Jubilees: A Commentary in Two Volumes

by James C VanderKam, Sidnie White Crawford (Editor)

Jubilees--so called because of its concern with marking forty-nine-year periods (or "jubilees") in Israel's history--is an ancient rewriting of Genesis and the first part of Exodus from the point of view of an anonymous second-century BCE Jewish author. Its distinctive perspective--as well as its apparent popularity at Qumran--make it particularly important for any reconstruction of early Judaism. James C. VanderKam, the world's foremost authority on Jubilees, offers a new translation based on his own critical editions of all the available textual evidence, including the Hebrew fragments preserved at Qumran (which he first published in Discoveries in the Judean Desert , vol. 13), as well as the first full running commentary on the book in the English language. Jubilees approaches the book as a rewriting of scripture but also as a literary work in its own right. The commentary explains the text and the teachings of the author with comprehensive coverage of the modern scholarship devoted to them. The introduction sets the book in its second-century BCE context, traces its sources in the Bible and in other early Jewish texts, and describes its influence on Jewish and Christian writers.

1324 pages, Hardcover

Published November 1, 2018

Reviews

[JonM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough and unique

[Fred Kohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism by Annette Yoshiko Reed has a chapter on Jubilees and I realized I was not as familiar with this ancient book as I needed to be. My only acquaintance with it comes from reading it once years ago and occasionally looking up passages that are sometimes referenced in my reading. There is a strange cult-like sect called Israel Only which among other bizarre beliefs argues (at least in some of its iterations) that when the New Testament references Satan, it is not referencing a supernatural being but is actually referencing the Jewish system, in particular the high priest. Since it is my misfortune to occasionally engage these people on Facebook, I felt it would be to my advantage to learn more about the origins of the N.T. Satan. Yoshiko Reed’s book is a good starting point, but Jubilees is worth studying for its own sake, irrespective of the particulars about the origins of Satan. And VanderKam literally wrote the book on Jubilees.

I’m not sure whether this book was ever intended to be read straight through. As Jeremy Schipper notes in his much slimmer commentary on Ruth, many readers use commentaries as reference books, only referring to them as needed when studying a particular passage. I think this is a very apt observation in the case of the Hermeneia commentaries, which are very detailed. Even for a Hermeneia commentary, VanderKam’s commentary is unusually detailed, with copious textual notes and footnotes. I don’t know whether I’m the best person to be reviewing this book as I wasn’t an especially careful reader of it, only occasionally consulting the footnotes and even more rarely consulting the textual notes. Moreover my eyes tended to glaze over at some of the details, especially details about the differences between the Ethiopic text and other versions.

VanderKam frequently references the work of previous scholars, sometimes approvingly and sometimes disapprovingly. He seems in particular to disapprove of those scholars who find interpolations in the texts. He devotes a number of excursuses to contesting the numerous places where James Kugel suggests a passage may be interpolated. To be fair, in other places VanderKam agrees with Kugel on some point or other, even if he disagrees with his theory of an interpolator.

One feature of this commentary I found fascinating was the frequent references to later books which were influenced by Jubilees, in particular The Testimony of the Twelve Patriarchs. This sent me scurrying to read it again, and indeed I noted several influences from Jubilees in the Testimonies, especially references to the heavenly tablets. According to Don K. Preston, founder and president of Preterist Research Institute, the N.T. also shows cases of being influenced by Jubilees. VanderKam, while occasionally noting parallels between material in the N.T. and Jubilees, never, as I recall, suggests any direct influence of Jubilees on the N.T.

This is a book I would love to have in my personal library and I will probably read it again, but not for some years in the future. I have to recover from the first read through! Next up on my reading about Satan is The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics by Elaine Pagels