Studies in the Book of Jubilees.

• Author: CHILTON, BRUCE
• Position: Review

Studies in the Book of Jubilees. Edited by MATTHIAS ALBANI, JORG FREY, and ARMIN LANGE. Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum, vol. 65. Tubingen: J.C.B. MOHR (PAUL SIEBECK), 1997. Pp. ix + 344. DM 228.

This handsome volume, accurately rendering papers in English and German (with only a few errors in French citations), represents a symposium held in Leipzig in 1996 that took account of the publication of manuscripts from Qumran cave 4 in 1994. But as edited, it also offers a fine introduction to the most recent critical thinking on Jubilees. The book is divided into three parts, "Introductory Issues and Biblical Interpretation," "Calendar, Cultic Festivals, and Other Concepts of Thought," and "Reception."

James C. VanderKam writes on "The Origins and Purposes of the Book of Jubilees," both reviewing the scholarship and setting out his own views most lucidly. His focus on the solar calendar as part of Jubilees' argument of a primordial, uncorrupted tradition is persuasive. More controversial, but effectively pointed, is Armin Lange's contribution, "Divinatorische Traume und Apokalyptik im Jubilaenbuch," which suggests that Jubilees' distance from the tradition of the allegorical dream implies a critical stance towards the genre of apocalyptic; indeed, Lange explicitly denies that Jubilees can be classed as an apocalyptic writing. More cautiously, and dealing with a small sample of evidence, George J. Brooke suggests that Jubilees presents itself "as prophetic law, an understanding of the author of what is written on the heavenly tablets which is consistent with the view of Moses as prophet" (p. 55, in "Exegetical Strategies in Jubilees 1-2"). The last essay in part I, "The Interpretation of Genesis 6:1-12 in J ubilees 5:1-19," by Jacques T.A.G.M. van Ruiten, would seem to offer support for Brooke's suggestion, but it does not take up that hermeneutical issue within its analysis of differing elements of interpretation.

Jubilees' fully solar calendar marks it as a precedent of the Essenes' interests, but one which they did not consistently follow. That then begs the question of the origin of such a calendar, which Matthias Albani takes up in "Zur Rekonstruktion eines verdrangten Konzepts: Der 364-Tage-Katender in der gegenwartigen Forschung," a rich, full, and methodically bold essay. He defends the plausibility of the hypothesis that the desire to emphasize the sabbath as eternal sign, against the Babylonian lunar sabbath, resulted in solar...