Book 9789004221109 B9789004221109 004-Preview

chapter three
THE CONTRADICTIONS IN THE BOOK OF JUBILEES
The previous chapter explored the strikingly different positions of Jubi-

lees’ original author and the Interpolator on the matter of the origins of
the Torah’s laws. But this is hardly the only expression of their differences.
It sometimes happened that the Interpolator, in his zeal to assert that this
or that law goes back to the Heavenly Tablets, ended up contradicting
some other element in the original author’s text. In fact, sometimes the
Interpolator seems even to have misunderstood what the original author
intended, and so apparently ended up disagreeing with him without
realizing it. In either case, these contradictions offer us further evidence
of the existence of these two very different writers and provide additional
clues as to the Interpolator’s intellectual profile and modus operandi.
Before turning to these contradictions, however, I should like to ac-
knowledge two predecessors whose work has proven particularly help-
ful with regard to this subject. The first is my student Liora Ravid, whose
study of Jubilees highlighted what she called the “special terminology of
the Heavenly Tablets,” that is, the unique vocabulary employed in numer-
ous passages of Jubilees, especially those that deal with laws (mentioned
above in the Introduction to chapter ).1 Ravid noted that these passages
have certain standard phrases and expressions. Various ordinances and
statutes are thus said to have been “ordained and written in the Heavenly
Tablets,” or simply “written and ordained” or “ordained and inscribed”
for Israelites to do. The same passages also often describe the book’s
angelic narrator turning to Moses at various points and saying, “And you,
Moses, command the Israelites to do such-and-such.” They also some-
times assert that the law or practice just described “has no temporal lim-
its” but is to be kept by the Israelites “for eternal generations.” All these
elements make up the special language of the Heavenly Tablets, and they
1 L. Ravid, “The Special Terminology of the Heavenly Tablets in the Book of Jubilees”
Tarbiz  (), –. Although the specific passages that I associate with the
“special terminology” differ somewhat from those listed by Ravid, my debt to her overall
insight should be evident throughout this study.
 chapter three
do not usually appear in isolation, but in clusters of two or three at a

time. Why was this specialized vocabulary not used for all the laws and
rulings mentioned in the book, but for only some? As I came to realize,
these passages did not belong to the original author of Jubilees, but were
the work of a second writer, the Interpolator. And often, as we shall see,
the passages marked by this stylistic “signature” share another feature:
they contradict something else in Jubilees, usually something that was
said just previously by the original author.
The other work that proved most significant for this subject was
Michael Segal’s  monograph on Jubilees.2 Much of his study concen-
trated specifically on the subject of contradictions within the book. Let
me mention here three of his examples:
(): Genesis  recounts how Judah ended up sleeping with his daugh-
ter-in-law, Tamar. When Jubilees retells this story, it provides both Judah
and Tamar with a legal exculpation that the biblical story did not men-
tion. It asserts that Tamar’s earlier marriages to Er and Onan had never
been consummated (see Jub. :–, –). As a result, she was still a
virgin when the incident with Judah occurred—and thus legally available
to be married to him. Their union was therefore altogether licit and nei-
ther of them was liable for punishment (as indeed they were not punished
in the biblical narrative). Yet in the middle of the Jubilees narrative comes
a passage summarizing the legal lesson to be learned from it (:–).
This passage—characterized by the typical “terminology of the Heavenly
Tablets”—mentions nothing about Tamar still being a virgin nor, conse-
quently, anything about the innocence of the two participants. Instead, as
far as the author of this passage was concerned, Judah was fully deserv-
ing of punishment and only “had forgiveness because he turned away
from his sin” (:) after pleading and lamenting (:) before God.
(It says nothing about the guilt or innocence of Tamar.) But if, according
to the surrounding narrative, Judah did nothing wrong, why should he
have had to plead and lament?
(): A similar case pointed out by Segal is that of the sin of Reuben,
who slept with his father’s concubine Bilhah (Gen :). Unlike the bib-
lical narrative, Jubilees stresses that Bilhah was an unwitting victim—she
2 M. Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology
(Leiden: Brill, ).

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chapter three

THE CONTRADICTIONS IN THE BOOK OF JUBILEES

The previous chapter explored the strikingly different positions of Jubi-

do not usually appear in isolation, but in clusters of two or three at a

(Leiden: Brill, ).

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