Is the Book of Jubilees a Commentary on Genesis

or an Intended Replacement?

James Kugel
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA (emeritus);
Bar Ilan University, Israel (emeritus)

Describing Jubilees in a single phrase is a daunting task. In truth, neither of the

two alternatives proposed in my title is altogether satisfactory, though each of
them has some validity. But Jubilees could not literally have been intended to
push Genesis out of its honored place in Israel’s sacred library: so much of the
book makes sense only if one has in the back of one’s mind not only the sto-
ries of Genesis but their actual wording. Moreover, the book opens with Moses
being called to the top of Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, the Pentateuch,
which in Jubilees’ day most certainly included the book of Genesis.1 The author
hardly would have mentioned this if he did not expect Genesis to be read and
studied after his book became known. Nevertheless, it would probably be fair
to say that Jubilees was intended to reconfigure the book of Genesis, so that no
reader, having read and accepted the things that are related in Jubilees, would
ever be able to think about the book of Genesis as before.
As for Jubilees’ being a commentary on Genesis, this too appears to be only
partly true. Clearly, Jubilees does set out to resolve a number of exegetical
problems arising from the Genesis narratives. Still, this was not done strictly
in the interest of biblical exegesis—not even the frequently tendentious
sort of exegesis represented in other Second Temple and later texts. Rather
Jubilees’ commenting on Genesis had an ulterior motive. In reconciling appar-
ent contradictions or other unexplained features, the author of Jubilees was at
the same time seeking to authenticate his own book and grant it the highest
level of authority:2 the very fact that it successfully explained numerous puz-
zling features of Genesis proved that it did indeed come from God through his
prophet Moses.

1 See on this: Jaques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, “The Rewriting of Exodus 24:12–18 in Jubilees
1:1–4,” BN 79 (1995): 25–29; James C. VanderKam, “Moses Trumping Moses: Making the Book
of Jubilees,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Transmission of Traditions and Production of Texts (ed.
Sarianna Metso et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 25–44.
2 See Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple
Judaism (JSJSup 77; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 41–69.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004281226_005

68 Kugel

But if Jubilees is not principally a commentary on Genesis or its intended

replacement, then what is it?3 To answer this question fully certainly requires
more than can be fitted into a single article. Nevertheless, in the following I
will seek to shed some light on the nature of Jubilees through an exploration of
the following specific issues: 1) the content and date of the book; 2) its overall
purpose; 3) the form of its biblical interpretation; and 4) the interpolator or
final redactor of the book, who, I believe, ended up modifying its message to
some significant degree.

1 Content and Date of the Book

The book of Jubilees is an expansive retelling of the narratives of Genesis

and the first part of the book of Exodus. In truth, the author himself gives a
fine summary of the book’s content in the rather lengthy title that opens the
book—though some of what it says has not been entirely clear to modern
commentators. Here then is a brief explanation of some of the title’s more elu-
sive phrases, presented as a way of understanding the author’s own version of
his book’s program.
The title starts: These are the words regarding the divisions of the times: The
phrase “divisions of the times” in the Ethiopic title of Jubilees certainly repre-
sents a literal translation of the Hebrew ‫מחלקות העתים‬.4 But what exactly does
‫ מחלקות העתים‬mean? As is well known, Jubilees dates various events in Israel’s
history according to the jubilee in which they occur. A jubilee, for this author,
is a period of 49 years, and each jubilee subdivides into seven seven-year peri-
ods, called “weeks.”5 It is thus the 49-year jubilee that constitutes the basic

3 One recent study addressing this question is John J. Collins, “The Genre of the Book of
Jubilees,” in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam (vol. 2; ed.
Eric F. Mason et al.; JSJSup 153; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 737–55.
4 The phrase is partially preserved in 4Q216 Jubileesa I, 11 as well as in the title of Jubilees found
in CD XVI, 3, ‫ספר מחלקות העתים‬. It appears in the Ethiopic translation not only in the title
but also in the verses 1:4, 26, 29 and 50:13.
5 One apparent exception to this 49-year jubilee is found in our text of Jubilees. While Gen 5:22
states that Enoch “walked with God” for three hundred years, Jub. 4:21 restates this verse by
saying that Enoch was with God “for six jubilees of years,” implying that a jubilee lasts 50
years rather than 49. (Note also that the Hebrew phrase ‫ששה יובלי שנים‬, while not found
among the Qumran fragments of Jubilees itself, appears in 4Q227 Pseudo-Jubileesc 2 II, in
apparent reference to Enoch’s years in heaven.) See on this James C. VanderKam, The Book
of Jubilees (CSCO 511; Scriptores Aethiopici 88; Leuven: Peeters, 1989), 27; Devorah Dimant,
“The Biography of Enoch and the Books of Enoch,” VT 33 (1983): 14–29. It may be that Jubilees’