Genesis (London: Black, 1902), 129, n. 20:2
21. J.H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2.93
22. Modern scholarship has recognized that these two verses should be read as a unity. See R. Neudecker, "'And You Shall Love Your Neighbor as Yourself - I am the Lord' (Lev. 19, 18) in Jewish Interpretation," Biblica 73 (1992) 509
23. The combined language of love and union against a common enemy fits well with ancient biblical notions of kinship. (See F.M. Cross, "Kinship and Covenant in Ancient Israel," in From Epic to Canon: History and Literature of Ancient Canaan [Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1998], 3-6.)
24. For an example and discussion of the technique, see S. Talmon, "Polemics and Apology in Biblical Historiography: 2 Kings 17:24-41," in Literary Studies in the Hebrew Bible: Form and Content (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993), 134-59, esp. 136-39
25. D. Flusser, "A New Sensitivity in Judaism and the Christian Message," HTR 61 (1968) 112, pointed out the juxtaposition between these two commandments in Jubilees, i.e. the commandment to love one's neighbor and the commandment to love God, though he did not recognize the exegetical basis of Jubilees' formulation
26. For examples of this juxtaposition in other texts, see Flusser, "A New Sensitivity," 107-27
27. D. Flusser, "The Ten Commandments and the New Testament," in The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition (eds. G. Levi and B. Segal; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1990), 219-46
28. and Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 758-59, 768-70, and 867-68
29. (Italics mine.) J.C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (Guides to the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 55
30. In G.W.E. Nickelsburg and M.E. Stone, Faith and Piety in Early Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 98
31. For Jubilees' specification of the punishment of a woman who commits a sexual offense and its exegetical necessity, see Anderson, "Status of the Torah," 19-29, esp. 22-24
32. Endres, Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees, 31
33. E. Schwarz, Identität durch Abgrenzung (Frankfurt: Lang, 1982), 21
34. and J.C. VanderKam, Enoch: A Man for All Generations (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 110-21
35. See also N.G. Cohen, "Taryag and the Noahide Commandments," JJS 43:1 (1992) 51-53
36. and L. Finkelstein, "Some Examples of the Maccabean Halaka," HTR 49 (1930) 21-25
37. Similarly Werman, "The Attitude towards Gentiles," 326, presents this passage as an attempt to answer the contemporary question of what principles apply to non-Jews
38. Likewise D. Dimant, "Noah in Early Jewish Literature," in Biblical Figures, 139-140
39. and Schultz, "Two Views of the Patriarchs," 44-45, view Noah's commandments as relating to the "main interests" of Jubilees
40. Werman, "The Attitude towards Gentiles," 76, acknowledges a connection between Noah's commandments to his sons and the context of the biblical narrative but elsewhere implies the existence of a greater degree of intentionality behind the contents of the list
41. Such is also the understanding of Ruiten, Primeval History Interpreted, 296
42. Halpern-Amaru, Rewriting the Bible, 26-27, seems to view the inclusion of these agricultural laws, which in the Pentateuch are associated with the Land of Israel, as indicating the general importance of "the Land" for Jubilees
43. Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees, 193-94. I have quoted the passage in full in order to exemplify the motivations generally brought to the interpretation of testaments in Jubilees
44. Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2003), esp. 117-26
45. See also Kugel, In Potiphar's House, 99-101, for the important role of Gen. 39:8-9 in this matter
46. and Dimant, "Noah in Early Jewish Literature," 144-46
47. and F.G. Martinez, Qumran and Apocalyptic: Studies on the Aramaic Texts From Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 24-44
48. See C. Albeck, Das Buch der Jubiläen und die Halacha (Berlin: Scholem, 1930), 34-35
49. The view of the Dead Sea sect is expressed in the terminology of "revealed laws" given at Sinai and "hidden laws" revealed only to the sect. For a discussion of this terminology, see L.H. Schiffman, The Halakhah at Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 22-32
50. J.M. Baumgarten, "The Unwritten Law in the Pre-Rabbinic Period," JSJ 3 (1972), 24, stresses the presence of continued revelation at Qumran: "While rabbinic tradition stressed the finality of the Mosaic revelation, there is found in the Scrolls an articulated emphasis on revelation as a continuing process involving a constant search for new illuminations."
51. and Baumgarten, "Unwritten Law," 24-25, point out the compatibility between biblical evidence for some sort of limited law in pre-Sinaitic times and the Dead Sea sect's doctrine of continued post-Sinaitic law